The number of homophobic hate crime reports in the UK has tripled and the number of transphobic hate crime reports has quadrupled over the last six years, shocking new figures reveal.
Data obtained by Vice World Newsshows there were 6,363 reports of hate crimes based on sexual orientation in 2014-15, the year same-sex weddings became legal in the UK, compared to 19,679 in 2020-21 – a total increase of 210 per cent.
For reports of transphobic hate crimes, there were 598 in 2014-15 and 2,588 in 2020-21, representing a rise of 332 per cent.
Only ten out of the 45 UK police forces recorded a decrease in hate crime, and the vast majority of those who provided data had seen a year-on-year rise in hate crime reports since 2014.
Among them were Liverpool’s Merseyside Police, which has been battling a wave of homophobic attacks in the city this year. Back in 2014-2015 the hate crime reports numbered just 64; in 2020-21 this figure soared to 834.
Leni Morris, chief executive of Galop, the UK’s LGBT+ anti-abuse charity, said she wasn’t surprised that hate crime reports went up during the lockdown period.
“Right from the beginning of the pandemic, we saw the impact that lockdown was having on the escalation in violence and abuse against our community,” she told Vice.
“We saw LGBT+ people targeted as a direct result of the pandemic – either because the pandemic was seen as a punishment for our existence, or because of our community’s association with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and a notion that LGBT+ people were somehow at the root of this pandemic.”
“What we do know for sure, from the UK government’s own figures, is that 90 per cent of hate crimes against LGBT+ people go unreported, so these figures only represent a tiny part of the overall amount of abuse and violence faced by the LGBT+ community in the UK today.”
This rise in hate crimes has been accompanied by a sharp uptick in the demand for the services of Victim Support, an independent charity which provides specialist, confidential help for victims of crime in England and Wales.
Victim Support says overall requests for help have jumped by almost 11 per cent in the past 12 months, with calls relating to transphobic attacks surging by a shocking 45 per cent.
This is significantly higher than the 22 per cent increase in the number of people seeking help for disability hate crimes, and a 20 per cent increase in sexual orientation-related crimes.
An “overwhelming majority” of hate crimes recorded by the charity were race and nationality-related (71 per cent), with Victim Support noting a spike in referrals to its services following the Euro 2020 final in July.
“It is both concerning and disheartening that our figures reflect this significant increase in hate crimes across the country,” said Diana Fawcett, Victim Support’s chief executive, as reported by the Independent.
“We are alarmed to see that the number of victims seeking support for race and nationality-related hate remains high, and we strongly condemn all types of racist abuse.
“It’s also worrying that there has been a huge jump in the number of people seeking support for disability, homophobic and transgender-identity related hate crimes, which we’ve seen have a damaging effect on the victim’s sense of safety, well-being and self-worth.”
The rising hate crime rates were confirmed earlier this month by the investigative journalism unit Liberty Investigates, which also found that forces across England and Wales had resolved fewer cases in 2020 than five years ago.
In 2020 only 14 per cent of cases resulted in a conclusive outcome such as a caution, charge, summons, penalty notice or community resolution – half the rate of 28 per cent seen five years earlier.
“These findings are extremely concerning,” said Nadia Whittome MP, who previously worked as a hate crime project officer at the non-profit social enterprise Communities Inc.
“I am not surprised that people withdraw from the police and criminal system, given how negative an experience many people from marginalised groups have had. However, the scale of withdrawals and lack of justice represents an institutional failure of hate crime victims.”
Dame Vera Baird QC, the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, said police had failed victims.
“It is shocking that police are clearly so unresponsive to this. If people are gaining the confidence to go to the police, only to be left lying by the wayside, there can’t be a clearer failure.”
We are lesbians and collaborators in the LGBTQ+ movement. We also have a third thing in common: We are both survivors of breast cancer. Each of our health journeys have led us to unite around a common goal to ensure that LGBTQ+ communities have what they need when facing a breast cancer diagnosis or getting treatment to prevent it.
In Dina’s case, she spent years undergoing countless procedures to mitigate her high breast cancer risks. She endured invasive surgeries that required grit, determination, resilience, and continual love and nurturing from her wife, Dom, their children, and their respective families. It went on for more than a decade.
Along the way, Dina also sought out support groups to help her cope with the emotions that arose around the bodily changes that resulted from her intense treatments. There, she faced a rude awakening. All of those groups were filled with straight women who did not react well when she spoke of her wife and her overall experience as a lesbian facing major breast health issues. In one online group, all but one of the women dropped off the call, after she shared insights from her LGBTQ+ perspective.
In another conversation, when Dina shared her sorrow over the loss she was feeling after a double mastectomy, the person she confided in quipped: “Well at least there’s still one set of boobs in your relationship,” referencing Dina’s wife, Dom, who has not faced any breast health problems herself. These incidents of insensitivity and misguided reactions left Dina feeling lonely, isolated, depressed, and unsupported.
Yet even as she rode the wave of these feelings, she felt a sense of resolve, knowing she had the skills, the contacts, and the wherewithal to make a change. As a registered nurse, author, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) expert, and CEO of her own health care consulting firm, she set out to give LGBTQ+ people a new resource. She enlisted Cindi’s advice as a breast cancer survivor, LGBTQ+ public relations pro, and friend.
Cindi overcame the immense challenge of major breast cancer treatment in 2018 and 2019, penning this op-ed for The Advocate at the time about the disparities facing LGBTQ+ people with cancer. She shared important statistics in the piece from the National LGBT Cancer Network and looked to the future about how to use her experience as a catalyst for giving back. The piece also highlighted how lucky she was to have good insurance, health care providers who respected her identity, and an amazing support system (including, most importantly, her wife, Rainie) to move through the difficulties. Far too many LGBTQ+ people with cancer lack these privileges.
