Two newlywed women were found fatally shot at their southeastern Utah campsite, officials said, days after telling friends they were worried about a “creepy guy” who had been lurking nearby.
The bodies of Crystal Michelle Turner, 38, and wife Kylen Carrol Schulte, 24, were discovered Wednesday off La Sal Loop Road in Moab, Utah, about 260 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, according to a statement from the Grand County sheriff.
Kylen Schulte and Crystal Turner.Courtesy Bridget Calvert
“At this time the Grand County Sheriff’s Office is conducting an on-going homicide investigation,” the statement said. “We are currently following up with any and all leads that come to our attention during this investigation and will continue to be available to people who come forward with information. The Grand County Sheriff’s Office believes there is no current danger to the public in the Grand County area.”
The statement did not elaborate on why “there is no current danger to the public,” and a sheriff’s department representative could not be immediately reached for comment Monday.
Turner and Schulte lived a bohemian lifestyle, moving to various campsites, Schulte’s aunt, Bridget Calvert, told NBC News on Monday.
Friends and co-workers started worrying about them when Turner missed work and Schulte was a no-show at her job.
Days before going missing, Turner and Schulte met friends at a local bar and told them they were worried about someone camping nearby.
Kylen Schulte.Courtesy Bridget Calvert
“They said they needed to move their campsite because of some creepy guy at their campsite,” Calvert said. “These are outdoors girls, and they’re independent and confident. And for somebody to make them feel uncomfortable, it had to be a very valid discomfort.”
The couple, married just in April, enjoyed a carefree lifestyle moving around in their converted van.
“That’s how they lived. They enjoyed life and didn’t worry about material things,” Calvert said. “There’s no clear motive. The entire community loved them. They’re amazing people.”
Woody’s Tavern said Turner and Schulte were at that bar the weekend before their bodies were discovered and has turned over surveillance video to law enforcement.
“At no time were they approached by anyone except my staff and the entire time they were relaxed and enjoying their time with their friends and each other,” according to a statement from the tavern on Sunday. “These two women were very much in love with each other and their focus and attention were always on each other.”
Chinese tech giant Tencent’s WeChat social media platform has deleted dozens of LGBTQ accounts run by university students, saying some had broken rules on information on the internet, sparking fear of a crackdown on gay content online.
Members of several LGBTQ groups told Reuters that access to their accounts was blocked late on Tuesday and they later discovered that all of their content had been deleted.
“Many of us suffered at the same time,” said the account manager of one group who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.
“They censored us without any warning. All of us have been wiped out.”
Attempts by Reuters to access some accounts were met with a notice from WeChat saying the groups “had violated regulations on the management of accounts offering public information service on the Chinese internet.”
Other accounts did not show up in search results.
WeChat did not immediately respond to emailed questions.
Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder in China until 2001, when it became legal. However, this year, a court upheld a university’s description of homosexuality as a “psychological disorder.”
The LGBTQ community has repeatedly found itself falling foul of censors. The Cyberspace Administration of China recently pledged to clean up the internet to protect minors and crack down on social media groups deemed a “bad influence.”
“Authorities have been tightening the space available for LGBT advocacy and civil society generally. This is another turning of the screw,” said Darius Longarino, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai’s China Center, who focuses on LGBTQ rights and gender equality.
The loyalty of LGBTQ university groups to the government and Communist Party was discussed in meeting in May between student groups and university representatives of the Communist Youth League — a department in charge of student affairs run by the Chinese Communist Party, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.
The sources declined to be identified or say at which universities the meetings took place but said LGBTQ student groups were asked if they were anti-Party or anti-China, and whether any of their funds had originated from abroad.
“We explained that our LGBT education work was within campus only,” one university student told Reuters. “After our meeting in May we were dismantled.”
LGBTQ student groups traditionally do not get the support of university authorities in their work to raise awareness of the community, even though they are not banned outright.
Last September, Marie Pinkney beat incumbent Delaware state Sen. David McBride in the Democratic primary by a solid margin, before going on to a decisive victory in the general election. Upon winning, Pinkney became not only the first openly queer woman to be elected to the Delaware Senate but one of dozens of LGBTQ female candidates who won their elections in the last cycle.
Pinkney, a social worker, said she was inspired to run because of her work with victims of gun violence and a lack of political will to pass effective gun control legislation.
“I didn’t know if I could actually win,” Pinkney said, “but then I looked at who my state senator was, and I realized he was a serious impediment to gun violence legislation passing or even getting to the floor. That was enough for me.”
Delaware State Sen. Marie Pinkney.via Marie Pinkney
As a complete newcomer to politics challenging one of the longest-serving lawmakers in Delaware history, Pinkney’s victory came as a surprise to observers. However, a new report from the LGBTQ Victory Institute, an organization that supports LGBTQ elected officials and political hopefuls, found that the odds aren’t good for those betting against queer female candidates.
