The Republic of Tunisia has become the first Arab state to recognise a same-sex marriage, a Tunisian LGBT+ rights organisation has announced.
According to Association Shams, a marriage settlement between a Frenchman, 31, and a Tunisian man, 26, was legally recognised in Tunisia for the first time on Friday.
Homosexuality is illegal in the north African country and same-sex marriage is not yet permitted, but the marriage in question was formalised in France.
It was officially noted in the birth certificate of the Tunisian registry, allowing the Tunisian man to obtain a visa for family reunification. Both men have remained anonymous for their safety.
Although the news hasn’t been confirmed by the Tunisian state, Shams is celebrating it as a huge step forward for LGBT+ rights in the Arab-Muslim world.
“[It is a] success of which I am very proud,” said SHAMS president Mounir Baatour, adding that it followed a years-long legal battle.
“We won… against the many post-revolutionary political-judicial regimes! This is not the least of my satisfactions.
“To my knowledge, Shams is now the only [LGBT+] legal association in the Arab-Muslim world. This is not nothing and offers us hardly believable opportunities, sometimes beyond our borders.”
“There is no centralisation of civil status data at the ministry of local affairs. We are therefore in the process of verifying the information,” said minister Lotfi Zitoun.
But he added: “If it is true, know that it is against the law. French law does not allow recognition of same-sex marriage by Maghreb countries. There was a precedent, an error committed by the municipality of Tunis. And it has been rectified.”
The LGBT+ and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell was tentatively optimistic but acknowledged that there is more work to be done.
He told The Jerusalem Post: “This recognition of a gay marriage is a milestone in the Arab world. But it is indirect recognition, and not the legalisation of marriage between same-sex couples.
“Even if it is appealed or overturned, this is a breakthrough that will give hope to LGBT+ people in Tunisia and across North Africa and the Middle East.”
LGBT+ advocates are mourning three trans women who were tragically murdered within a single week in Puerto Rico.
The bodies of Serena Angelique Velázquez Ramos, 32, and Layla Pelaez Sánchez, 21, were found together in a charred car on April 21.
Their deaths were preceded by Penélope Díaz Ramírez, 31, who was killed in a correctional centre on April 13. Her death was not reported until April 27.
It marks the ninth violent death of a transgender person in the US this year, and comes as Puerto Rican activists desperately warn: “They are hunting us.”
“There is no longer any doubt, this is an epidemic of anti-LGBT+ violence,” said Pedro Julio Serrano of Coalition for the Search for Equity (CABE), a Puerto Rican LGBT+ group.
“The police have the obligation to disclose the status of the investigations of at least eight murders, one death without a determined cause and several attacks in which LGBTTIQ people have been injured since January 2019.”
Tori Cooper, director of the Human Rights Campaign‘s transgender justice initiative, agreed that the problem is escalating.
“Penélope did not deserve to die. Transgender people do not deserve to die. Every single advocate, ally, elected official and community member must stand up in light of this horrific news and say ‘No more.’ What we are doing is not enough.”
She continued: “Transgender and gender non-conforming people, especially women of colour, are too often the victims of a toxic mix of transphobia, racism and misogyny.
“People and policy must work together to protect our lives and our well-being. HRC stands in solidarity with all who knew and loved Penélope, and we will continue our tireless fight to ensure a future where living one’s truth can never become a death sentence.”
Six trans candidates said they have been eliminated from the race to represent their communities at county level by the Brooklyn Democratic Party because of their gender.
In March, Nandani Bharrat, Casey Bohannon, Michael Donatz, Derek Gaskill, Paige Havener and Angela LaScala-Gruenewald all submitted petitions to run for seats on the governing body of the Brooklyn Democratic Party.
They are all trans, non-binary, or gender non-conforming, and had all left the gender field blank when they applied to run in the upcoming June and December elections, because there was only a male or female option.
On April 22, the six learned that the Board of Elections had disqualified them from the race – “not because we did not collect enough signatures — but because of our genders”, they wrote in a column for the Brooklyn Paper.
