Despite the annulment of the 2014 Anti-Homosexuality Act that was meant to criminalize the act of same-sex relations by life imprisonment and even capital punishment in Uganda, members of the LGBTQ community continue to face unwarranted reproof.
Several bills have been proposed in Parliament, such as the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, the revised Anti-Homosexuality Bill and just recently bills that would criminalize sex work and gay sex. However, none of these bills saw the light of day thanks to the rigorous fight put down by LGBTQ activists against the government through the Constitutional Court and protests.
Who could forget the horrific and traumatic experience that was faced by 44 LGBTQ people at the end of May of this year when police raided a private function that was being held in Kampala that saw the 44 being arrested, assaulted and humiliated by the police, who even went an extra mile of posting their faces on social media and national television.
That petrifying moment is still being relived not only by the 44, but other LGBTQ community members as Iga Isma, executive director of Happy Family Youth Uganda, aptly states.
“In May, police raided a private function that had 44 LGBTQI+ personnel and they were arrested for conducting a gay wedding which was not the case as they were just having a party and since their arrest although they have now been released, they have been receiving a lot of stigma because after they were incarcerated their photos were paraded on social media, national television and it is now difficult for them to move, to get a job or do anything because when they get on the streets people intimidate, harass and assault them so they are facing a lot of challenges. They cannot talk in the community, they cannot buy anything, some of them when they were released from prison actually came back to burned down houses. Their houses were set on fire by some members of the community and others were chased away by their families,” said Isma.
In addition, Isma cited that many members of the LGBTQ community now do not have a sense of belonging as they have been rejected and sidelined by those they deem to be their loved ones.
“In Uganda today, hundreds of LGBTQI+ personnel have no place to call home as they are kicked out by their homophobic and transphobic, conservative communities as well as family members due to stigma and a lot of LGBTQI+ personnel continue to live in the shadows and do not come out due to fear of rejection from their families, colleagues and members of their communities.
However, we as LGBTQI+ organizations are trying to educate members of the community, government and all stakeholders about the LGBTQI+ community because that is the only way we can do away with the repugnant attitude towards the LGBTQI+ community. Though it is difficult due to the homophobic and transphobic communities within our midst, we are trying to change the narrative,” said Isma.
It is now yet to be seen whether or not the new administration, which formed earlier in January under President Yoweri Museveni, who has governed the East African country for the past 35 years, will lift the cumbersome tribulations and aspersions that are continuously being faced by members of the LGBTQ community.
DC Comics has celebrated National Coming Out Day by confirming a long-rumored development: Superman has officially come out as bisexual.
To be clear: this is not the well-known Clark Kent/Kal-El Superman; rather, his son, Jon Kent. GayTimesreports that DC has confirmed the character will officially come out in the pages of Superman: Son of Kal-El on October 9.
“I’ve always said everyone needs heroes and everyone deserves to see themselves in their heroes and I’m very grateful DC and Warner Bros. share this idea,” Tom Taylor, writer of the book, said in a statement. “Superman’s symbol has always stood for hope, for truth and for justice. Today, that symbol represents something more. Today, more people can see themselves in the most powerful superhero in comics.”
DC has also confirmed that in the comics, Jon Kent will fall for his close friend, reporter Jay Nakamura. As Jon faces exhaustion from saving the world from constant threats, the emotional bond between he and Jay will deepen.
Jon Kent joins the ranks of popular, queer DC heroes and villains, including Batwoman, The Question, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. Earlier this year, former Robin Tim Drake (of Batman & Robin fame) also came out as queer.
Now, what do we have to do to get a movie about this Superman?
Two Omaha women and their teenage sons have sued Nebraska’s health department for rejecting their request that both women be listed as legal parents on their sons’ birth certificates.
Erin Porterfield and Kristin Williams started their family in 2002 using assisted reproductive technology and each gave birth to one of their sons, who are now 16 and 18, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, which is representing the couple with the Omaha law firm Koenig-Dunne.
Porterfield and Williams were never married and are now no longer together, but they both have a court order that establishes an in loco parentis relationship that grants them some, but not all, parental legal rights.
This summer, the couple requested that both of them be acknowledged on their sons’ birth certificates, but the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services denied their request last month, writing in a letter that the “only routes to legal parentage under Nebraska law are through marital presumption, adoption, or biological relationship.”
But the women say these options are unavailable to them. Nebraska case law prohibits second-parent adoption by an unmarried non-birth parent, according to the lawsuit.
Porterfield and Williams alleged in the lawsuit filed Monday that Nebraska law is discriminatory because it treats unmarried same-sex couples differently from unmarried different-sex couples, who “can establish parentage of their children through voluntary acknowledgment at any time after a child is born,” according to the lawsuit.
Erin Porterfield, back left, and Kristin Williams, back right, along with their children, Cameron Porter Williams, 16, front left, and Kadin Porter Williams, 18, at the family law firm Koenig | Dunne in Omaha, Neb., on Aug. 4.Rebecca S. Gratz for ACLU of Nebraska
The state health department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Being fully legally recognized as parents to both of their children would ensure that Porterfield and Williams can make decisions about their sons’ care, including those related to education or estate planning, according to the ACLU of Nebraska.