A review of the win and loss records of all 1,088 candidates endorsed by the LGBTQ Victory Fund (the political action committee associated with the Victory Institute) from 2016 to 2020 found that queer cisgender women — including lesbian, bisexual and other nonheterosexual women — won 69 percent of the time, compared to 59 percent for queer cisgender men endorsed by the political action committee.
Victory Fund does not track candidates it does not endorse, but its analysis of the 2020 LGBTQ candidates (both endorsed and unendorsed) suggests its candidates are representative of the overall LGBTQ candidate population in terms of race, sexual orientation and gender identification.
Though they are more successful at the ballot box, queer cisgender female candidates were outnumbered by their male counterparts every year covered by the Victory Institute’s report. Queer cisgender women accounted for just 35 percent of Victory Fund-endorsed candidates since 2016, whereas cisgender male candidates accounted for 59 percent.
This means that even if lesbian, bisexual and other nonheterosexual cisgender women started to run at the same rate as their male counterparts, they would not reach electoral parity with queer cisgender men until 2037, the report stated.
“LGBTQ women face unique barriers to running for office — the same sexist campaign tactics and misperceptions of their own qualifications as other women, combined with anti-LGBTQ bias — yet overcoming those obstacles makes them strong contenders by the time they run,” Annise Parker, president and CEO of the Victory Institute and former mayor of Houston, told NBC News. “LGBTQ women candidates tend to wait to run for positions they are qualified — and often overqualified — to hold and perhaps don’t trigger the same negative stereotypes directed at LGBTQ men.”
“Their experiences as women and as LGBTQ people often make them better politicians, portraying an authenticity and sensibility that resonates with voters,” Parker continued. “LGBTQ women make fantastic candidates, and when we run, we win. But we will not achieve representation equitable to LGBTQ men until we start running in much higher numbers.”
Among all female candidates, existing research suggests women and men win elections at approximately the same rate and their representational deficit has more to do with barriers to seeking office in the first place. However, endorsements by groups like EMILY’s List and E-Pac (and Victory Fund) reportedly make a large difference in their likelihood of success.
Transgender female candidates were also more likely to succeed than their transmasculine counterparts, winning 54 percent of the time, compared to trans men’s 18 percent success rate, according to the Victory Institute’s report. Nonbinary and gender-nonconforming candidates performed even better, winning 64 percent of the time. But the number of transgender and nonbinary candidates is relatively small. Only 39 of the more than 1,000 candidates tracked by the Victory Institute were transgender women, and only 11 were transgender men. There were also only 11 nonbinary or gender-nonconforming candidates over the five-year period. That said, the 2020 election cycle saw the most trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming candidates.
Despite their electoral advantage, queer cisgender women are only 37 percent of LGBTQ elected officials, and transgender women are only 4 percent, according to the Victory Institute. Only 2 percent of LGBTQ elected officials are nonbinary or gender-nonconforming, and approximately 0.5 percent are transgender men. Even queer cisgender men, who make up 56 percent of LGBTQ elected officials, are severely underrepresented when compared to all elected officials.
LGBTQ elected officials represent approximately 0.19 percent of all elected officials nationwide, according to a previous Victory Institute report. To achieve proportionate representation of the United States’ estimated 18 million LGBTQ adults (roughly 5.6 percent of the adult population, according to the most recent Gallup poll), Americans would need to elect 28,128 more LGBTQ people to office — a significant jump from the current total of 974.
As to why she thinks LGBTQ women perform relatively well at the ballot box, Pinkney said LGBTQ people, along with other marginalized groups, generally understand the importance of maintaining a high level of preparedness and taking every opportunity to succeed.
“We don’t have the room for error. We don’t have the room to mess up and make those mistakes,” she said. “It comes off as excellence, but for most marginalized communities, it just feels like everyday operation.”
Tony Christon-Walker was determined to set up an HIV prevention clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, that would succeed where others have long struggled to combat the scourge of the virus among his fellow queer Black men.
The director of prevention and community partnerships at the nonprofit AIDS Alabama, he spent much of 2019 hiring a clinic staff composed of people of color. They were trained to provide the kind of affirming care that, he said, “reflects our culture,” and that would encourage local men at risk of HIV to keep coming back.
Even facing the headwinds of the Covid-19 pandemic, the fledgling clinic, which specializes in prescribing the HIV prevention pill known as PrEP, for pre-exposure prophylaxis, made steady progress in realizing his vision.
But now clinics like this that provide vital HIV prevention services to disadvantaged populations are facing a dire — and for some of these nonprofit groups, even existential — financial crisis driven by the vagaries of an arcane federal law governing prescription drug discounts.
These safety net clinics are set to lose well over $100 million in annual HIV prevention funds due in part to a recent decision by the pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences to cut off what has become an increasingly valuable revenue stream supporting these organizations in their grassroots efforts to prevent the virus’s spread. The consequences are expected to be most devastating to clinics in the South, due to the region’s disproportionately large uninsured population and the fact that half of HIV transmissions in the United States occur in those states.