Trans and non-binary Democrats say they are being blocked from representing their communities.
All six said they were eliminated because the Democratic primary ballot currently requires candidates to specify their gender as male or female only.
“Each of us should have the right to run to represent our communities,” the candidates wrote in response to their elimination.
“Removing these gender barriers is critical to fixing our local political system.
“For many, holding a seat on County Committee is the first stepping stone before running for higher office in New York City.
As Democrats, we can and should do better to support people of all genders seeking these elected positions.
They alleged that the Board of Elections later filled out the gender fields without their consent, assigning them false genders based off their names, according to local news.
In the lawsuit, the candidates argue that gender-parity rules, in place to ensure that a certain number of men and women represent each state assembly district and originally intended to encourage more women to join local politics, exclude non-binary people.
In their op-ed, the candidates wrote: “We contend the gender-based discrimination ingrained in Brooklyn’s petitioning process violates the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution and our city and state human rights laws.
“The current requirements to petition for a seat on County Committee neglect a view of gender that reflects our lived experience and the experiences of tens of thousands of New Yorkers.
“As both first-time candidates and former members of the committee, we see how gender and gender-based assumptions permeate our local Democratic Party structure.”
Brooklyn Democrats have eliminated gender rules in other cases.
At a higher level of politics in Brooklyn, these rules have already been eliminated to allow for two women — Rodneyse Bichotte and Annette Robinson — to hold the posts of executive committee chair and vice chair.
This would not have been allowed under the gender-parity rules, which state there must be one man and one woman in these posts.
UNAIDS and MPact Global Action for Gay Men’s Health and Rights on Monday said governments around the world must stop targeting LGBTQ people during the coronavirus pandemic.
“HIV has taught us that violence, bullying and discrimination only serve to further marginalize the people most in need,” said UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima in a press release her organization released with MPact. “All people, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, are entitled to the right to health, safety and security, without exception. Respect and dignity are needed now more than ever before.”
The press release notes governments and law enforcement officials have targeted LGBTQ people during the pandemic.
Ugandan police late last month raided an LGBTQ shelter in the country’s capital of Kampala and arrested 20 of its residents. The Associated Press reported Ugandan authorities have charged them with violating the country’s social distancing rules.
The UNAIDS and MPact Global Action for Gay Men’s Health and Rights press release notes Ulysease Roca Terry, a 25-year-old gay Belizean man with HIV, died earlier this month after his arrest for violating the curfew imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus in the Central American country. Media reports indicate police officers beat Terry after they arrested him.
Philippine police also publicly humiliated three LGBTQ people, among others, after they violated the country’s coronavirus curfew. UNAIDS and MPact note a police captain apologized after the incident — during which officers forced the three LGBTQ people to dance and kiss each other — went viral.
Deputy Hungarian Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén on March 31 introduced an omnibus bill with a proposal that would ban transgender people from legally changing their gender in the country. The Hungarian Parliament the day before overwhelmingly approved a controversial measure that gave Prime Minister Viktor Orbán more authority in order to combat the pandemic in his country.
“We are receiving reports that government and religious leaders in some countries are making false claims and releasing misinformation about COVID-19 that has incited violence and discrimination against LGBTI people,” said MPact Executive Director George Ayala. “Organizations and homes are being raided, LGBTI people are being beaten, and there has been an increase in arrests and threatened deportation of LGBTI asylum seekers.”
People with HIV more vulnerable to coronavirus
Johns Hopkins University of Medicine’s Coronavirus Resource Center notes there are more than 3 million confirmed coronavirus cases around the world, with 985,443 of them in the U.S. The global pandemic has killed 210,611 people.
People with HIV are among those who are at higher risk for the coronavirus. Activists around the world with whom the Washington Blade has spoken in recent weeks say the pandemic has also left LGBTQ people even more vulnerable because lockdowns and curfews prevent them from working.
Diálogo Diverso, an LGBTQ advocacy group in Ecuador, earlier this month created an “emergency fund” to help LGBTQ people and Venezuelan migrants during the pandemic. Danilo Manzano, the group’s director, told the Blade that poverty has made the coronavirus’ impact even worse on the aforementioned groups.