Today, we, Dina and Cindi, are both healthy and thriving. So, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we are thrilled to announce that we have formed a new nonprofit to fill the resource gap for those in our communities who are confronted with breast health challenges. It’s called the Inclusive Community for Breast Health or as we affectionately call it, “I See Breast Health,” a play on our acronym. ICBH will provide education and resources for LGBTQ+ individuals who are in treatment for, or seeking to prevent, breast cancer, and work to build cultural competence within the health care system through collaboration with academic and health organizations.
As Dina saw firsthand during her own nursing education, there is a dearth of information on LGBTQ+ populations for those being trained as nurses, doctors, and other health care roles. ICBH plans to formally partner with academic institutions and engage with current medical students and future health care providers so they have the tools they need to provide excellent breast-focused healthcare for LGBTQ+ people. Some of these collaborations have informally begun.
And although we are only just beginning our work, we’re excited to share a non-research based survey focused on identifying LGBTQ+ community support needs in the area of breast/chest health. The responses we receive will help us understand what people are facing so we can better focus our programming priorities to meet those needs. We’re also organizing our first online educational panel that will include a variety of LGBTQ+ individuals with varying experiences and perspectives on breast health. That event is planned for November and we will share specific details on our social media pages in the near future.
We are grateful to take these first steps in launching what we believe will be a vital source of information for LGBTQ+ individuals with breast health concerns. We aim to create a safe space for those in our communities who are in the midst of these circumstances and looking for help. We want to give them the freedom to be fully authentic as they seek guidance and community support. We’re excited to lay the groundwork and start executing our programming in earnest over the next year, and we look forward to reporting back to you about our progress during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 2022.
Dina Proto, RN, is the Founder and CEO of Dina Proto International, a DE&I and LGBTQ+ Cultural Competency Consulting firm. In addition to her DE&I Healthcare Consulting firm, Dina is a Published Author, Speaker and Educator. In her book, Identity Impact: When Society’s Expectations Collide with the Authentic Self, Dina explores the clinical correlation between society’s projection of gender role and identity and healthcare disparities.
Cindi Creager is a media consultant with decades of communications experience in the news industry and LGBTQI non-profit world, including a successful tenure at ABC News, GLAAD, and her co-owned boutique public relations firm, CreagerCole Communications LLC.
A UK cervical screening pilot programme for trans men and non-binary people was so successful it could be used as a model for programmes around the world.
The pilot programme was launched in October 2019 in conjunction with the NHS as part of a study to address cervical cancer in trans and non-binary communities.
It offered weekly cervical screening clinics, only staffed by healthcare professionals with experience in treating trans and non-binary patients.
Of those who attended the clinic and gave feedback, 100 per cent were satisfied with the service, and a majority (60 per cent), said they would not have been screened if it were not for the clinic.
In the UK, screening is recommended every three years for all people with a cervix between the ages of 25 and 49, and every five years for those between age 49 and 64.
“Trans men and non-binary people are often reluctant to receive cervical screening, raising their risk of undetected human papillomavirus [HPV], which could lead to cervical cancer,” said Alison May Berner, a specialty trainee and clinical research fellow in medical oncology at Barts Cancer Institute in London, a specialist registrar with the Tavistock and Portman Gender Identity Clinic and the study’s lead author, per News Medical.
The results of the study were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research’s Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved this month, indicating that it could have international implications, and Berner said she wants further research to look at trans-specific cervical screenings in a GP setting.
She said: “People assume that this population’s health care-related needs are solely related to transition. That’s not true.
“Trans and non-binary people are at risk of HPV infection and cervical cancer if they continue to retain a cervix, and they stand to benefit from programs designed specifically for them.
“If you’re a trans or non-binary person living in a place where these specialist services do not exist, I would encourage you to work with a trusted health care professional to build relationships and ensure that you get the appropriate screenings, while continuing to have your identity respected.”
Bria Brown-King, 29, a Pennsylvania native, was raised as a girl. As Brown-King got older, however, they realized they were developing differently.
“I didn’t have the feminizing puberty that the other girls in my class had,” said Brown-King, who was born with an enlarged clitoris and started to develop masculine traits during puberty, including facial hair and larger muscles.
Brown-King, who has since come out as nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns, was born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or CAH, a rare condition in which the body produces high levels of androgens — hormones that influence masculine characteristics. Those with CAH are considered intersex, an umbrella term used to describe individuals whose sex characteristics do not match strictly binary definitions of male or female. While rare, at least 1 in 2,000people are born with a genital difference caused by an intersex trait, according to Human Rights Watch, an international research and advocacy group.
Bria Brown-King.Courtesy Bria Brown-King
Though many children with CAH undergo “gender-normalizing surgery” to make the genitals look more typically female in infancy, Brown-King’s parents decided to wait until Brown-King was old enough to choose. But Brown-King said severe bullying over their appearance drove them to get the surgery at 13. Looking back, Brown-King, who now works for InterAct, an intersex advocacy group, said they would have made a different choice “had I known that it was OK to have the body that I had.”
These so-called gender-normalizing surgeries have been performed on intersex babies and toddlers since at least the 1950s — usually in secrecy, without ever telling the children when they get older. Until recently, doctors saw a genital difference as a “psychosocial emergency” and rushed to assign a gender and perform surgery, believing children would be psychologically harmed otherwise, according to Dr. Sue Stred, a retired pediatric endocrinologist who has worked with intersex youth for nearly three decades. Emergency surgery, however, is only necessary in rare cases — if a child can’t urinate properly, for example, according to medical experts who work with these children.
The exact number of hospitals that currently perform these surgeries is unknown, and only a handful specialize in such procedures. Adults who underwent these surgeries as children report mixed feelings, with many saying they have had no problems, while others say they are “just wrought with devastation” over complications, according to Kyle Knight, a senior researcher who interviewed dozens of intersex people for Human Rights Watch. Complications can include sexual dysfunction, loss of sensation, infertility and gender dysphoria, according to the report.