The imminent funding loss threatens to substantially compromise an ambitious plan the federal government launched last year to end the nation’s HIV epidemic by 2030. People of color will likely bear the brunt of the impact — at a time when the public health sector is striving to mitigate racial disparities, not see them worsen.
“This will shut us down,” said Christon-Walker, of how Gilead’s policy change will affect AIDS Alabama’s PrEP clinic. Losing the funds, he said, will “destroy our program and totally inhibit our ability to see uninsured clients, which make up the bulk of our business.”
Dependence on a ‘patchwork solution’
The financial morass centers around a 1992 federal drug pricing law called 340B. The law grants clinics that care for a disproportionate number of uninsured and low-income individuals the right to purchase pharmaceuticals at steep discounts through their in-house or contracted pharmacies. Public and private insurers typically reimburse 340B-designated clinics’ pharmacies at a dollar amount close to a prescribed drug’s list price; and in a unique setup that Gilead recently decided to end, citing ballooning costs, the California-based company has long engaged in a similar reimbursement process when providing free antiretrovirals for HIV treatment or prevention to uninsured people. Such transactions yield surplus cash — known as the “340B spread” — that these organizations spend on their services.
For expensive brand-name drugs, the 340B spread can be quite a substantial sum. By contrast, when these clinics prescribe a cheaper generic medication, the difference between the price they pay and the price at which they are reimbursed is often relatively minimal; so the prescription generates little revenue.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Gilead’s antiretroviral Truvada for use as HIV prevention in 2012. David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Consequently, even as the Biden administration seeks to drive downthe cost of pharmaceuticals, the little-publicized 340B pricing law conversely — and perversely — causes many health care facilities serving low-income individuals to depend on drug prices for all kinds of health conditions remaining high to support their bottom lines.
Tim Horn, director of health care access at the HIV advocacy group NASTAD, said the 340B funding system is a “patchwork solution” to the woeful lack of investment in the nation’s medical and public health safety net, and one that amounts to “a house of cards.”
Because of the high price of antiretrovirals used to treat and prevent HIV, the 340B spread funnels hundreds of millions of dollars annually into HIV-focused safety net clinics that serve the low-income, uninsured and nonwhite populations that are disproportionately impacted by the virus. The additional funds allow these clinics to provide extra services, such as transportation assistance or case management.
In the coming years, high-quality HIV treatment regimens will increasingly go off patent. This is good news for the nation’s overall health care bill, and state Medicaid budgets in particular. But as cheaper generic antiretrovirals enter the market, safety net clinics treating people with HIV will sustain a progressive and potentially devastating loss of their 340B revenue.
Currently, however, the most pressing 340B-related financial concern in the national HIV arena revolves around revenue tied to the historically pricey PrEP.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Gilead’s antiretroviral Truvada for use as HIV prevention in 2012. PrEP’s popularity has soaredin recent years, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently estimated that about 285,000 people — overwhelmingly white gay and bisexual men — were taking it by 2019. The federal agency credits PrEP with helping drive the modest 8 percent decrease, from 37,800 to 34,800 cases, in estimated annual HIV transmissions in the U.S. between 2015 and 2019.
But PrEP’s use has remained disappointingly limited among Black and Latino men who have sex with men, who comprised a respective 25 percent and 21 percent of the 36,800 new HIV diagnoses in 2019, according to the CDC. These are disparities that 340B clinics have worked hard, and are uniquely positioned, to address.
Daniel O’Day, CEO of Gilead Sciences, testifies during a hearing on why Truvada is so expensive, on May, 16, 2019 in Washington.Bill O’Leary / The Washington Post via Getty Images
In recent years, the activist group PrEP4All has campaigned against Truvada’s high price, which Gilead has raised from $1,160 per month in 2012 to $1,842 today. The activists have claimed that Truvada’s cost has been the predominant factor limiting PrEP access in the nation — a claim echoed by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, now the CDC director, during a May 2019 congressional hearing held over Gilead’s high list price for PrEP.
And yet, PrEP is widely covered by insurance, with federal guidelines requiring that almost all private plans, as well as state Medicaid programs expanded under the Affordable Care Act, cover it with no cost-sharing. Gilead also providesfree PrEP to uninsured people.
Moreover, the high price of Truvada, and now also Descovy — an updated version of Truvada that the FDA approved as the second available form of PrEP in 2019 — has actually been a financial godsend to the 340B clinics that serve the very populations among whom HIV transmission is the highest.
According to Horn, the 340B spread for a single prescription for Truvada or Descovy amounts to about $1,200 to $1,600 monthly, or $14,400 to $19,200 annually. Clinics have been able to use this windfall to subsidize for their uninsured PrEP patients the quarterly clinic visits and laboratory tests that are required to maintain the prescription and that are not covered by Gilead’s patient assistance program.