“They don’t have the financial resources to be able to support themselves day-to-day,” said Manzano. “It is therefore a very difficult situation.”
UNAIDS and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects in an April 8 statement noted the pandemic has also had a disproportionate impact on sex workers because of lockdown measures and their inability to access government assistance programs created in response to the pandemic. American advocacy and HIV/AIDS service organizations have also demanded coronavirus treatment and prevention programs include safeguards to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
“Now more than ever, we must stand together to protect and promote the health and human rights of LGBTI people worldwide,” said UNAIDS and MPact in their press release.
At least 170 national, state, and local LGBTQ and allied organizations on April 21 released a joint open letter to health care and public policy leaders calling for measures to prohibit discrimination in the treatment and prevention of the novel coronavirus.
The letter also reiterates earlier requests by LGBTQ health advocates for the collection of data on the sexual orientation and gender identity of patients testing positive and being treated for coronavirus illness along with data already being collected on race, ethnicity, age, sex, and disability.
D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Health is part of a coalition of six national and local LGBTQ organizations that initiated and coordinated the joint letter.
“Whitman-Walker and other community health centers that care for LGBTQ+ patients and others in marginalized communities have many patients who are understandably fearful of neglect or mistreatment in this pandemic,” said Laura Durso, Chief Learning Officer of the Whitman-Walker Institute. “We are committed to protecting those who are bearing the brunt of the pandemic’s economic devastation,” Durso said in a statement accompanying the joint letter.
The April 21 letter follows an earlier joint letter issued by many of the same groups on March 11 pointing out to health care providers that LGBTQ people may be at greater risk for coronavirus than the general public due to certain risk factors, including a higher rate of tobacco use, a higher rate of HIV infection, and a greater likelihood of being subjected to discrimination by health care providers.
“There is a long history of discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in the health care system,” the April 21 letter states. “Even when they do not encounter overt discrimination, too many LGBTQ+ individuals and families experience a lack of understanding, unwelcoming attitudes, and even hostility from health care providers and staff,” the letter states.
“In high-stress situations with looming threats of shortages of life-saving medical equipment, hospital beds and health care staff, the danger of implicit if not explicit bias against queer patients in especially worrisome,” the letter continues.
The letter calls on federal, state and local public health authorities, health care institutions, and government officials to take a “clear, strong, and public stand against any discrimination in this pandemic, whether based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, ethnicity, national origin, immigration status, religion, or disability.”
It says explicit nondiscrimination provisions covering sexual orientation, gender identity and the other categories should be included in all COVID-19 response legislation.
The letter also calls on public officials overseeing the coronavirus treatment and prevention efforts to ensure that “all COVID-19 data collection and reporting include SOGI [sexual orientation and gender identity] demographic measures.”
In addition to Whitman-Walker Health, the other five groups that coordinated the joint letter include the National LGBT Cancer Network; GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ Equality; National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance; New York Transgender Advocacy Group; and the national LGBTQ seniors advocacy group SAGE.
Others among the 170 organizations that signed on to the letter include the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, the National Center for Transgender Equality, PFLAG National, the Trevor Project, the NAACP, and People for the American Way.
In its call for data collection of LGBTQ people who test positive and are being treated for COVID-19, the joint letter doesn’t provide details on how health care providers should go about collecting that data.
In a separate statement last month in response to an inquiry from the Washington Blade, the Human Rights Campaign said the disclosure of someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity in COVID-19 testing should be voluntary.
Also in response to a question from the Blade, Whitman-Walker Health elaborated on its own position related to LGBTQ data collection.
“It is important for health care providers, public health authorities and government agencies to understand that asking people to voluntarily provide their sexual orientation and gender identity is important – and that the information should be requested in a sensitive, non-stigmatizing manner that reassures the patient that the information will be kept confidential,” Whitman-Walker told the Blade in an April 22 statement.