As more people tell their stories, an increasing number of organizations have condemned medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex youth, including the United Nations, the World Health Organization, Physicians for Human Rights, the American Academy of Family Physicians, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Under mounting pressure, several hospitals have recently announced they would defer certain medically unnecessary genital surgeries until children are old enough to participate in the decision, including Lurie’s Children Hospital in Chicago, Boston Children’s Hospital and New York City Health & Hospitals, the largest public health care system in the United States.
“We empathize with intersex individuals who were harmed by the treatment that they received according to the historic standard of care and we apologize and are truly sorry,” Lurie Children’s Hospital announced in a statement last year. It was the first time a hospital had ever made such an apology.
‘The right answer right now isn’t clear’
There is fierce disagreement among doctors and advocates over whether surgical delays should extend to those with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Unlike many other intersex youths whose genetics and reproductive organs make it difficult to assign a sex, those with CAH have distinctly male or female chromosomes and sex organs — and only those assigned female at birth undergo surgery because of genital and hormonal differences.
As such, some people who work with these children wonder if delaying surgery would do more harm than good. Even adults with CAH are divided over this. A recent study from Europe, which surveyed 459 intersex adults who underwent genital surgery as children, found that 66 percent of those with CAH thought infancy or childhood was an appropriate age for this surgery, while 12 percent thought they would have been better off without it.
Bria Brown-King as an infant.Courtesy Bria Brown-King
Given these complexities, doctors and advocates have argued over whether children with CAH should be exempt from potential laws and policies that protect them from early cosmetic surgery. This was the case last year in California, when lawmakers, advocates and physician groups sparred over whether a bill, which would ban unnecessary surgeries on children with genital differences before age 6, was too broad. The bill, which was strongly opposed by the California Medical Association and Societies for Pediatric Urology, a group that represents the doctors who treat these patients, did not pass.
“The right answer right now isn’t clear,” Dr. Beth Drzewiecki, chief of pediatric urology at Tufts Children’s Hospital in Boston, said. “However, a blanket ban on surgery will not accurately support the views and voices of all of those that have variations in sex development.”
While Lurie Children’s Hospital has ended early medically unnecessary surgeries, it is considering an exemption for children with CAH, who experts say make up a majority of those who undergo feminizing surgeries. In an email, a spokeswoman for the hospital said the surgeries “will not be performed on CAH patients until we have evaluated the best practices and ethics and have released a white paper or report on the topic.”
The risks of ‘gender-normalizing surgeries’
There are no laws in the U.S. that regulate medically unnecessary gential surgeries for intersex children, Meanwhile, the current standard of care “remains an interdisciplinary team approach informed by parents’ wishes,” according to the AMA Journal of Ethics.
Taking this approach, more hospitals are hiring teams of surgeons, psychologists, social workers and genetic experts who work together to better understand a baby’s unique specific intersex trait, a process that can take weeks or even months, according to experts who work with these children. And doctors today are less likely to rush to assign a gender, though this may not always be the case.
“We still make recommendations for what gender we think the child is best going to feel, and we work that way,” Stred said. In cases where it is difficult to assign a sex, she said some doctors may recommend giving the child a gender-neutral name in case the child later disagrees with what sex they have been assigned.
Surgical techniques have improved greatly since the 1950s, with a better understanding of how to preserve sensitive nerves and tissue, according to Drzewiecki. She also said more surgeons today are giving parents options, rather than recommending surgery as a default solution.
“It’s really, I think, important to affirm to the families that their child is going to be OK with or without surgery,” she said, adding that “the most important thing is having transparency about what the risks are, and what the long-term risk over time will be, as well.”
One risk for those with CAH is stenosis, a condition in which surgically altered vaginal openings — performed in order to separate the urethra from the vaginal canal, which are typically fused in these children — can narrow over time, according to doctors. While the procedure is done to create a more typical vagina, doctors say it may be medically necessary to prevent urinary tract infections in some children, though the need for this is debated. A contentious way to prevent stenosis has been for parents or doctors to periodically insert a dilator in the opening to maintain it, though experts say this is usually traumatizing for children and, as such, is rarely done anymore.
Stenosis can lead to issues with menstruation and sex later in life, and may require additional surgery to fix, according to Dr. Frances Grimstad, a pediatric and adolescent gynecologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, who has training in these surgical repairs. And in general, she said, any early surgery performed on a child’s genitals is “playing a guessing game” as to what they will need or want in the future. Overall success rates of early surgeries are hard to pinpoint, she added, since health and insurance databases don’t accurately track them, and medical research tends to focus only on early outcomes.
“Surgeons who are doing these surgeries typically don’t follow their patients into their early 20s,” she said.
Brown-King said they developed urinary tract infections both before and after surgery and had to get additional surgery at age 19 to fix scar tissue.
“Surgery doesn’t fix everything,” they said. “I think that that’s kind of a narrative that sometimes doctors like to paint, that once you have surgery, things will be great. But that’s not necessarily the case.”
Surgery can also lead to mental health problems later in life, especially for those whose parents kept it a secret from them, according to Dr. Katharine Dalke, a psychiatrist at Penn State Health who specializes in LGBTQ and intersex populations. For many, she said, this sent a message that there was something “fundamentally wrong” with who they are, and that they “weren’t lovable otherwise.”
Parents struggle with surgery decisions
While some medical professionals are beginning to take a more nuanced and affirming approach to intersex care, the decision to perform early surgery remains in the hands of parents, who vary widely in their attitudes toward sex and gender. And many struggle to cope with the challenges of raising a child with a gential difference in a world that wants to know, “Is your baby a boy or a girl?” Under this pressure, parents may feel that “doing nothing equals doing harm,” according to Stred.