Such funds have also been channeled into paying 340B clinics’ facility and technology costs and to pay for patient navigators, safe sex counselors, outreach workers, condoms, advertising, patient transportation, sexually transmitted infection screening and treatment, and opioid use disorder treatment. And in some cases, this money covers other medications for uninsured people, including the initial few months of HIV treatment before the federal Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program kicks in and picks up the tab.
Now, much of the 340B spread tied to PrEP is poised to vanish, potentially hobbling the services that help keep the HIV epidemic in check. Many uninsured people are expected to lose access to PrEP because of an inability to pay for their clinic visits and lab tests.
“It’s going to put a lot of our programs in serious harm’s way at best,” Jim Pickett, senior director of prevention advocacy and gay men’s health at AIDS Foundation Chicago said. “Some of them will be decimated and destroyed.”
Laboratory technician Brady Robles draws blood from a patient at the Kind Clinic in Austin, Texas. Kind Clinic
HIV advocates worry that this funding crisis will only exacerbate the racial disparities that have long characterized the nation’s epidemic.
“HIV has a disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities, especially here in Texas. I really fear that we will have more Black and Latinx people acquiring HIV if other funding sources aren’t in place,” Christopher Hamilton, CEO of Texas Health Action, an HIV- and LGBTQ-focused nonprofit health care provider, said as he echoed a concern shared among his colleagues across the country.
A ‘peculiar’ and ‘unsustainable’ system
After Gilead announced in early April that it would change its patient assistance program reimbursement policy starting in October, an outcry followed, prompting the companyto move the cut-off to January 2022.
Also in April, multiple generic versions of Truvada entered the market for the first time. Some have a list price as low as $30 per month, posing a major threat to Gilead’s highly profitable PrEP sales.
This price plunge heralds a second oncoming financial crisis for 340B organizations. Insurers are already starting to push people with PrEP prescriptions off of Descovy or the brand-name Truvada and onto the cheap generic drug. Should this shift persist, 340B revenue tied to insured people receiving PrEP will steadily deplete.
In recent years, the activist group PrEP4All has campaigned against Truvada’s high price, which Gilead has raised from $1,160 per month in 2012 to $1,842 today. BSIP / Universal Images Group via Getty
Determining how much money is at stake with the 340B spread tied to PrEP — even Gilead says it does not know the true sum — largely requires querying each clinic individually. The Health Resources and Services Administration recently ascertained from 195 health centerssplitting a $54 million HIV-prevention grant from the agency that in 2020, these clinics prescribed PrEP to 63,000 people — up from 20,000 the previous year. According to the agency, which had no comment for this article, 96 percent of these centers participate in the 340B program. And while it is unknown what percentage of these PrEP recipients are uninsured, overall about a quarter of HRSA-funded health centers’ patients lack health insurance.
NBC News asked nearly 120 HIV prevention-focused 340B clinics for their PrEP-patient figures. The vast majority were unresponsive or refused to share their data. Many said they were wary of alienating Gilead, given the clinics’ further dependency on charitable grants from the company, which is the dominant manufacturer of HIV-treatment pharmaceuticals.
Nevertheless, NBC News was able to tally that at the very least, some 7,000 uninsured 340B clinic patients nationwide are receiving free PrEP from Gilead’s patient assistance program monthly. This modest figure alone translates to a pending minimum loss in 340B-spread revenue to such clinics of $100 million annually starting in January. Given the low response rate to queries — data on roughly 3,000 of these patients came from publicly available information concerning California, and the remainder came from just 24 clinics elsewhere — and given the implication of the HRSA figures, the true dollar figure is likely considerably higher.
“It is peculiar that all of these organizations have been able to get all this funding for receiving a free drug,” said Carl Schmid, executive director at HIV + Hepatitis Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. “But that’s the system that we have been living with, and people have been counting on that for years.”
During an April 8 call between HIV advocates and Gilead to discuss the impending financial changes, Eric Leue, vice president of prevention services at the HIV-prevention clinic Friends for Life in Memphis, Tennessee, was clearly distraught as he pleaded with company representatives to reconsider their change in policy. Noting that Memphis has one of the nation’s highest HIV diagnosis rates, Leue said, Gilead’s “unconscionable”impending reimbursement cutwill force his clinic to close, and that overall, it “will set this county and our population back by at least another decade.”
Coy Stout, vice president of market access strategy at Gilead, explained in an interview that the company never intended to establish the 340B revenue stream in question. In 2004, eight years before PrEP was even approved, Gilead made a fateful decision regarding the administration of its patient assistance program. Instead of having a single contracted mail-order pharmacy send free antiretrovirals to uninsured people directly, as pharma companies typically do, Gilead decided it would reimburse the nation’s pharmacies for purchasing the company’s HIV antiretrovirals and hepatitis B antivirals. According to Stout, the intention was to make filling prescriptions convenient for uninsured patients.