“We encourage all medical providers and testing centers to follow best-practices for data collection from their patients,” the statement says. “Privacy protections are essential to ensuring access to healthcare services for LGBTQ people…Public health systems, and disease reporting systems in particular, should have built-in safeguards to protect privacy,” the statement continues.
“However, we feel strongly the questions should be asked and the data collected so that we can develop accurate demographic information to identify health inequities and inform the public health response for LGBTQ people as well as for LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ communities who are also marginalized based on race, citizenship, socio-economic status or location,” the Whitman-Walker statement concludes.
The full text of the joint 170-group letter and the list of signers can be accessed here.
Eva Nabagala hoped she and her young son would be safe from her family when they fled Uganda for a Kenyan refugee camp – but instead, the 28-year-old says she was attacked and raped there as punishment for being a lesbian.
“I have been threatened with death, I have been beaten, I have been harassed sexually, and I have been sexually abused, raped,” Nabagala told Reuters by phone.
She’s one of a group of around 300 gay, lesbian and transgender refugees in Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya, who say other refugees repeatedly attack them because of their sexual orientation. The group say police and the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, have failed to protect them.
UNHCR Kenya told Reuters that police investigate reports of violence, assault, or other crimes and UNHCR offers support to survivors.
“Whenever we are informed … we do our utmost to provide medical, legal and social-economic support and psychosocial counseling to survivors,” the agency said.
Kenya’s national police spokesman Charles Owino said he was unaware of any violence against the group of refugees.
Nabagala said she and her now two-year-old son came to Kenya in 2018 after her family threatened to kill her because she is a lesbian.
“I ran from my home … because I wanted to be safe, I wanted protection, but it has turned into something the opposite,” Nabagala said.
Stephen Sebuuma, another Ugandan refugee in Kakuma, said refugees armed with iron bars, sticks and machetes damaged their houses on three occasions, injuring four adults and two children.
“Police insult us instead of helping us,” Sebuuma, 32, told Reuters by phone.
Pictures Sebuuma and another refugee sent to Reuters from the camp showed holes punched in the walls of homes made of corrugated iron. Kambungu Mubarak, 31, also from Uganda, said the attackers also burnt two houses.
UNHCR Kenya said as soon as they were informed of the attack, they contacted Kenya’s Refugee Affairs Secretariat, and sent an ambulance. UNHCR also contacted police, who had started investigations, the agency said. But Sebuuma said the police never helped them.
“We have written complaints, people have gotten OBs (Occurrence Book reports) from police. So many of them, and police even sometimes chase us, saying ‘we are tired of you’,” he said.
Same-sex relationships are punishable in Kenya by 14 years in jail. It is rarely enforced but discrimination is common.
Kenya also requires refugees to stay in camps. Some have tried to leave but say life is so hard that they returned. Nabagala left but was raped again in Mombasa, where she had gone seeking shelter, so she came back.
Another refugee, 23-year-old Winnie Nabaterega, told Reuters by phone that she fled Uganda in 2019 after being raped and becoming pregnant. Her father pressured her to marry her attacker. Her daughter, now two, lives with her. She is constantly threatened by other refugees, she said.
“We were told because we were homosexuals … they would put poison in the water,” she said.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Timothy J. Shea, the city’s lead prosecutor, earlier this month informed his office’s Hate Bias Task Force that he objected to a decision by a judge to grant the early release of a defendant convicted of a bias-related assault against an LGBTQ person.
In an April 7 letter to members of the Task Force, which serves as a citizens’ advisory body, Shea indicated that the identity of the perpetrator and the judge could not be released because the judge agreed to a defense request that the perpetrator be sentenced under the D.C. Youth Rehabilitation Act. The act allows judges in certain cases to seal the court records of a case involving defendants between the age of 18 and 24.
Shea’s office released a copy of his letter to the Washington Blade.
“On February 13, 2020, the defendant was convicted by a jury of one count of simple assault with a bias-related enhancement for punching the victim, who he knew or perceived to be a member of the LGBTQ community, so hard that she briefly blacked out,” Shea said in his letter to Hate Bias Task Force members.