“While we spend our parenting time the same as most good parents — showing up for show choir and band competitions, making sure homework is done, teaching values and manners, and gently guiding our boys to be their truest selves regardless of cultural expectations — we haven’t had the luxury of peace of mind that should something happen to one of us our boys would seamlessly be afforded the government benefits other families take for granted,” Williams said, according to a press release.
The lawsuit also argued that the health department is violating the equal protection and due process clauses of the Constitution by refusing to apply state law in the same way for both same-sex and unmarried different-sex parents.
Currently, the health department offers a “voluntary acknowledgement of paternity” form that fathers can use to obtain full legal parenting rights. When Porterfield and Williams submitted their forms over the summer, they amended them to be gender-neutral and changed “paternity” to “parentage,” according to the ACLU of Nebraska.
The department denied these amended requests, and as a result, their lawsuit also seeks a declaration that the department will apply state law related to voluntary acknowledgement in a gender-neutral way.
Angela Dunne, managing partner at the law firm Koenig-Dunne, said the case is an example of how families’ attempts to protect their parenting rights can be “thwarted by gender-specific language that does not support the ever-changing face of families.”
“We have a biological mom and an in loco parentis mom, and we are legally unable to permanently preserve their legal rights to their children and the children’s legal rights to have two parents,” Dunne said in the press release. “We hope this lawsuit will remedy this deficiency and protect our legally vulnerable families.”
Nebraska is one of 35 states with a law that recognizes the nongestational parent — the parent who didn’t carry and give birth to the child — as a legal parent if the couple is married but don’t have a clear statute or established case law for unmarried couples, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank. Fifteen states and Washington, D.C., recognize the nongestational parent as a legal parent regardless of marital status.
One law, the Uniform Parentage Act, addresses the differences in parentage laws across the country. It was updated in 2017, and state legislatures can choose to adopt it.
Courtney G. Joslin, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who was the primary drafter of the 2017 act, told NBC Newslast year that four states — California, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington — have enacted all or large portions of the latest law. Connecticut and Maine also voluntarily expanded their parentage laws earlier this year. These states offer nonbiological parents paths to parentage regardless of their marital status and don’t require parents to adopt their own children.
Joslin said variations in state laws across the country can put same-sex couples in difficult situations.
“It is incredibly hard for families to have their status potentially change as they move across state lines,” she said.
Multiple North Carolina state representatives are demanding that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Republican, resign after a video surfaced showing him describing the LGBTQ community as “filth.”
The video, first shared by Right Wing Watch, a project of the progressive advocacy group People For the American Way, shows Robinson speaking at the Asbury Baptist Church in Seagrove during a visit in June, local NBC affiliate WRAL reported.
“I’m saying this now, and I’ve been saying it, and I don’t care who likes it: Those issues have no place in a school. There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality — any of that filth,” he said.
He added: “And yes, I called it filth. And if you don’t like it that I called it filth, come see me and I’ll explain it to you. It’s time for us to stop letting these children be abused in schools, and it’s not going to happen till the people of God stand up and demand different, same ones that established those schools to begin with.”https://iframe.nbcnews.com/EKbaUyq?app=1
One of the words Robinson used — “transgenderism” — was adopted by anti-transgender activists to make being transgender sound like a condition, according to the LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD.
John Wesley Waugh, a spokesperson for Robinson, said in an email that the lieutenant governor’s comments “refer to education.”
“Topics surrounding transgenderism and homosexuality should be discussed at home and not in public education,” Waugh said. “We must focus on reading, writing, and mathematics in North Carolina. Our students have struggled with these topics even before the pandemic. Our primary focus needs to be helping our students succeed, not on topics that should be discussed at home.”
When asked whether Robinson has a response to criticism that his comments were anti-LGBTQ regardless of the context, Waugh said Robinson “affirms every individual’s Constitutional right to identify or express themselves in anyway they desire.”
He added, “He is the Lieutenant Governor for all North Carolinians and will fight for and protect the rights of all citizens. His comments were referring to teaching about these topics in the classroom, not about individuals of the LGBTQ community.”
Robinson is second in command in the state and would fill in should Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, leave the state or his position. Robinson narrowly defeated Democrat Yvonne Lewis Holley in 2020, with 51.6 percent of the vote compared to Holley’s 48.4 percent.
In a statement emailed to NBC News Friday, Jordan Monaghan, Cooper’s press secretary, called Robinson’s comments “abhorrent.”
“North Carolina is a welcoming state where we value public education and the diversity of our people. It’s abhorrent to hear anyone, and especially an elected official, use hateful rhetoric that hurts people and our state’s reputation,” the statement reads.
Some state senators have taken a harder line and are demanding that Robinson resign, calling his remarks discriminatory.
Sen. Jeff Jackson, a Democrat representing North Carolina’s 37th District — which includes the state’s most populous city, Charlotte — condemned Robinson’s comments in a series of tweets on Thursday and Friday.
“There’s no debate here. This is open discrimination. It is completely unacceptable,” Jackson wrote, in part. “Mark Robinson should resign.”https://iframe.nbcnews.com/P9wSGmh?app=1
Jackson, who is running for the U.S. Senate in 2022, added that Robinson’s comments are part of a pattern. He said he’s made openly “hateful and discriminatory” comments about LGBTQ people and other minorities in the past, linking to an article from local news outlet the Cardinal & Pine.