Gilead did not expect pharmacies to purchase substantial quantities of the company’s antiretrovirals at 340B discount prices, because the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program covers HIV treatment for the uninsured and underinsured.
But the U.S. government would establish no such safety net program to pay for PrEP.
So particularly in the 13 states that have not expanded Medicaid, which are concentrated in the South, there are now substantial — and ever growing — numbers of uninsured people receiving free PrEP from Gilead’s patient assistance program through 340B clinics.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/V9XOgMB?app=1
As for insured people receiving PrEP at 340B clinics, responses from the 24 clinics pointed to some 2,850 such individuals receiving brand-name Truvada and 5,900 receiving Descovy. These figures, which experts believe represent vast underestimates of actual national totals, translate to at least $125 million in annual 340B revenue that stands to diminish given insurers’ efforts to push patients onto cheap generic versions.
To put the cumulative pending loss of 340B-spread funds into context, the federal government funded the “Ending the HIV Epidemic” plan by increasing the HIV-related budget by $267 million in 2020 and by $405 million in 2021. The Biden administration’s 2022 budget request has sought to raise this additional outlay to $670 million.
HIV policy advocates like Schmid have been pushing Congress, the Health Resources and Services Administration and the CDC for increased funding to address the lost revenue tied to PrEP’s 340B spread. The CDC traditionally forbids clinics from spending agency grant money to pay for the lab tests and clinic visits for uninsured people on PrEP. However, it does allow Ending the HIV Epidemic-related grants to cover such costs.
From Gilead’s perspective, its patient assistance program is well over budget and, according to Stout, is “unsustainable.” He further stressed that the company is not able simply to turn around and donate the lost 340B spread to the impacted clinics. Under federal tax law, charitable contributions on Gilead’s part cannot be directly geared around their own commercial products.
“It makes good business sense for Gilead to change the policy,”NASTAD’s Tim Horn said, “but it’s just very, very unfortunate timing.”
A New Jersey appeal court has upheld a massive $3.5 million fine against a conversion therapy practice, which was shut down after former patients alleged widespread abuse.
On Tuesday (6 July), the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey upheld a previous judgement against Jewish Institute for Global Awareness (JIFGA) – formerly known as Jews Offering New Alternatives (JONAH). JONAH was a nonprofit that claimed to be able to cure patients of same-sex attractions.
Former clients and practitioners have been locked in a heated legal battle for years. The Southern Poverty Law Center, who brought the initial lawsuit on behalf of several former JONAH clients and their families, announced the conversion therapy provider had lost its latest appeal.
As such, the plaintiffs are entitled to claim millions in attorney’s fees from the original lawsuit because JONAH did not shut its doors and stop promoting conversion therapy.
Scott McCoy, SPLC’s interim deputy legal director of LGBTQ rights and special litigation, said: “This case was always about protecting vulnerable people and families against the purveyors of fraudulent, harmful and ineffective so-called gay-to-straight conversion therapy.”
He added that conversion therapy is “fraudulent” because it’s “based on the lie that LGBTQ people can and should be fixed”. McCoy then vowed SPLC and “other allies” will not stop “until we eradicate these dangerous practices in New Jersey” and across the US.
n 2015, the New Jersey Superior Court found that JONAH had violated the state’s consumer fraud law and engaged in “unconscionable commercial practices”. The court also ordered the conversion therapy provider to permanently shut down and dissolve its organisation, according to reports by The Guardian.
The Guardianreported four former clients of JONAH alleged that organisers had engaged in a range of horrific behaviours and so-called therapeutic techniques. The clients claimed that therapy participants were instructed to remove all their clothing in group sessions and beat an effigy of their mothers with a tennis racket.
They also assorted clients were called homophobic slurs during mock gym classes and other sessions, according to The Guardian.
If it did not cease operation, the court ruled JONAH would have to pay $3.5 million to the plaintiffs.
But a couple of years later, in 2019, the same court found JONAH had violated the legal ruling by continuing to operate under a new name, JIFGA. As such, the Superior Court ordered the conversion therapy provider to pay up to $3.5 million, according to NBC News.
JONAH appealed against the ruling, but the appealed court just ruled against them again.
But Michael Laffey, who represented JONAH and its owners, said the latest ruling contained “clear factual errors”, according to Law.com. He added his clients are “considering their options”.
Conversion therapy has been denounced by several leading medical groups
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) said in 2018 that it strongly opposes conversion therapy. It reaffirmed its 1998 statement that the leading professional group “opposes any psychiatric treatment” that is “based on the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder” or based on the assumption the individual “should change his or her homosexual orientation”.
LGBT+ supporters hold placards demonstration against the use of conversion therapy outside UK Cabinet office. (Photo by May James/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Earlier this year, the APA also adopted a resolution rebuking conversion therapy for trans people. It added that conversion therapy only served to promote “stigma and discrimination against transgender and gender diverse people”.