“On February 28, 2020, the Court sentenced the defendant, pursuant to the Youth Rehabilitation Act, to 270 days of incarceration, suspending execution of the sentence except for 90 days,” Shea wrote in his letter. He said the court – meaning the judge – also sentenced the defendant to undergo three years of supervision upon release from incarceration.
“Thus, according to the terms of the original February 2020 sentence, the defendant was to have served 90 days of incarceration, followed by three years of supervised release,” Shea continued in his letter. “However, on March 13, 2020, the defendant filed a motion seeking a reduction in his sentence, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as a rationale,” Shea said.
“Our office opposed his motion,” Shea said in his letter. “However, on April 1, 2020, over our Office’s objections, the Court granted the defendant’s motion and re-sentenced him, pursuant to the Youth Rehabilitation Act, to 270 days of incarceration, this time suspending execution of all of the sentence except for time served, followed by three years of supervision upon release.”
Shea noted that the court’s action resulted in the defendant being released from jail on April 1 after having served only about 30 days or one-third of his original sentence.
“While I understand how unsettling this result is for the victim-survivor, the LGBTQ community, and our community as a whole, I wanted to share this information with you and reassure you that our Office continues its commitment to the prosecution of hate- and bias-related crimes even as our nation and the world face the COVID-19 pandemic,” Shea concluded in his letter.
A Shea spokesperson said the office has a policy of not disclosing the names of crime victims in cases that it prosecutes.
Shea’s letter comes at a time when public health officials have called for the temporary release of people from jails in D.C. and states across the country who were convicted of non-violent crimes on grounds that incarceration places them at greater risk of coronavirus infection.
D.C. transgender activist Bobbi Elaine Strang, who serves as president of the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance and who has attended meetings of the U.S. Attorney’s Hate Bias Task Force, said she shares Shea’s concern about the judge’s decision to grant the defendant early release.
“The defendant committed a violent offense and we have no assurance that he would not continue to be a danger to the LGBTQ community,” Strang told the Blade. “However, simple assault is not a capital crime and crowded prison environments facilitate the spread of the coronavirus, significantly increasing the odds of mortality,” she said.
The city’s Youth Rehabilitation Act of 1985, which the D.C. Council amended and Mayor Muriel Bowser signed in 2018, seeks to give first offenders between the ages of 18 and 24 who are convicted of a crime other than first and second degree murder, first and sexual degree sexual abuse, and first degree child sexual abuse a “second chance” of rehabilitation.
The law authorizes a judge to determine whether a defendant sentenced under the act who successfully completes his or her sentence is eligible to have their criminal record permanently sealed with a waiver on having to disclose their arrest and conviction when applying for a job, a loan, or any other benefit that might be denied to someone with a criminal record.
LGBT+ activists have confirmed that at least one gay man in Morocco has died by suicide after being hunted down and publicly outed by a transgender beauty influencer.
Gay men in Morocco have been living in terror for the past fortnight, after beauty influencer Naofal Moussa, also known as Sofia Talouni, instructed her hundreds of thousands of followers to use gay dating apps to identify them.
Moussa, whose verified Instagram account had 627,000 followers before it was deleted, used a series of Instagram Live videos to encourage straight women in Morocco to create fake accounts on Grindr and Planet Romeo.
She instructed them to identify as “bottoms” and said that by doing this, they would be able to identify gay men around them during lockdown – going as far to suggest that women might be able to find out if their family members are gay.
As a result, gay dating apps were flooded with fake accounts and images of gay men’s profiles began circulating online.
Homosexuality is illegal in Morocco and any form of same-sex intimacy – including kissing – is punishable by up to three years in prison.
Following Moussa’s videos, multiple gay men in Morocco told PinkNews that they were living in a state of absolute terror: watching as other gay men were outed on social media, beaten up by their families, kicked out of their homes, disappearing and, in several, unverified, cases, killing themselves as a result of being publicly outed.
Now, tragically, reports of gay men dying by suicide in the Muslim-majority country have been confirmed.
“We were shocked when we were contacted by the LGBT+ group in Morocco,” Schmidt said.