The article includes 2016 comments that Robinson made after the shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse, in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 patrons — many of them young LGBTQ people — were killed and dozens more wounded before the shooter died in a shootout with law enforcement.
“First, let me say that I pray for the souls of all those killed, healing for all those wounded, and comfort for the family members of the terrorist shooting in Orlando,” Robinson wrote on his Facebook pageat the time. “However, homosexuality is STILL an abominable sin and I WILL NOT join in ‘celebrating gay pride’ nor will I fly their sacrilegious flag on my page. Sorry if this offends anyone, but I’m not falling for the media/pop culture ‘okey-doke.'”
State Sen. Wiley Nickel, a Democrat representing the state’s 16th District, which includes Raleigh and Durham, also called for Robinson to resign.
“I stand with the LGBTQ Community and hope you will join me in condemning this hate speech from the most senior Republican elected official in our state,” Nickel wrote on Twitter Friday. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/HgiJl5B?app=1
Kendra Johnson, the executive director of Equality NC, an LGBTQ nonprofit, said the group condemns Robinson’s “dangerous rhetoric.”
“At a time when LGBTQ people, especially those with multiple layers of marginalization, need a supportive state, Robinson offered transphobia and homophobia instead,” Johnson said in an email. “No one who thinks like this should be in a position of power, and these discriminatory attitudes underscore the need for comprehensive nondiscrimination protections in North Carolina.”
LGBTQ advocates have said that views like Robinson’s don’t represent the majority of North Carolinians. So far this year, 10 municipalities have passed measures that protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in public accommodations, employment and more.
A 2019 poll from Public Policy Polling found that 67 percent of voters in North Carolina support such legislation, with 19 percent in opposition.
Voters diverge more when broken down by political party. More than three-quarters of Democrats in the state support nondiscrimination legislation, while 12 percent oppose it. Among Republicans in North Carolina, those figures are 50 percent and 32 percent, respectively.
Allison Scott, the director of impact and innovation at the Campaign for Southern Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy group based in North Carolina, said Robinson’s comments remind her of the insults the LGBTQ community regularly endured a decade ago.
“They are shocking in their brazen homophobia and transphobia and are as unacceptable now as they were 10 years ago,” she said. “Our state has been on a journey, and more than a dozen cities and counties have successfully passed protections for LGBTQ people. It’s time for all North Carolinians to come on this journey toward a future where no one faces discrimination or harassment because of who they are.”
Robinson’s comments specifically addressed LGBTQ-inclusive classrooms — a topic that has recently joined other education culture wars, with more school districts banning pride symbols and flags. Though, in recent years, advocates have called on educators to make an effort to be more openly supportive of LGBTQ people — whether that’s by including prominent LGBTQ figures in lessons or by displaying a Pride flag in the classroom — because they say it can benefit LGBTQ youth.
One 2019 survey from The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that queer youth with at least one accepting adult in their life have a 40 percent lower risk of attempting suicide.
“Tell me about your coming out,” my 30-something friend Seth recently said to me.
“It was more than a day!” I joked.
National Coming Out Day (NCOD) is on Oct. 11. The holiday, celebrated yearly on Oct. 11, was first observed on Oct. 11, 1988.
That date was the one-year anniversary of the 1987 queer rights march in Washington, D.C. More than half a million people were at the march, which was a turning point in the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Robert H. Eichberg, a psychologist who died in 1995, and gay rights activist Jean O’Leary, who died in 2005, co-founded NCOD.
Things have progressed so far for us queers since then. We can marry and serve in the military. We’re parents, cops, athletes, teachers and preachers.
In this era of marriage equality, it’s tempting to wonder: What is all the fuss about coming out?
But, a reality check shows that coming out still matters.
A quick look through the news headlines reveals why staying in the closet is so hurtful and how unsafe it can still be to come out as LGBTQ+.
If you’re of a certain age, you likely cried your eyes out when you watched the Disney movie “Old Yeller.” Who could forget the scene when the young boy Travis (played by Tommy Kirk shoots “Old Yeller” because his dog has rabies? In 2019, the Library of Congress added
”Old Yeller” to the National Film Registry.
Kirk died on Sept. 28 at 79 at his Las Vegas home. Despite Kirk’s popularity with fans, Disney didn’t renew his contract because he was gay.
“I was caught having sex with a boy at a public pool in Burbank,” Kirk told the gossip columnist Liz Smith. “We were both young, and the boy’s mother went to Walt.”
In the 1960s, there was no way that an out actor would have had a chance in Hollywood.
I wish I could say that everything’s changed since Disney fired Kirk. But, this isn’t the case.
In August, Jamel Myles, a fourth grader in Denver killed himself, the Denver Post reported. His mother told the Post that her son, who’d come out to her as gay, took his own life because he’d been bullied for a year.
“We are deeply committed to our students’ well-being,” a Denver Public Schools spokesman said in a statement.