In 2020, a United Nations (UN) expert called for a global ban on conversion therapy, saying the practice is “inherently degrading and discriminatory” toward LGBT+ people. Earlier this year, the UN also urged the UK governmentto ban the discredited practice and said conversion therapy has “haunting consequences” for LGBT+ individuals.
Karen Holden, LGBT+ lawyer and founder of A City Law Firm, writes for PinkNews about the legal leaps and bounds the UK has made in the last three decades.
It has been almost 54 years since the decriminalisation of homosexualitystarted, sparking the decades-long fight for LGBT+ equality under British law.
t all kicked off on 21 July 1967 with the Sexual Offences Act (the law that started to recognise LGBT+ rights). Since this monumental move, we have made some phenomenal steps forward.
In light of this upcoming anniversary, let’s celebrate some of the most game-changing laws that have transformed the lives of the community to date.
LGBT+ Brits have the right not to be discriminated
The 1998 Human Rights Act, one of the most important pieces of legislation in Britain, allowed for fundamental human rights – the right to be treated equally, with fairness, dignity and respect.
t, crucially, this includes the right not the be discriminated against for sexual orientation.
It was later used to also advance the rights of LGBT+ individuals for legal protection in a relationship.
Same-sex couples can legally adopt
Paving the way for queer couples to start a family, the Adoption and Children Act 2002 meant that for the first time same-sex couples were legally able to adopt.
This also allowed many the right to be considered not just as a person who helped care for their partner’s child but as their actual legal parent too.
The law that opened the door for civil partnerships
In what was a stepping stone towards marriage quality and a seismic leap in LGBT+ rights in Britain, the Civil Partnership Act 2004 marked a significant change in the legal standing for couples.
Trans people can legally change their gender for the first time
Transgender people protesting delays to reforming the Gender Recognition Act on 04 July, 2020 in London, England. The government announced in September it would not be reforming it, despite overwhelming public support. (WIktor Szymanowicz/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The 2004 Gender Recognition Act was the upshot of the European Court of Human Rights ruling in favour of trans woman Christine Goodwin, who was denied the right to marry in the UK.
It created for the first time a mechanism that allows trans people to be legally recognised by something other than their assigned gender at birth – this includes having the correct gender marker listed on their birth certificate.
For the first time, queer families could use surrogacy to start a family
Although surrogacy was permitted before, the parental order process, which makes the intended parent or parents the legal parents rather than the surrogate, was not available for same-sex male couples.
But the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 rectified this and even introduced the ability for same-sex female couples to be both named on the birth certificate as the legal parents of a child after using a known donor.
A single act that ensured stronger protections for all LGBT+ people
The landmark Equality Act 2010 added gender reassignment as a ‘protected characteristic’ and offered a vital tool to fight and promote protection against LGBT+ harassment, unfavourable treatment and discrimination.
Caselaw continued to evolve after this focal act against discrimination, perceived sexual orientation and those diagnosed with HIV and AIDS.
It was a drastic move to bridge the gap of there being separate laws to instead promote genuine equality for the LGBT+ community and many other minority groups collectively.
After rocky journey, marriage equality finally becomes reality
Peter McGraith and David Cabreza became the first same-sex couple to marry after the practice was legalised in England and Wales. (Andrea Baldo/LightRocket via Getty)
The road to marriage equality in Britain was a years-long uphill climb for tireless activists but by 2013, the first same-sex couple to legally wed in England became a reality.
As well as equalising marriage in name, the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act allowed same-sex couples to marry in both civil and religious ceremonies, where the religious organisation has ‘opted in’ to conduct such ceremonies and the minister of religion agrees.
Thousands of queer men pardoned in law named after Alan Turing
Alan Turing was a gay man, a scientist and a war hero. (Getty)
The “Alan Turing Law”, part of the Policing and Crime Act 2017, serves as an amnesty law pardoning criminal convictions of men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
Named after Alan Turing, the cryptographer who helped to break the German Enigma code who had previously been convicted of ‘gross indecency’ and was chemically castrated, who was granted a royal pardon.
The association of British Insurers Guide to minimum standards 2018
HIV discrimination was removed from the previous wording included the association of British Insurers Guide to minimum standards in 2018 for being highly judgemental and stigmatising.
The new guidance from the trade association made up of hundreds of insurers reflects the considerable progress that has been made for those living with HIV over the last thirty years.
In 2019, single parents could apply for parental rights after surrogacy
An adaption to the law came into force making parental orders (which give parenthood to the intended parents after the birth and extinguish the status of the surrogate) available to single parents as well as to couples.
All these changes helped LGBT+ families really flourish, providing the right to alternative family structures, from marriage equality to adoption and surrogacy for same-sex couples being made more accessible; the protection against discrimination both in and outside the workplace, against neighbours or providers, altering the way they approach members of the LGBT+ community.
Although we should celebrate how far LGBT+ rights have progressed there are still things left unaddressed and biases still restricting genuine equality.
