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More than 1,600 books banned during 2021-22 school year, report finds

More than 1,600 books were banned in over 5,000 schools during the last school year, with most of the bans targeting titles related to the LGBTQ community or race and racism, according to a new report.  PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature, released a report Monday, the start of Banned Books Week, that shows the sweeping scope of efforts to ban certain books during the 2021-22 school year.  It found that there were 2,532 instances of individual books’ being banned, which affected 1,648 titles — meaning the same titles were targeted multiple times in different districts and states. […]

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Black trans woman sues apartment complex for discriminating against her family

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A Black trans woman says her housing complex discriminated against her family and refused to respect her gender identity. Shayla Anderson and her husband have filed a lawsuit accusing the Grand Fountain apartment complex in Richmond, Texas of discrimination. “I went to her office, and she said, ‘I’m not going to speak with you about this,’” Anderson told KPRC. “‘I’m not going to speak with you about this, sir.’” “She took my womanhood and crushed it by calling me sir.” From there, Anderson reached out to the company in charge of the apartment complex, SunRidge Management Group, who never got back to […]

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Lakota two-spirit person killed in South Dakota

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A Lakota two-spirit person was found dead of gunshot wounds outside Rapid City, South Dakota in August. Acey Morrison, 30, was among at least 30 trans or gender-nonconforming people to die in violent circumstances in the U.S. in 2022. Morrison’s murder was reported early Sunday morning, August 21, by the owner of the mobile home she occupied in the Country Village Estates RV park. Morrison came from a large family in South Dakota and Nebraska and worked at the local Walmart and Sam’s Club. In a tribute published in Native Sun News Today, her family wrote: “Acey was what we call […]

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Senate punts same-sex marriage vote until after midterm elections

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The Senate won’t vote on legislation to protect same-sex marriage until after the midterm elections, key senators said Thursday, apparently in a bid to give Republicans political space to support the bill without offending their base. The leader of the effort, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., has been working this month on an amendment to the bill aimed at attracting more Republican votes to overcome a filibuster. But the necessary 10 GOP votes have remained elusive. “We’re very confident that the bill will pass, but we will need a little more time,” Baldwin told reporters Thursday. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said […]

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Montana defies order on transgender birth certificates

Just hours after a Montana judge blocked health officials from enforcing a state rule that would prevent transgender people from changing the gender on their birth certificate, the Republican-run state on Thursday said it would defy the order. District Court Judge Michael Moses chided attorneys for the state during a hearing in Billings for circumventing his April order that temporarily blocked a 2021 Montana law that made it harder to change birth certificates. Moses said there was no question that state officials violated his earlier order by creating the new rule. Moses said his order reinstates a 2017 Department of Public Health […]

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Providing Help & Hope to LGBTQ+ Elders Struggling With Suicide

This is National Suicide Prevention Week, which technically means that during this week we are to raise awareness for suicide prevention. Next week is, among other things, National Child Passenger Safety Awareness Week, and the last week in September is International Deaf Awareness Week. Since I’m partially deaf, that week means something to me, but by the time we get to the week of October 9 and National Fire Prevention Week, will anyone remember the awareness raised a month before for suicide prevention? We’ve filled so many weeks up in the calendar that we skip from one issue to another […]

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Monkeypox reckoning

As the famous TV commercial went from the ‘70s – “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” Mother Nature has a way of exacting her revenge.  The immediate task at hand is to educate gay and bisexual men how to avoid monkeypox and to get vaccinated. But it isn’t too early to assess what brought us to this point. In the last 10 years there has been a wholesale abandonment of safer sex promotion in favor of PrEP brought to you by Gilead. The result has been the destruction of the condom culture, which was so carefully built in the […]

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Chuck Schumer will force Republicans to vote on same-sex marriage before midterm elections

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) has announced his attention to hold a vote “in the coming weeks” on the “The Respect for Marriage Act,” a bill that would help enshrine same-sex marriage rights into law. In doing so, he’d get Senate Republicans to state whether they support marriage equality before the November midterm elections. Democrats could use Republican opposition to the bill to pummel conservative candidates and convince larger numbers of Democratic voters to come to the polls. ADVERTISING Democratic and Independent voters have come out against Republicans in greater numbers since the conservative-led Supreme Court overturned the right to abortions […]

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What women & LGBTQ people lose when church & state collide

After standing with Donald Trump throughout his morally reprehensible actions and policy directives, conservative Evangelical Christians – along with other anti-choice, anti-contraceptive, and anti-LGBTQ zealots – were downright giddy over the possibility of finally receiving some of the promised dividends for selling their souls to the Devil. This group has sacrificed all of their “deeply held religious beliefs.” They have stood with him from his destructive and epithet-laden tweets, to his promise of constructing a wall on our southern border, to the Access Hollywood tape, to revelations of his payoffs to quiet a porn star, to separating babies and young […]

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Malta’s PM promises free gender affirming surgery as part of sweeping LGBTQ+ rights reforms

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Malta’s prime minister, Robert Abela, has promised reforms for the country’s LGBTQ+ community, including free gender affirming surgery for trans people.  According to local publication Lovin Malta, the prime minster attended Malta’s Pride march in Valletta on 10 September to share news that the government is committed to carrying out these reforms. In an interview with ONE Radio he said: “I believe that social reform gives the Labour Party its identity. “My presence yesterday, as well as that of ministers and MPs, symbolises the messages that while we have done a lot, more is yet to come. While we’re proud of what we […]

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