Unfortunately, Jamal’s story is far from unique. Nationwide, many LGBTQ+ students in the U.S. have been bullied. Nearly half (43 percent) of transgender youth have been bullied, according to the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance survey. Nearly a third (29 percent) of trans youth, 21 percent of gay and lesbian youth and 22 percent of bisexual youth have attempted suicide, the survey reports.
Life is far more dangerous for queer folk in many places worldwide from Hungary to Ghana.
You could respond to this grim news by going to bed, staying under the covers—tucked in the closet.
But that would let homophobia and transphobia have the right of way. It would deny us the chance to joyfully, proudly, defiantly celebrate who we are.
Studies have shown that knowing us can help alleviate prejudice.
Family members, friends and colleagues may still feel uncomfortable around us because of our sexual orientation or gender identity.
But, it’s hard to hate your non-binary 10-year-old granddaughter on Christmas morning. Or your gay buddy at the gym.
One of my fondest memories is when I came out to my Aunt Manci. I worried that she wouldn’t accept my girlfriend. I needed have been anxious. “You’re lucky,” she said, “she loves you.”
Coming out is a process that lasts a lifetime—from deciding if you want to be out in the third grade to ensuring that your loved ones won’t erase your queerness from your obituary.
Coming out can be arduous. But, it’s liberating! Let the revels begin! Happy National Coming Out Day!
Chay Brown, director of TransActual, said: “These findings are shocking but in no way unexpected. They merely put figures to a perilous situation that almost every trans person in the UK is well aware of.
“Transphobia feels unescapable, whether we’re at home, at work or when we go to the doctors.”
Transphobic discrimination in healthcare worse for trans people of colour and disabled trans people
Alongside prejudice and discrimination against trans people trying to access healthcare, problems also persist in the workplace.
In the workplace, high numbers of trans people have experienced transphobia while trying to get a job (63 per cent), or from their line manager or colleagues. Seventy-three per cent of trans men and women have experienced transphobia from their colleagues, as have 80 per cent of non-binary people.
While anti-trans discrimination affects the majority of trans people, for trans people of colour and disabled trans people the situation is even worse. Seventy-three per cent of Black people and people of colour (BPOC) have experience transphobia while seeking employment, and 88 per cent have experienced transphobia from colleagues.
In healthcare, a greater number of disabled trans people reported that healthcare services are inadequate than non-disabled trans people. Sixty per cent of disabled respondents to TransActual’s survey reported experiencing ableism when trying to access trans-specific healthcare services.
Trans people with disabilities are also more likely to experience delayed treatment, with 93 per cent having done so compared with 85 per cent of non-disabled people.
Additionally, 53 per cent of BPOC said they have experienced racism when trying to access trans-specific healthcare services.
Outside of work and healthcare, trans people face other serious issues: 27 per cent of British trans people have been homeless at some point in their lives, rising to 36 per cent of BPOC and disabled trans people.
jane fae, chair of Trans Media Watch, said of the report’s findings that the “real scandal” is “how comprehensively the media have conspired to ignore this situation, preferring, instead, to produce tens of thousands of words on the largely imagined consequences of reform to the Gender Recognition Act”.
fae added: “We are not at all surprised to find that 70% of respondents said that media transphobia has impacted their mental health. In addition, 93% reported that media transphobia had an impact on their experience of transphobia from strangers on the street, while 85% said it has impacted how their family treat them.
“The bottom line is: transphobia impacts all aspects of daily life for trans people, from relationships with our friends and families, to healthcare, and even listening to the radio. This report is essential reading for anyone working in healthcare or in the media, as well as for policy makers and employers, and we hope that it provides food for thought.
“Your actions (and inactions) have a profound impact on all of us.”
Administrators this week in the Davis School District, which is Utah’s 2nd largest school district with 72,987 students, banned LGBTQ Pride and Black Lives Matter flags, saying they are ‘politically charged.’
According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, Davis Schools spokesperson Chris Williams told the paper; “No flags fly in our schools except for the flag of the United States of America.” Williams later walked that statement back adding a clarification that some of the Districts schools have flags from sports team or international countries which are considered “unrelated to politics.”
“What we’re doing is we’re following state law,” said Williams. “State law says that we have to have a classroom that’s politically neutral.”
Amanda Darrow, Director of Youth, Family, and Education at the Utah Pride Center in Salt Lake City, told multiple media outlets the school district is “politicizing the rainbow flag” which doesn’t belong on a political list.
“That flag for us is so much more,” said Darrow. “It is just telling us we’re included in the schools, we are being seen in the schools, and we belong in these schools.”
KUTV CBS2 News in Salt Lake City checked with the Utah State Board of Education. In an email, spokesman Mark Peterson said, “There is nothing in code that specifically defines a rainbow flag as a political statement so it would be up to district or charter school policies to make that determination.”
The local Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union also weighed in saying in a statement;
“Whether or not a school district has the legal ability to ban inclusive and supportive symbols from classrooms, it is bad policy for them to do so,” the advocacy organization said in a statement. “Utah schools have an obligation to ensure that all students, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identify, feel welcome inside a classroom. We urge school administrators and teachers to adopt policies that make all students feel safe and included.”
Williams insisted the policy is not meant to exclude anyone and that all students are loved and welcomed – they just want to keep politics out of school he told the Tribune and KUTV.