Here are just some of the changes needed for greater equality:
Surveys and soft supervision by the EU will be lost on LGBT+ laws and rights so the UK need to put in place its own protections to ensure we are continually moving in the right direction.
Proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act were effectively dropped, so transgender people still need a medical diagnosis to legally change gender. This is archaic and is unfair. It is our hope that these proposals for reform are brought back soon.
Although LGBT+ education in schools was made mandatory there continues to be resistance from some parents and religious campaign groups. This means that how this education is to be implemented remains uncertain. Laws around this, to provide a framework for this contentious area would be welcome.
Making surrogacy in the UK smoother with automatic parental rights.
We have come a very long way and things are slowly evolving, but there is still more to do and mindsets left to modify.
Volkswagen has claimed that UEFA blocked the company from using rainbow-coloured banners on advertising boards at the Euro 2020 quarter-finals in Russia and Azerbaijan.
The auto-maker, a years-long sponsor of the football competition, alleged that the governing body voiced “concerns with regard to the legal framework at the venues in Russia and Azerbaijan”.
UEFA had approved pitch-side rainbow advertising from a raft of companies for all eight of the round of 16 matches in the Euro 2020 tournament.
But Volkswagen officials told The Athleticthat UEFA blocked them from extending its rainbow-hued LED advertising boards to St Petersburg and Baku, a decision the German company says it “regrets”.
“Volkswagen took a clear stand for diversity with the colouring of the advertising banners in the round of 16 games throughout Europe,” a spokesperson said.
“To continue to openly and consistently demonstrate this open-minded outlook when it comes to respect and equal rights, the plan was for our rainbow banners to be displayed again in the upcoming quarter-final games in St Petersburg, Munich, Baku and Rome.
“Due to concerns of UEFA with regard to the legal framework at the venues in Russia and Azerbaijan, the association informed us that it was not possible to use rainbow-coloured banners on the advertising boards in St Petersburg and Baku.
“We regret this development. Regardless of this, the LED advertising boards will be used as a colourful statement of diversity and respect in the two remaining quarter-finals in Munich and Rome and, if possible, in the remaining games of the tournament.”
UEFA ‘fully supports tolerance’
It’s the latest flashpoint in UEFA‘s increasingly shaky relationship with the LGBT+ community after it denied Munich officials’ request to light up the Fussball-Arena Munich in the colours of the Pride flag in response to Hungary’s anti-LGBT+ law.
Russia discriminated against a trans woman and violated her right to family life by denying her any contact with her children, Europe’s leading human rights court has ruled.
In a landmark judgement released on Tuesday (6 July), the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled in favour of a divorced trans woman who was blocked by Russian domestic courts from seeing her two young children back in 2017.
It marks the first time the court has found a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights’ prohibition of discrimination (Article 14) on the basis of a person’s gender identity. Russia ratified the convention in 1998 and is therefore under the court’s jurisdiction.
“It was clear from the domestic decisions … that the influence of the applicant’s gender identity on the assessment of her claim had been a decisive factor leading to the decision to restrict her contact with her children,” the court said.
“The applicant had therefore been treated differently from other parents who also sought contact with their estranged children, but whose gender identity matched their sex assigned at birth.”
Reacting to the judgement, executive director of TGEU (Transgender Europe), Masen Davis, said: “The kids are alright – there is nothing wrong with being a trans parent! Today, we celebrate this important message together with all trans families.
Every fourth trans person in Europe is a parent. Today’s judgement gives legal security to many of them.
“We congratulate the applicant for having gone all the way to Strasbourg to defend her right to be the best possible parent to her children.”
The woman, identified only as AM, separated from her wife after seven years of marriage and gained legal gender recognition in 2015, according to court documents.
The following year AM’s wife denied her access to their children, born in 2009 and 2012, with a district court claiming her visits would have a “negative impact on the mental health and psychological development” of the children.
The European Court, however, noted that the domestic courts had failed to demonstrate that the restriction was justified and well-substantiated.
“Too often we are hearing the best interest of the child being abused as an argument to limit the rights of LGBTI people,” said Evelyne Paradis, Executive Director of ILGA-Europe.
“We are glad to see the Court clearly rejecting such an abusive argument, and instead naming very concrete responsibilities for state authorities in ensuring the best interest of the child. Spreading hatred, misinformation and splitting loving parents from their children is not in the best interest of children.”
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has claimed that his cruel law banning the “promotion” of LGBT+ lives to minors is “not about homosexuality”.
In June, Orbán and his ruling party passed legislation restricting the portrayal of LGBT+ people on media, school materials and advertisements aimed at minors. It was quickly compared to Russia’s “gay propaganda bill” and Britain’s Section 28.
But faced with backlash from EU leaders, Orbán simply sidestepped their concerns with an astonishing claim at a European Council summit last week.
“It’s not about homosexuality,” he said, according to the Independent.
“It’s about the kids and the parents.