A protester outside Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York on Aug. 7.Casey Orozco-Poore
However, doctors say more parents are deciding to delay surgery, though it’s unclear how common this is. Those who make this choice often navigate a difficult journey alone, with few support groups or resources to guide them.
NBC News spoke to the father of a 6-year-old girl with CAH, who requested that his name not be published to protect his daughter’s privacy. So far, she identifies as a girl, though she is gender-nonconforming, and has had no issues with urinary tract infections, he said.
While he wants her to have “autonomy in determining her own identity,” he also said he worries she will resent him for not getting the surgery. He said he would let her get the surgery when she is old enough to decide.
“My fear is that she will want to do the surgery because of social pressure or peer pressure, and doing something simply to conform or avoid being different, I would have a harder time supporting,” he explained.
Dalke said that helping kids with genital differences begins with understanding “there’s nothing inherently pathological about” them, and that with help from parents and mental health providers, they can learn how to cope with bullying and even thrive.
For this reason, intersex advocates have fought for better education and psychological support for parents, and some lawmakers have begun to listen. That was the case this year when the New York City Council passed a bill that requires the city’s health department to provide intersex-inclusive education to parents and doctors.
There are hospitals that already provide psychological counseling for parents of intersex children, and some parents still struggle in spite of it. Recalling one mother who body-shamed her child during visits, Drzewiecki said children raised in nonaffirming environments are susceptible to psychological harm. And while it’s ideal to raise these children in an affirming way, she said, it’s “unrealistic” to expect that of “everybody in our society right now.”
As for Brown-King, they said surgery did not spare them from bullying, nor are they “worried about finding love” over the way they look. When asked whether those with CAH should be excluded from surgical delays, they posed a different question: “Why aren’t we having conversations with our children about the different ways to have a body?”
“There’s no such thing as having a clitoris that’s too large,” Brown-King said. “In the same way that penises come in all different shapes and sizes, so do clitorises. Why can’t we start to push that narrative instead?”
I’ve been around long enough in politics and corporate America to recognize overt signs of power grabs and people who would stampede over their mothers to get what they want. Oftentimes, it’s done abruptly, while in other instances, it’s done stealthily and slowly, chip, chip, chipping away until they finally get what they want — regardless of who has to pay the price.
When I worked on the Hill, the annual visit to congressional offices by pro-life forces on January 22, which was the anniversary of the passage of Roe v. Wade, was always a day to be dreaded if you were a congressional staffer. They were among the most stubborn, and paradoxically rudest people who came to lobby.
I remember one time, a pro-life woman dropped the file folders all over the reception area in our office, and I leaned over to help her pick them up. Instead of saying thank you, she seethed, “If you are pro-choice, leave my papers alone.” We weren’t — and aren’t — dealing with rational people.
For nearly 50 years, the pro-life movement has been laser-focused on overturning Roe v. Wade, so much so that many held their noses to support Donald Trump, because he had promised them Supreme Court justice nominations, as well as lower court judges.
It was the pro-life and conservative dream to obtain a lop-sided majority at the Supreme Court. Despite the fact that Democratic presidents have been in power 17 out of the last 29 years, that wish came true with the confirmation of right-wing darling Amy Coney Barrett, who was rushed through after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and pushed the number of conservative justices to the magic number of six.
The court, now, is known as the Roberts Court, since he is chief justice, and he has been twisting himself in knots to try and create a sense of balance about his court, by voting with the liberals on occasion. Roberts is fearful that his branded court will become one of the most divisive and negatively consequential.
Take the court’s ruling on the horiffic Texas abortion law last month: despite Roberts’ vote against it, the measure was upheld. The law basically makes abortion illegal and those who try to seek one at the risk of getting arrested by citizen vigilantes. This, as CNN reported that 70% of Americans disagree with the idea of allowing private citizens to bring lawsuits against abortion providers.
The court is definitely on its way to overturning Roe v. Wade, a fantasy that will come true due to the 18thcentury thinking of justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett. It’s only a matter of time. They’ve been outspoken through their careers about the illegality of Roe v. Wade, except of course when they testified at their Senate confirmation hearings, and lied through their teeth that they wouldn’t cast votes dictated by their personal convictions.
They are die-hard anti-abortion activists – yes, activists not judges. And, if you want the unvarnished and unmitigated truth, and they are also rigidly opposed to gay marriage; therefore, you can bet your last dollar that they will now start to chip away at marriage equality. It’s virtually a guarantee, and they’ve already hinted that they will.
When the court refused to hear a case brought by that nutty Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis last October, who wouldn’t abide by the law and issue marriage licenses, Justices Alito and Thomas, in their dissent, went ballisic on the decision that secured marriage equality nationally.
Thomas, writing for himself and Alito, said that the decision “enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss.” And that the Davis case “…may have been one of the first victims of this court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision.”
And their final dart: “…Obergefell will continue to have ruinous consequences for religious liberty.”
We wrote previously about Jonathan Mitchell, the architect of that slimy Texas abortion law. My colleague, Trudy Ring penned that Mitchell “…has invited the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn or at least severely undermine key LGBTQ+ rights decisions — the ones that struck down sodomy bans and established marriage equality.”
Mitchell filed what is called an amicus brief, or a friend of the court, in support of the Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy except “in medical emergencies or for severe fetal abnormality.” As Ring wrote, “Two federal courts have blocked the law, but the state is appealing to the Supreme Court, which just today announced the date for the hearing. It is widely seen as the case that could overturn Roe.”
In the brief, Mitchell calls for Roe to be overturned, and said that a decision to overturn could open the door for other “lawless” rights and protections to be reversed, including the right to have gay sex and the right to same-sex marriage.
According to a story in The Guardian, “While the majority of the justices stressed that they had not yet ruled on the constitutionality of the Texas law itself, the ruling showed that the majority was receptive to Mitchell’s legal strategy.”