“We have to have a politically neutral classroom, and we’re going to educate the students in the best possible way that we can,” said Williams.
A Utah based veteran freelance journalist, writer, editor, and food photographer weighed in on Twitter highlighting the negative impact of the Davis Schools decision on its LGBTQ youth.
Texas mom Annaliese Cothron drove an hour and a half from her home in San Antonio to the state Capitol in Austin this year for a rally in support of transgender children, including her own child. It’s a drive she has made so many times that she has lost count.
Trans youths in the state have been the targets this year of more than 50 bills that would restrict their participation in sports or ban them from gaining access to certain health care, among other restrictions.
Cothron was leading the crowd in a chant, but she started to get tired. So she asked the Rev. Remington Johnson, a Presbyterian clergywoman and a fellow activist, to take the bullhorn.
Johnson, a trans woman who has testified almost a half-dozen times against anti-trans bills, had shown up that day riding a longboard, wearing hot pink shorts and carrying a huge trans flag, Cothron recalled. She took the bullhorn, and the first thing she said was: “Trans kids are magical.”
Cothron, who has an 8-year-old child who is nonbinary, said the moment has stuck with her.
“That, to me, was so powerful,” she said. “Nobody talks about my child like that, because they don’t have the same experience that a trans person has to know really how truly unique and magical and powerful transgender children are.”
The Rev. Remington Johnson waves pride flags at a rally in Austin in May.Ricardo Martinez
Johnson, a health care chaplain who previously worked in a hospital supporting people who are sick or dying, said her role in life is to be a caregiver and a “justice bringer.” She returns to the Capitol again and again despite the toll it has taken on her physically and emotionally, not only to advocate for herself as a trans woman, but also to bring some levity to a space that has been traumatizing for trans people and families.
“The caregiving at the bedside, the caregiving at the Capitol — it’s all one and the same,” said Johnson, who is working on her master’s degree in nursing at the University of Texas at Austin. “These are all systems, and there’s suffering swirling, and I feel like my role and my responsibility here is to at least show up.”
Activism as an ‘exercise in self-love’
Johnson, 35, grew up just outside Texas in the rural Oklahoma Panhandle, in a family with Mennonite roots. She said she wasn’t raised with liberal or conservative ideals; she was “kind of raised tabula rasa” — her parents would encourage her to put herself in other people’s shoes.
Johnson said that in junior high school, she had an experience with her family that made her feel as though she couldn’t talk about her identity openly. One evening, while her family was visiting the gay-friendly beach town of Provincetown, Massachusetts, two tall women walked past, she said.
“I remember as a kid just being like, ‘I don’t know what that is, but I love everything about it,’” Johnson said. “I don’t know if they were drag queens or trans women or what, but it was magical. But that was also the same moment where I got to hear from family members about how they were not OK with those folks. So it was this sort of whiplash.”
She said her coming out process was gradual after that. She told a therapist in college how she was feeling about her gender, and the therapist suggested that she might be a trans woman, “and I was like, ‘Thank you very much,’ and I never went back,” Johnson said.
She wrestled with internalized transphobia — a battle that continues to this day and plays a role in her activism, she said.
She moved to Texas in 2008. Nine years later, Texas Republicans introduced a bill that would have required trans people to use the bathrooms that matched the sexes listed on their birth certificates. Although Johnson was out as trans at that point, she said, she didn’t feel ready to participate in activism, because she felt she “was the problem.”
“I just felt like I was the boogeyman that Republicans were talking about, because I was this huge, built, powerful figure that was going to be using the restroom with them,” she said. She didn’t feel ready to advocate then, but when the 2020 legislative session began, she decided she wanted to be there.
“I want to show up for me and because a lot of the things that these legislators and anti-trans folks were saying are things that my loved ones have said to me during my transition and internalized transphobia that I say to myself,” she said. “So some of this is an exercise in self-love and self-compassion and a tangible reminder that there’s nothing wrong with me.”
‘Fixing things is what I do’
Among the families who are fighting anti-trans bills at the Capitol, Johnson’s presence is known as healing. She developed that skill, putting people at ease, during her work as a health care chaplain, when she would help people make difficult decisions, such as whether to go through with high-risk operations or to go home with hospice, or end-of-life, care.
She said she introduced herself to a woman in hospice care as “a fixer.” The woman responded “What are you going to fix?” and Johnson said, “I’m going to fix it.”
“And I did, I fixed it,” Johnson said. “I couldn’t cure her cancer, but I could help her build a relationship with her care team. I can help her build a relationship with her family.
“Fixing things is what I do,” she added.
Even outside of her activism, in her personal life, she fixes. She took up woodworking and built the cabinets and the countertops and redid the flooring and the windows in her last home. During the pandemic, she taught herself how to longboard, and she now builds her boards herself.
Her friend Meghan Jacobson said fixing things and caring for people are at the core of who Johnson is.
“She worked in hospice because she recognizes the specialness and the importance of these moments that a lot of other people run away from,” Jacobson said, adding that Johnson saved her life over the last year by connecting her with a mental health care provider and by simply being there to support her.
Parents who advocate on behalf of their transgender children at Texas’ Capitol tell similar stories.