“We took immediate action by sending a security message to all our 41,000 users in Morocco, we blocked all profiles created from the time this person addressed her users and contacted Facebook to have the group page taken offline.”
Images of gay men in Morocco are being shared in closed Facebook groups by women following Moussa’s instructions.
A spokesperson for the social-media giant said it was trying to shut these groups down.
“We don’t allow people to out members of the LGBT+ community. It puts people at risk, so we remove this content as quickly as we can,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.
The Samaritans are the UK’s suicide reduction charity and their free helpline number is 116 123.
In the US, The Lifeline offers free, confidential support 24/7 on 1-800-273-8255.
With the economy frozen amid the coronavirus crisis, small businesses across the country are feeling the pinch and LGBTQ-owned companies — some of which have dramatically altered their business models to stay afloat in trying times — are no exception.
Faced with their traditional sources of revenue being cut off amid government-imposed shutdowns aimed at containing COVID-19, LGBTQ business owners who spoke to the Blade said they’ve had to improvise by facilitating different services than they did in their roles prior to the epidemic.
Amy Tiller, a lesbian and co-owner of the Portland, Ore.-based Inspired Results, said her company immediately pivoted from brand management in print and apparel for client businesses to sending supplies of PPE to hospitals in regions hardest hit by the coronavirus.
“We did a couple of large volume orders for hand sanitizer and gloves and things like that, and then people just started you know started referring us to other health care companies,” Tiller said. “It just became this thing in a matter of weeks that we were securing for traditional hospitals and clinics as well as senior living communities, as well as also we do a lot with our local retail grocery stores.”
The clientele base for Inspired Results, Tiller said, was around 70 percent in health care related industries, so pivoting to PPE was a natural shift, and the business that followed “just kind of blossomed.”
“We will quite literally send out millions of pieces of PPE between gloves, sanitizer, face masks and gowns — primarily those four are huge — and kind of with no end in sight,” Tiller said.
Typically, Tiller said a day for Inspired Results consists of sending emails at 3 a.m. to China, where the supply chain starts, to ensure the PPE is available for clients, which she said has built off the company’s mission to supply those in need without price gouging.
“I think that that has really resonated: The combination of speed, agility and access to the supply, combined with the fact that we’re not going to charge you $10 for a gown,” Tiller said. “We just won’t deal with suppliers that are doing that.”
Among her clients across the country, Tiller said, is a large health system in the United States as well as other highly regulated industries in health care, logistics companies and telecom.
The shift, Tiller said, has made her clients take a second look at the company and realize it has more to offer beyond its initial focus on brand management.
“It’s felt really good to be able to be there for them in their time of need and I think that they see us differently as well,” Tiller said. “Like, one you could do so much more than maybe what I thought your capabilities were before because like big organizations are using us for one or two things, right? Now, it’s kind of opened up this world now.”
The change in business model for Inspired Results is just one many for LGBTQ-owned businesses throughout the country, many of which are coordinating with the National LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce for assistance.
Jonathan Lovitz, senior vice president for the National LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce, said his organization has been coordinating with the U.S. Small Business Administration to ensure they get that help.
“As the business voice of the LGBT community, the NGLCC is uniquely positioned to connect public and private sector resources to our network of affiliate chambers and partner organizations who urgently need the economic relief and emotional connection our community can always be counted on to provide,” Lovitz said.
Prior to enactment of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce sent letters to members of Congress demanding the inclusion of LGBTQ entrepreneurs as well as support for non-profit, micro businesses and independent contractors.
Justin Nelson, president of the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, said via email the CARES Act and initial call with SBA were “positive first steps to ensure our community is financially protected during this crisis,” but more is needed.
“Many were left out and more will certainly be needed, especially as many of our business owners faced difficulty in applying for these essential funds,” Nelson said. “This is why NGLCC, in collaboration with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC), U.S. Black Chamber of Commerce (USBC), and the Asian/Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce (ACE) and over 100 of our collective affiliate chambers will continue advocating for expanded funding for small business relief in upcoming rounds of relief, the inclusion of 501(c)(6) organizations in relief for nonprofit organizations, and the eligibility of— and increased assistance for — diverse small and micro businesses.”