You can be sure that Thomas and Alito are chomping at the bit to outlaw gay sex, and do away with gay marriage, and they will do it by chip, chip, chipping away. They now have three other comrades on their side, who are equally opposed to gay sex, and gay marriage, because it goes against their fervent religious beliefs.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine about the ominous signs, particularly for gay marriage, and he was nonchalant about the doom that may – and is most likely – to lie ahead. “They can’t do away with gay marriage, since so many are married. How do you undo that?”
Pretty easily, it turns out. There should be no denying that a major attempt on trampling our rights is being mounted. The Texas law was a harbinger that the court’s conservative members have no issue overturning precedent if it goes against their vaunted Christian beliefs. It almost seems like a forgone conclusion that they will uphold the equally destructive Mississippi abortion law, which at 15 weeks is “less” severe than the Texas law, So why wouldn’t they support the “watered down” law?
We will indeed see Roe v. Wade come under its most ruthless assault.
And, do you think that these Justices, and all those who lobbied for them, and supported them and voted for them will just stop at Roe? Think again. They are on a mission to do away with all of the progress made for women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights over the last five decades. Thomas and Alito said out loud what the others are thinking: Being gay, being married, and being equal is an affront to zealous religious doctrine. It goes against the grain. You cannot be gay, and be Christian, in their eyes.
Sometimes it’s as if our community takes things for granted, particularly the younger generation. They aren’t aware of all the fighting and hard work it took to get our community where it is today. They see an administration that strongly supports them; yet, they seem blissfully unaware of the stealthily and silent assault coming our way by a Supreme Court cloaked in black and in secrecy.
If the court has the arrogance to actually strip away LGBTQ+ rights and marriages, it will start a fierce war. Corporate America has rallied strongly in support of gay marriage. So has the military. Most of society has moved beyond whether or not gay marriage is right or wrong. It’s more of a fact than a law.
But the fact is that there are evil forces out there who want to do away with our right to marry, including five very powerful people. The Texas abortion ruling has invigorated the religious right. And so long as the court upholds laws like it, and inevitably Mississippi’s, we should be prepared to watch them dismantle gay marriage.
Can you imagine anti-gay marriage and anti-gay sex vigilantes turning us in for cash rewards, similar to abortion? Just think about that for a moment, because the way the court is ruling these days, that’s not out of the realm of possibilities.
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, used the visit by the pope to Budapest last month to advance his populist agenda. He said he had been encouraged by his meeting with Frances to advance ‘family values’. Indeed, Orbán claimed to have the pontiff’s imprimatur: ‘Moreover, he said: go ahead, go for it. And go for it we will.’
But what is Orbán ‘going for’, beyond the rhetoric?
With elections looming next year and a poor record in government so far, the increasingly autocratic Orbán has found a new target in attacking LGBT rights, in which ‘family values’ is a proxy for a whole other agenda. It started with refugees and now it is sexual and gender minorities. It is best understood as a cynical move to distract attention from Orbán’s bungling of the state response to the pandemic, as well as corruption scandals involving business oligarchs and dodgy dealings with China.
Under the banner of ‘family values’, in 2020 Hungary banned adoption by same-sex couples, barred transgender people from changing their legal gender and refused to ratify the Istanbul convention, which aims to protect women from violence. This year Hungary passed a law which equates homosexuality with paedophilia and bans ‘promotion and portrayal of homosexuality’ and gender diversity to under-18s, in sexuality education, films or advertisements.
Putin’s playbook
Orbán is taking a leaf out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook. The Russian president has used the spectre of LGBT rights as a wedge to consolidate a conservative support base at home, delineate regional zones of influence and forge global alliances. It started in earnest with the passage in 2013 of the ‘gay propaganda law’, an administrative regulation which forbids the positive portrayal of ‘non-traditional sexual relations’ where minors are present.
In effect, the law inhibits any such presentation of LGBT identities in the public domain. It has a chilling effect on freedom of expression, being vague enough to make Russians afraid to fall foul of the law. Hungary’s law has strong echoes although it goes even further, banning any depiction of LGBT people to children.
Russia’s law has had a stifling effect on teachers and counsellors and has been used to shut down an online support network for LGBT kids. It has been associated with an upturn in homophobic violence. There is no reason to think the impact of Hungary’s law will be any different.
The ‘gay propaganda law’ has proved a very effective tool for Putin—if very harmful for many Russians. On a domestic level, the negative connnotations of ‘propaganda’, with its Stalinist associations, and the positive affirmation of purported national ‘tradition’, pitted against the forces of globalisation, have proved an effective shorthand. They have mobilise Putin’s small-town and rural supporters in the face of public protests in the big urban centres (in as much as these have been allowed).
Regionally, the rhetoric has been used to contest spheres of influence between the Russian-backed Eurasian customs union and the European Union. On a global level, at the United Nations Russia has been at least partially successful in assuming the mantle of protector of ‘traditional values’—counterposed to universal norms such as human rights—and in the process forging geopolitical alliances with like-minded states.
Sustained attack
Poland under the Law and Justice Party (PiS) has become another outlier in Europe, where the independence of the judiciary, civil society and the media have been under sustained assault. The government has cast LGBT rights as a dangerous and subversive ideology, while local authorities have declared ‘LGBT-ideology free zones’.
Warsaw has systematically attacked reproductive rights and comprehensive sexuality education and threatened to withdraw from the Istanbul convention—the convention includes a reference to sexual orientation and a broad definition of gender. This was an election rallying point in 2019, designed to help the PiS secure a second term in office.
Leaders such as Orbán, or the key PiS figure Jarosław Kaczyński, and the parties they represent project an unalloyed vision of their societies. They present themselves as the authentic voice of ‘the people’, against ‘liberal elites’ accused of defying ‘common sense’.
This dangerous world of nationalist rhetoric produces ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, shoring up support by concocting imagined threats to the nation. In Hungary, migrants have been vilified as a perceived external demon, while LGBT people have been cast as both an internal threat and a foreign influence.