Linzy Foster, who is from Austin, has been to the Capitol about a dozen times this year to advocate on behalf of her 7-year-old trans daughter. She said that she has been dealing with a lot of anxiety recently and that during a news conference last month, she was breathing heavily. Johnson, who was sitting next to her, noticed.
“She just put her hand on my back and was rubbing my back, and we just had this little moment,” Foster said. A reporter from the Austin American-Statesman captured a photo; Foster said that when she saw it, she “burst into tears.”
“Because it’s just symbolic — she is fighting her own battle, but she keeps showing up for the parents so that we can show up for our kids,” Foster said.
The energy at the Capitol is often heavy and traumatic for parents, Foster said, and Johnson makes everyone laugh.
For example, at one news conference, Johnson described how Republican legislators in Texas and elsewhere tried to pass bathroom bills after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality in 2015. “What happens is they try to vilify women like myself who have a little bit of size, and we’re just too charming and beautiful to want to pee next to,” she said, leading to a chorus of laughs.
Johnson said she tries to bring humor and joy to her activism because she wants trans people watching “to feel safe, at least for a tiny moment.”
“I want them to see somebody that gets to stand up in front of them, and I want to feel like I’m a good representative,” she said. “I want to feel like the mothers can look and say, ‘Oh my gosh, my child can grow up and it’s going to be OK.’ I want to offer a tiny moment of levity and power and hope.”
‘This is not trans tragedy. This is trans joy.’
Although someone wouldn’t know it by watching her speak at the Capitol, Johnson said that she has been traumatized by her activism this year and that the trauma is getting worse as she continues to go back.
She compared the experience to a sports injury. Sports have been and still are a huge part of her life — which is partly why she fights so hard for trans kids to have the right to play. She plays on a gay flag football team in Austin.
“Showing up to the Capitol is like playing through an injury,” she said. “There has been a traumatic injury to my soul. And I see it, and I’ve had it checked out by professionals, and they say, ‘You can keep playing on it, but it’s going to hurt you.’”
The Rev. Remington Johnson speaks at a rally on the steps of the Texas Capitol in Austin. Brad Pritchett
But she stressed that activism isn’t only about trauma. She said that after the Supreme Court ruled last year that LGBTQ people are protected from employment discrimination under federal law, she rode 26 miles around Austin on her homemade longboard carrying a huge trans pride flag. “People were honking and stopping for photos,” she said. “It was really special.”
For Cothron, Johnson’s positivity and joy show her that her nonbinary child can grow to thrive.
“This is not trans tragedy. This is trans joy,” Cothron said. “And Remington is there to really embody that. … To me, my child being able to have role models who are adults and fighting — and not just fighting but also thriving — that is just so critically important.”
For Johnson, that’s the trans experience: “to be able to go through discomfort and come out on the other side with this buoyant, joyous presence,” she said. “That’s who we are. That’s who I am.”
Books about sex, LGBTQ issues and how to have a baby have public library employees in a deeply conservative Wyoming city facing possible prosecution after angry local residents complained to police that the material is obscene and doesn’t belong in sections for children and teenagers.
For weeks, Campbell County Public Library officials have been facing a local outcry over the books and for scheduling a transgender magician to perform for youngsters, an act canceled amid threats against the magician and library staff.
Campbell County Public Library in Wyoming.Google Maps
The books are “This Book is Gay” by Juno Dawson, “How Do You Make a Baby” by Anna Fiske, “Doing It” by Hannah Witton, “Sex is a Funny Word” by Corey Silverberg, and “Dating and Sex: A Guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy” by Andrew P. Smiler, according to Susan Sisti, a local pastor who has been raising concerns about those and other books in the library.
“It’s really easy to go into the library and look around a little bit and find a filthy book that should not even be in a public library,” said Sisti, pastor of Open Door Church in Gillette. “These books are absolutely appalling.”
Now, after a complaint filed with the sheriff’s office, prosecutors are reviewing the case. They will seek appointment of a special prosecutor to weigh in as well before deciding whether to pursue charges, County Attorney Mitchell Damsky announced Friday.
Investigators haven’t contacted library officials about the case, leaving them unsure which books got the library in potential legal trouble, said the library’s executive director, Terri Lesley.
Told the list provided by Sisti, Lesley said library officials had reviewed a complaint about “This Book is Gay” and determined it belonged in the library’s Teen Room. The decision was being appealed to the library board while library officials review pending complaints about the other four.
In all, the library has been working through 35 recent complaints about 18 books, she said, a situation she said appeared to be quite unusual for a public library.
“It’s unexpected,” Lesley said. “We are trying to be the force of reason, trying to work through these things using the policy we have in place — review these books and do our due diligence.”
The LGBTQ advocacy group Wyoming Equality said it’s up to parents to decide when their children should have access to such books.
“Maybe the answer is never. If it’s never, that’s fine. But do you get to make that choice for other families?” said the group’s executive director, Sara Burlingame.
The book dispute has “gotten contentious and out of hand” when it may have been resolvable by putting the books among material for adults, said Damsky, the prosecutor.
“Personally, as a parent, I find the material to be just inappropriate for children and disgusting. But as a lawyer I’m sworn to uphold the Constitution and that’s why we are dealing with it with a fine-toothed comb,” Damsky said.