“I am defending the rights of homosexual guys but this law is not about them.”
Hungary’s oldest LGBT+ campaign group Háttér Society called his words blatant “lies”.
Despite Orbán telling EU officials that there is “no law about homosexuality”, the bill in question references homosexuality six times, the group said.
“The truth is that the law passed two weeks ago makes explicit references to homosexuality… in the context of declaring that it is ‘prohibited to make available to children under the age of 18 any (…) content [which] promotes or portrays deviation from the self-identity in line with the birth sex, gender reassignment, and homosexuality’.”
Háttér Society debunked Orbán’s claims that he “protects” the rights of “gay guys”, in particular, noting that his voting record says it all.
Orbán has voted against anti-discrimination laws and same-sex adoption rights, and in favour of abolishing the Equal Treatment Authority, the nation’s equality watchdog.
The group also pointed to a survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights which found that 95 per cent of LGBT+ Hungarians feel the government has not tackled anti-LGBT+ hate.
As EU officials consider choking Hungary’s funding as one way to squash the law, 17 of the bloc’s leaders have signed an open letter pledging to “continue fighting against discrimination towards the LGBTI community”.
“Respect and tolerance,” the letter stated, “are at the core of the European project.”
In recent years, LGBTQ rights have made significant advancements in the United States, but there remain areas of growing legislative hurdles and challenges.
In a country that is divided on a long list of cultural and societal issues, the acceptance of gay marriage stands out as a remarkable exception. Once a divisive issue, it now has the support of 7 in 10 Americans, according to a recent poll from Gallup.
But perhaps even more impressive, gay marriage now has majority support across a long list of voter groups.
It’s probably not a big surprise that 83 percent of Democrats say they believe gay marriage should be recognized by law, but that’s also true of 73 percent of independents and, more unexpectedly, 55 percent of Republicans.
And the Gallup data shows strong support from young and old as well. More than 80 percent of those from ages 18 to 34, but also 72 percent among middle-aged Americans and 60 percent support among those 55 and older.
That last number is especially eye-catching. Older Americans tend to be more culturally conservative than the public at large and 60-percent support is a solid number.
To give a sense of just how solid support for gay marriage is today, compare it to Gallup’s numbers on some other somewhat divisive topics.
After decades of debate, the morality of abortion remains as divisive as ever — 47 percent of Americans believe it is morally acceptable.
Obamacare may be the law of the land, particularly after the Supreme Court’s June ruling on the law, but still only 56 percent of Americans believe the federal government should make sure people have health care coverage.
And, it may be close, but more Americans believe gay marriage should be legal than believe that global warming is occurring. It’s close (a statistical tie really) but gay marriage holds a slight edge in the percentages.
Those numbers give a sense of the depth of support for legal same-sex marriage and they are even more remarkable when you realize how fast opinions on the unions have changed. In 15 years, the issue has gone from culturally divisive to culturally decided.
How dramatic is that swing? Compare it to the relatively slow public acceptance of marriage between black and white Americans.
It took “interracial marriage” almost 40 years to gain acceptance in the United States — that’s comparing support the first time Gallup asked the question (1958) to when it broke 50 percent support in the 1990s. When Gallup first asked about gay marriage in 1996, only 27 percent of Americans supported legalizing the bond. In just 15 years, 2011, 53 percent of Americans supported legalizing the practice.
Court decisions on the two practices only drive the point home.
Even if one uses the Supreme Court’s 1967 Loving decision (the ruling that made laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional), as a marker for public opinion, it was still roughly 30 years before interracial marriage was accepted by the public. By the time the Supreme Court ruled that all states had to honor gay marriage as legal in 2015, 60 percent of Americans already favored that view.
In other words, the court was leading the nation on interracial marriage, but essentially following public opinion on gay marriage.
But not all issues are settled or headed in a positive direction for the LGBTQ community. Particularly on issues that concern transgender people, state legislatures are writing legislation to limit what that population can and can’t do.
Research from the group Freedom for All Americans finds that 38 different states have proposed legislation in 2021 that would limit what trans Americans can do covering areas ranging from sports to homeless shelters to medicine. Texas and Tennessee led the way with 12 pieces of legislation each, according to the group.
And Gallup polling data from this year shows there has been a slight decline in acceptance for idea of transgender people serving in the military. Support for the idea is still high, 66 percent, but down five points from where it was in 2019. That number bears watching. It could just be a blip or something more.
The real lesson in Pride Month, however, may be as much about politics and the malleability of public opinion in America today as it is LGBTQ rights.
After all, Pride Month itself is still a relatively young event. It was just over 20 years ago, only in 1999, that then-President Bill Clinton declared June “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month” for the first time. Back then, only 35 percent of Americans thought gay marriage should be recognized by law, half the number in the 2021 poll.
It’s evidence that even in a time of deep partisanship on what seems to be a contentious issue, opinions can still change — and rapidly