‘Gender ideology’
Why do advances in women’s or LGBT rights elicit such apocalyptic fantasies of destruction of the social order? Connecting developments in Poland and Hungary is the concept of ‘gender ideology’. This is closely linked to the idea of traditional values but more amorphous and, it seems, better able to rally disparate groups against a common perceived enemy. First coined decades ago by the Holy See, ‘gender ideology’ has become a ubiquitous term, strategically deployed to curtail sexual and reproductive rights.
As an ‘empty signifier’ (in semiotic terms), gender ideology simultaneously means nothing and everything. This has allowed it to become the symbolic ‘glue’, uniting disparate groups in opposition—to feminism, transgender equality, the existence of intersex bodies, elimination of sex stereotyping, family-law reform, same-sex marriage, access to abortion and contraception, and comprehensive sexuality education.
The anti-gender movement is increasingly well resourced and co-ordinated, and more strategic and sophisticated than in the past. It has mobilised against gender- and sexuality-based human-rights advances at the national level, as well vis-à-vis regional and global mechanisms relating to rights, development and public health.
The anti-gender movement has even co-opted the language of human rights—positioning itself domestically as protecting free speech and religious freedom against ideological conformity and internationally as protecting national cultural integrity against imperialism. In this way, LGBT identities have come to stand in for something much bigger, being construed as a threat to the fabric of society itself.
Proceedings initiated
Last month, LGBT activist groups submitted a legal complaint to the European Commission, asserting that Poland’s ‘LGBT-ideology free zones’ and other discriminatory measures ran counter to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the directive on equal treatment in employment and occupation. In mid-July, the commission initiated infringement proceedings against Poland, because of local authorities having adopted ‘LGBT-ideology free zone’ resolutions (three have since reneged), and against aspects of Hungary’s disingenuous paedophilia law falling foul of its human-rights obligations.
Aside from violations relating to trade and the free flow of information, the commission asserted, the Hungarian provisions infringed rights to non-discrimination, human dignity, freedom of expression and information and respect for private life. The Polish authorities meanwhile had failed to respond adequately to its inquiry as to the meaning and impact of municipalities becoming ‘LGBT-ideology free zones’.
These are serious allegations, with far-reaching implications, and the commission is right to identify depredations of basic human rights and core European values. Both states enjoy the economic benefits attached to EU membership, yet under their current governments eschew the associated obligations.
Supporting the rights of, and equality for, LGBT people in these settings is thus more than defending members of a minority group, vital though that is. It is defending democracy and human rights for everyone.
The United States has issued its first passport with an “X” gender marker, which denotes that someone is neither exclusively male nor female, the State Department said Wednesday.
This marks a milestone for nonbinary and intersex Americans, who make up an estimated 1.2 million and 4 million Americans, respectively, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, and interACT, an intersex advocacy group. An increasing number of intersex, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people have come out in recent years, but most of them have been unable to obtain IDs that accurately reflect who they are due to a patchwork of state laws across the country.
The State Department said that it expects to be able to offer the “X” designation to more people early next year.
The U.S.’ special diplomatic envoy for LGBTQ rights, Jessica Stern, called the moves historic and celebratory, saying they bring the government documents in line with the “lived reality” that there is a wider spectrum of human sex characteristics than is reflected in the previous two designations.
“When a person obtains identity documents that reflect their true identity, they live with greater dignity and respect,” Stern said.
The department did not announce to whom the passport was issued. A department official declined to say whether it was for Dana Zzyym, an intersex Colorado resident who has been in a legal battle with the department since 2015, saying the department does not usually discuss individual passport applications because of privacy concerns.
Zzyym (pronounced Zimm) was denied a passport for failing to check male or female on an application. According to court documents, Zzyym wrote “intersex” above the boxes marked “M” and “F” and requested an “X” gender marker instead in a separate letter.
Zzyym was born with ambiguous physical sexual characteristics but was raised as a boy, according to court filings. Zzyym later came out as intersex while working and studying at Colorado State University, and uses gender-neutral pronouns. The department’s denial of Zzyym’s passport prevented them from being able to travel to a meeting of Organization Intersex International in Mexico.
The State Department announced in June that it was moving toward adding a third gender marker but said it would take time because it required extensive updates to its computer systems. A department official said the passport application and system update with the “X” designation option still need to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget, which approves all government forms, before they can be issued.
The department now also allows applicants to self-select their gender as male or female, no longer requiring them to provide medical certification if their gender does not match that listed on their other identification documents.
The United States joins a handful of countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Nepal and New Zealand in allowing its citizens to designate a gender other than male or female on their passports.
Stern said her office planned to talk about the U.S.′ experience with the change in its interactions around the world and she hopes that might help inspire other governments to offer the option.
“We see this as a way of affirming and uplifting the human rights of trans and intersex and gender-nonconforming and nonbinary people everywhere,” she said.
It’s unclear how the policy change will affect state laws that do not recognize “X” gender markers. Twenty states and D.C. allow residents to use an “X” marker on their driver’s licenses, according tothe Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank.
States also have a mix of laws that regulate how someone can request a gender marker change on an ID. Twenty-two states allow people to decide what gender markers are appropriate for them — which is now the policy that the State Department will use — according to MAP.
That process, known as self-attestation, allows trans and nonbinary people to keep themselves safe, said Arli Christian, a campaign strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been pressuring the Biden administration to allow “X” gender markers on passports and advocates for laws that allow people to attest to their own gender.
“That is hands down the best policy for ensuring that all people have the most accurate gender marker on their ID,” Christian said.
The remaining states either require medical provider certification in order to update a gender marker, a court order and proof of genital surgery or they have an unclear law.