Sisti has been working with Hugh and Susan Bennett, who went to the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday with concerns that the five books may have violated state child-sex laws. Sheriff’s officials reviewed the complaint and referred the case, which was first reported by the Gillette News Record, to prosecutors.
“It’s very challenging to imagine how a child who’s sexually immature, physically immature, if there’s any reasonable purpose for exposing them to sexual behavior that’s far beyond their physical and mental and emotional and intellectual abilities to understand,” Hugh Bennett said.
He called the books “hard-core pornography to children.”
“This Book is Gay,” Sisti pointed out, includes illustrations of male and female genitalia and descriptions of oral and anal sex. But child access to all kinds of material on the internet might be pertinent to the case, suggested Damsky.
“What 9-year-old kid today can’t access Pornhub or whatever they want, you know what I mean?” Damsky said.
The library already faced protests and threats last summer over plans for a performance by a transgender magician. The magician canceled the show due to the threats.
The furor over the magician and the books prompted Wyoming Equality to talk with local officials about the threats and offer support to library staff. Local leaders had left Burlingame hopeful the rancor over the library would tone down, she said.
“It seemed like there was some kind of opportunity to put the brakes on this and can we talk to each other,” Burlingame said. “It seems like the train has jumped the tracks.”
Rachel Gonzales has been to the Texas Capitol at least a dozen times since 2017, when she advocated against a bill that would’ve banned her then-6-year-old transgender daughter, Libby, from using the girls’ bathroom.
That bill died in 2017,but the fight hasn’t stopped. Since January, Texas has considered 52bills that target trans people, particularly youth, according to Equality Texas, an LGBTQ advocacy group in the state.
Parents like Gonzales and advocates have defeated all of the bills so far. But last week, during a third special legislative session, the Texas Senate passed a bill that would ban transgender student athletes in public schools from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity, as opposed to their sex assigned at birth.
State Sens. Bob Halland Charles Perry, both Republicans, also refiled bills last week that would ban health care providers from providing trans children with gender-affirming health care — including therapy — and that could charge parents and doctors with child abuse if they provide such care for trans children.
Gonzales said she will continue to fight the bills, but she added that she is so burnt out by the last nine months that she doesn’t feel like an effective advocate.
“I joke, but it’s not really a joke, that I have definitely lost years off my life from this battle — the amount of stress, the physical manifestation of that stress and the mental anguish,” she said. “It’s so much of negotiating my own feelings in order to assure my kid that she’s going to be OK. But it’s terrifying that I don’t know if it’s going to be OK, and not just for her, but for other kids across the state, kids who cannot safely be out.”
It’s taken a mental and physical toll on her, she said, and other parents and advocates in the state say the same. They say they won’t stop, because they’re doing it for their kids, but they need more help.
‘It takes me hours to fall asleep’
Supporters of trans athlete bans in Texas say they are trying to protect fairness in women’s sports, though — like most supporters of similar bills — they haven’t been able to provide any examples in their state of trans girls jeopardizing fairness, according to LGBTQ advocates.
Proponents of bans on gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers say the care is “experimental” and that children are too young to receive it. But medical experts who provide gender-affirming care say it is supported by all relevant major medical organizations, such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association. Some of these groups note that gender-affirming care is backed by decades of research and has been used to treat cisgender kids experiencing precocious puberty, for example.
Libby Gonzales, right, and her sister, Cecilia, inside Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s office at the Capitol in Austin.Courtesy of the Gonzales Family
Parents like Gonzales have been fighting the bills so relentlessly because they say the proposals, whether they pass or not, have a devastating effect on trans youth in the state — especially youth who help advocate against them.
Libby, Gonzales’s 11-year-old daughter who is transgender, said the anti-trans bills reintroduced by Republican state senators make her “feel really scared and like they are trying to harm me in very terrible ways.”
She first became an activist at 6 years old, when conservatives in the state tried to pass a billthat would’ve banned her from using the girls’ restroom. Libby said being an advocate is important to her because if she wasn’t, “I would be really hurt, and people wouldn’t hear me.”
“It is very tiring,” she said. “Sometimes it takes me hours to fall asleep just because I’m so scared about these specific bills.”
Rebekah Bryant, who lives in Houston and has been to the Capitol six times this year to advocate against the bills, said they’ve also affected her 8-year-old trans daughter, Sunny.
Sunny has testified against the sports bills twice,in July and August. The first time she testified, she told the Senate committee she likes baseball, soccer, tennis and gymnastics, and that none of her teammates cared that she is trans.
“I’ve been with the same classmates for three years, and none of them knew I was trans until this year,” she said. “When my mom had to speak at the Capitol, they loved me just the same, because kids my age don’t care about that stuff. Kids care about what’s in your heart.”
“Only old people can’t see that,” she added, with a smile. Committee members, including Republicans, laughed, Bryant said.
The second time she testified, Sunny didn’t step up to the podium — which was taller than her — until 1 a.m. Afterward, when she and her mom got back to their hotel room, Sunny sat down on the bed and started crying.