This summer, a Texas judge declared the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program unlawful. But President Biden’s administration is moving swiftly to respond and protect undocumented young people. He must, for so much more is at stake for LGBTQ+ Asian Dreamers.
President Obama created DACA in 2012, which has helped thousands of undocumented young people to work, study, and improve their lives in this country, without the fear of deportation. Many of them are LGBTQ+. And many come from Asian counties.
To address this disastrous court decision from this summer, Biden is looking to shore up the program with new rules. Still, only Congress can permanently safeguard DACA recipients and grant them, along with the rest of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., a pathway to citizenship.
Estimates say that 267,000 undocumented immigrants are LGBTQ+, of which a disproportionate share is Asian and Pacific Islander. More than 169,000 people who are API are eligible for DACA. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, over 16,000 people from South Korea, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, and China have already benefitted from DACA. The court’s ruling will subject 800,000 potential DACA beneficiaries to again live in fear of deportation.
On Biden’s first day in office, he announced the Citizenship Act of 2021 (HR 1177/S.348), which will give undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship (including 1.5 million Asians and a quarter million LGBTQ+ immigrants), keep LGBTQ+ Asian immigrant families together, reduce visa backlogs, and expand visas and green cards for workers.
Absent congressional action, thousands of talented LGBTQ+ and Asian young people could be deported, many of them to countries where they cannot live their authentic lives and reach their fullest potential.
For LGBTQ+ people, the stakes are even higher than those who are not LGBTQ+. Many countries in Asia and the Pacific prohibit same-sex relations, such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga. In Indonesia, police shaved the heads of trans women and publicly caned a gay couple for having consensual sex. In most Asian and Oceania countries, transgender people cannot legally change their gender on their IDs, and LGBTQ+ people are not protected by anti-discrimination laws.
The programs supporting undocumented youth have real-world consequences for real people. Tony Choi is a 32-year-old gay Korean DACA beneficiary from New Jersey. In 2010, his options were taking care of his mother with cancer in the U.S. or returning to Korea where his LGBTQ+ identity would subject him to harsh hazing for two years in the mandatory military service. The Korean military penal law also criminalizes homosexuality. Because of DACA, he’s been able to serve his community. Bupendra Ram is a South Asian Dreamer from Fiji who came to the U.S. when he was only 2 years old. He is the first person in his family to earn a college degree, but he had to save every extra dollar from his minimum wage job in order to afford tuition. His undocumented status at the time meant he couldn’t receive financial aid.
DACA has provided LGBTQ+ undocumented young people employment opportunities and educational opportunities. Asian Americans, South Asians, Southeast Asians, and Pacific Islanders are the fastest-growing racial group in the U.S. today and the largest segment of new immigrants. Undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ+ Dreamers, and DACA recipients are the ones who are making our country great and they deserve an opportunity for a pathway to citizenship.
Glenn D. Magpantay has been an advocate for the LGBTQ+, AAPI, and immigrant communities for over 30 years. He is a longtime civil rights attorney, professor of law and Asian-American Studies, and LGBTQ+ rights activist.
Anxiety. Depression. Stress. These are some of the emotions LGBTQ Americans experienced during the Trump administration, according to two recent studies. The reports, conducted independently, both landed on the same conclusion: There was a significant decline in the mental well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people while Donald Trump was president.
“Everybody’s worst fears came into reality,” Adrienne Grzenda, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA and lead author of one of the studies, told NBC News. “We were noticing this undercurrent of despair and hopelessness among our clients,” many of whom are LGBTQ.
While Trump is no longer in the White House, the ongoing introduction of anti-LGBTQ legislation in the states continues to expose LGBTQ people, especially children, to the risk of significant mental health consequences, according to some advocates and researchers.
‘Extreme’ and ‘frequent’ mental distress
A study scheduled to be published in the December issue of the journal Economics and Human Biology found that “extreme mental distress” — defined as reporting poor mental health every day for the past 30 days — increased among LGBTQ people during Trump’s rise and presidency.
The report, written by Masanori Kuroki, an associate professor of economics at Arkansas Tech University, compared the likelihood of extreme mental distress among LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people by using data on more than 1 million people interviewed from 2014 to 2020 for the government’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/9TzYQA1?app=1
This study found that the “extreme mental distress gap” between LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people “increased from 1.8 percentage points during 2014–2015 to 3.8 percentage points after Trump’s presidency became a real possibility in early 2016.” Even seemingly small increases in extreme distress are important, the study notes, because such distress is not common.
While Trump was not the first president to advocate and enforce policies widely considered anti-LGBTQ, his tenure followed the relatively pro-LGBTQ Obama presidency. The possibility of removing recently gained rights and protections “might be more damaging to LGBT people’s mental well-being than simply not having equal rights in the first place,” the study states.
While Kuroki’s report does include a cautionary note about attributing the increase in mental distress among LGBTQ people to the rise and presidency of Trump, he does note that “the findings do suggest that the Biden administration may have inherited higher rates of mental distress among LGBT people” than they would have “if Trump had not run and won the 2016 election.”
In his conclusion, Kuroki suggests that future research examine LGBTQ mental health under the Biden administration, which has already implemented measures to advance LGBTQ rights and protections.
“If presidents affect LGBT people’s mental health, then we should expect that the extreme mental distress gap between LGBT people and non-LGBT people to narrow under the Biden presidency,” he stated in his report’s conclusion.
Grzenda’s study used data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to measure whether the 2016 election and transition to the Trump administration led to a change in the number of sexual and gender minority (SGM) adults reporting “frequent mental distress” compared to cisgender, heterosexual respondents (frequent mental distress is defined as feeling depressed, stressed or unable to control one’s emotions during at least 14 of the last 30 days). Between 2015 and 2018, LGBTQ respondents reporting frequent mental distress increased by 6.1 percentage points, from 15.4 percent to 21.5 percent, while non-LGBTQ respondents reported a 1.1 percentage point increase, from 10.4 percent to 11.5 percent.
“A clear association exists between the 2016 election and the changeover to a decisively anti-LGBT administration and the worsening mental health of SGM adults, although a completely causal relationship cannot be fully established,” the report, published this year in the journal LGBT Health, states.
The effects, however, were not seen evenly among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.
“We’ve got to start looking at sub-populations more,” Grzenda said. “When we break it down, it was bisexual individuals and especially transgender individuals who were really hit the hardest.”
Grzenda said the differential impact on gender minority adults may be because of the Trump administration’s targeting of transgender rights and protections in military service, health care and access to public facilities. At the same time, the focus on lesbian, gay and transgender rights may have “exacerbated feelings of bisexual invisibilty/erasure,” and compounded existing stress for bisexual respondents.
The study, which had a sample size of nearly 270,000 adults, approximately 5 percent of them LGBTQ, states in its conclusion that its findings provide “data-driven support for advocacy efforts toward the implementation of unequivocal antidiscrimination protects on the basis of [sexual orientation and gender identity] across all domains of daily living, immutable to sudden political realignment.”
Grzenda, like Kuroki, notes that a definitive causal link cannot be drawn between the Trump administration and the decline in LGBTQ mental health with existing data, though both studies controlled for likely competing factors.
‘Bullying by legislation’
The effect of politics on LGBTQ mental health is not just relegated to the federal government and national policies. The spate of anti-LGBTQ legislation in statehouses raises concerns about other sources of mental health strain, particularly for young people.
From 2015 to 2019, 42 states introduced more than 200 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation, according to a recent study by Child Trends, a nonpartisan research institute, and the introduction of these measures were found to have negative mental health consequences on LGBTQ minors.
The report notes that Crisis Text Line, a global nonprofit that provides free mental health texting services, saw an uptick in messages from LGBTQ youths in the four weeks after their respective states proposed anti-LGBTQ legislation.
“This suggests the bills are harmful whether or not they are passed,” Dominique Parris, director of diversity, equity and inclusion at Child Trends and lead author on the study, told NBC News. “We need to understand the full scope of what these laws do to young people.”
Among the most common types of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced during the 2015-19 timeframe were restrictions on single-sex facilities, the report states.
This year alone, there have already been over 200 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced at the state level, Parris said.
“Oftentimes the argument in support of [these bills] is to protect children, but what this research suggests is that that may not in fact be the outcome, and simply proposing this legislation may cause children distress,” Parris said.
“When there have been public policy decisions, we hear about that on our crisis line,” Amit Paley, the project’s CEO, told NBC News.
When Trump banned transgender people from the military, the Trevor Project saw an increase in trans and nonbinary people reaching out for crisis services, he said. This was not due to trans people necessarily wanting to serve in the military, Paley added, but because a powerful public figure was making judgments about their worth.
“Young people are listening,” he said. “When their message is discriminatory and hateful, that does have an impact.”
Trans and nonbinary youth are at particular risk for the most devastating consequences of mental distress, including suicide, according to Trevor Project research.
“That’s not because LGBTQ trans nonbinary people are born more likely to consider suicide,” Paley said. “It’s because of the discrimination, isolation and rejection they face.”
Paley said that Texas legislators this year have introduced dozens of anti-LGBTQ bills, many of which target trans and nonbinary people.
On Wednesday, a bill that would that would require student athletes to compete on sports teams corresponding to their “biological sex” advanced out of committee and heads toward a full vote on the state House floor where it is likely to pass. The bill advanced despite emotional testimony from parents and students regarding the toll such a law would take on trans children, something LGBTQ children’s advocates have been sounding the alarm about for some time.
“Trevor Project has received almost 4,000 calls, chats and texts from trans and nonbinary people in Texas this year,” Paley said. “This is effectively bullying by legislation. It is dangerous and it is wrong.”
‘Some steps forward and several steps backward’
Advocates hope LGBTQ mental health might improve under the Biden administration, which has made public statements and enacted policies in support of LGBTQ rights.
However, some, like Paley and Parris, worry about the message that certain signals — like the ongoing support for Trump among many Republicans, the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ state legislation and the failure to pass the Equality Act in Congress — will send to LGBTQ youth and adults.
“I think we are seeing some steps forward and several steps backward,” Paley said.
A-League midfielder Josh Cavallo says he knows there are other players “living in silence” after becoming the only known current male top-flight professional footballer in the world to come out as gay.
Cavallo on Wednesday became a rarity in men’s professional sport, announcing on social media he was “ready to speak about something personal that I’m finally comfortable to talk about in my life”.
The Twitter post and emotive personal video, shared by his club Adelaide United, has since made international headlines and elicited support from all corners of the game.
The 21-year-old said growing up he “always felt the need to hide myself because I was ashamed.” “Ashamed I would never be able to do what I loved and be gay,” he wrote.
“Being a closeted gay footballer, I’ve had to learn to mask my feelings in order to fit the mould of a professional footballer. “Growing up being gay and playing football were just two worlds that hadn’t crossed paths before. “I’ve lived my life assuming that this was a topic never to be spoken about.”
Adelaide United coach Carl Veart said Cavallo, who has played 19 games for the Reds after playing nine matches for Western United, has “shown incredible courage to be one of very few professional sportsmen to be this brave.”
An Adelaide United statement said: “Today, Josh Cavallo speaks his truth to the world and demonstrates profound courage. Adelaide United, not only as a football club, but as the embodiment of an inclusive community, supports a remarkable and brave person.
“We stand alongside Josh for proudly being true to himself and will continue to love and support him as a member of our beautifully diverse family.”
Football Australia chief executive James Johnson said: “Football Australia wishes to commend Josh’s bravery to come out as the only openly gay player in the A-League Men competition. His courage to be open with himself and share that part with others is inspiring and will hopefully inspire more footballers to do the same in the future.”