Sunny Bryant, 8.Courtesy of the Bryant family
“She said, ‘Why do so many people not like me?’” Bryant said. “And that’s the first time she’s expressed any pain toward this. I was exhausted, and I just said to her, ‘Look, there are way more people there that love you. … There are so many more people in the world that are on your side than aren’t. Those people are the outliers.’”
She said Sunny developed anxiety afterward. Though it’s slowly gone away, Bryant hasn’t brought Sunny to the Capitol again.
Advocates say the rhetoric used in the bills has also had a negative effect on the mental health of transgender — as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer — youth statewide.
For example, between Jan. 1 and Aug. 30, crisis calls from LGBTQ young people in Texas increased 150 percent compared to the same period last year, according to data shared last week by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization. About 4,000, or 36 percent of all contacts from Texas, came from transgender or nonbinary youth.
The Trevor Project added that while the volume of crisis contacts “can not be attributed to any one factor (or bill),” a qualitative analysis of the crisis contacts found that “transgender and nonbinary youth in Texas have directly stated that they are feeling stressed, using self-harm, and considering suicide due to anti-LGBTQ laws being debated in their state.”
The Trans Lifeline, the country’s first transgender crisis hotline, also saw a 72 percent increase in calls from Texas in May — when state lawmakers first considered about a dozen anti-trans bills — when compared to May 2020, according to data shared with NBC News. In July, when the legislation was reconsidered, Trans Lifeline saw a 19 percent increase in calls from Texas.
Adri Pèrez, policy and advocacy strategist for LGBTQ equality at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said it’s unclear whether Texas’ trans athlete ban will pass the House and become law and that its passage “shouldn’t be the focal point.”
“The larger issue, I think, is out of the state of Texas there is a lot of misinformation about transgender people and transgender youth, specifically,” Pèrez said. “The work is not necessarily inside of the Texas Legislature; it’s outside of it. And what we’re doing to help humanize trans people and trans youth to those who have never met a transgender person or a transgender kid, that would be the most effective firewall for these bills. It’s not letting that misinformation take hold at all.”
Whether someone knows a transgender person can significantly affect their views on legislation such as trans athlete bans, according a survey released Thursday by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute. A slim majority of Americans who know a transgender person (52 percent), compared to one-third of Americans who do not know anyone who is transgender (33 percent), believe that a transgender girl should be allowed to compete in high school sports with cisgender female students.
PRRI also noted that support for trans people participating in sports has declined since 2018. About one-third, or 36 percent, of Americans believe that trans girls should be allowed to participate in sports with their cisgender classmates, compared to 50 percent in 2018.
Physical, mental and financial strain
Parents who are transgender advocates say Texas’ last few legislative sessions have been particularly difficult for them, too.
Bryant said this is the first year she’s become more active, and it has taken an emotional and financial toll on her family. She said she has to take off work to travel to the Capitol, which is about a 3 1/2-hour drive away, and she often has to book a hotel room. All told, she said she’s spent close to $3,000 going back and forth to the Capitol just this year.
Sunny, left, with her sibling, Bodhi, and her dad, Chet, and mom, Rebekah.Courtesy of the Bryant family
“It’s just so draining, because it’s not only just sitting there and waiting, but it’s sitting there and listening to people lie about you and your family — people that have never met a person who’s trans in their life and really haven’t walked the walk that all of us have,” she said.
Recently, many parents and advocates have been hitting “a wall,” said Linzy Foster, who is from Austin and has been to the Capitol about a dozen times this year to advocate on behalf of her 7-year-old trans daughter.
“The general population who usually are all on board and showing up and fighting for these things, they’re getting fatigued, and there’s also so many things to fight now,” she said. “We’re beginning to feel more and more lonely.”
Many of the advocates described being at the Capitol as traumatic. Annaleise Cothron, whose 8-year-old is nonbinary, said one day she went to the Capitol and the supporters of anti-trans bills called her child “a freak” and “disgusting.”
“While I would never tell my child that, just hearing that from somebody else is really emotionally taxing, and my child doesn’t deserve that,” she said. “People need to understand that’s the level of vitriol that we’re facing just going to the Capitol to say, ‘Please leave us alone. Please leave our community alone.’ This isn’t about politics; this is about human beings.”
More than just sports
Though the parents and advocates believe that trans kids have a right to play on the sports teams that match their gender identity, they said their advocacy is about more than just sports.
Annaliese Cothron protests on behalf of her 8-year-old nonbinary child.Courtesy of Dorothy Wallace
“Just the conversation of whether or not my child should exist in public school sports and whether or not other kids should bully them for who they are — that’s the conversation that this legislative body is inviting by entertaining these bills,” Cothron said.
She said the other bills that Republicans have reintroduced or plan to reintroduce that could charge her with child abuse for providing her child with access to gender-affirming care prove that the conversation is about more than fairness in sports.
“This is about the broader conversation of saying whether or not a transgender child should exist in Texas and access public services,” she said.
For now, the parents say they are leaning on each other for support.
“The only reason I’m doing OK, to be honest with you, is because in all of this I have met these amazing people in this community who show up, and we support one another,” Foster said. “We have moments of levity even in the trauma that we’re dealing with when we’re in the Capitol, being able to make each other laugh, knowing that you’re loved, knowing that you’re supported. That is the only thing that’s keeping me going.”