Other businesses are finding other ways to cope during the COVID-19 epidemic, even at the expenses of profit margins if it means keeping workers on payroll.
Nathan Perry, who’s gay and co-owner of the Brooklyn-based Cutting Edge Elite, said his company — a staffing agency for New York residents seeking to moonlight as hospitality workers at events — has shifted to find them work without any profit.
“Recently, with everything that’s happened, obviously, events wiped out completely,” Perry said. “So sales, 100 percent gone, and nobody should be having a party right now, frankly, but it was our mission to our staff, so now it’s just our mission to get them work without any profit.”
Among the staff at Cutting Edge Elite are New York performers in the gig economy, some of which are doing theater work. As a result, Perry said many of these workers don’t qualify for unemployment benefits.
Perry said he created a relief division, priced it at cost to cover their staff wages and employer tax insurance and then moved to “getting them out there to good work.”
“I think from a mental health perspective this is hard on so many levels,” Perry said. “And one of them is just not having work during this tragedy, which leaves you stuck at home watching CNN way too many hours, and our staff are among the most financially vulnerable.”
Lucas Mendieta, who’s gay and also a co-owner of Cutting Edge Elite, said among the new clients for staffers includes the New York Department of Aging. And the tasks have changed as well.
“We’ve had some staff that are helping out in-house with getting meals ready and then other ones … just to get food out to a lot of older people who just aren’t able to leave their homes,” Mendieta said.
Although $350 billion was made available for small businesses under the third installment of the CARES ACT, many companies have yet to see that relief.
Perry said Cutting Edge Elite applied for relief under the Paycheck Protection Program, but as of last week had yet to hear any news.
“We know we can last about eight weeks with zero business and everyone at this level,” Perry said. “We put in for that PPP application, as well as the SBA disaster relief as well as the NYC continuity fund. Haven’t heard a peep from our bank.”
With the money depleted for the Paycheck Protection Program, the Senate after negotiations approved this week on a bipartisan basis an additional $480 billion for the initiative. The measure is now pending before the House, which is expected to approve the measure this week.
LGBTQ businesses are adjusting to new realities under the coronavirus as debate rages on — with passionate advocates on both sides — over when is the right time to reopen the economy.
Medical experts are saying testing in the United States must be ramped up two or threefold before that can happen safely, while many throughout the country agitate over getting back to normal and fume over travel restrictions.
Tiller said Inspired Results last week held an all-hands meeting on when things would go back and concluded “there is no going back.”
“We’ve probably created a new business line within our company out of this,” Tiller said. “What does that mean? How do we keep engaged and keep that momentum, but then also we have to prepare for when we do go back will the marketing be there. Will those traditional spends that we normally see be there?”
Even though she’s a business owner and would stand to gain from restarting the economy, Tiller said she “has a fear” about the economy opening up quickly.
“I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but my fear first and foremost is more people will die right?” Tiller said. “If we do it too soon, it’ll just compromise more of our citizens, No. 1. And as we reopen the country and the economy, doing so in a layered approach — obviously there’s no light switch, it’s not going to go from one way to the other — I would be very much afraid to not follow the data and not follow the science.”
Perry said a number of factors are playing into his views on opening up the economy and the prospects for Cutting Edge Elite, including the possibility of a coronavirus resurgence in the fall — which he said could be devastating.
“If our business does survive this hit, which I’m 90 percent confident we will, a second one — we would have to lay people off immediately,” Perry said. “We’d already be in high debt — even nice cheap debt from the government — we’d already be in a high debt position. So, we can’t have any bumps in the restart or that could be kind of the killing blow.”
A former police officer will receive $90,000 in damages after filing a lawsuit claiming he was denied employment as a sheriff’s deputy in 2012 when his prospective employer learned he has HIV. The case, along with another lawsuit involving two HIV-positive members of the Air Force who claimed they were discharged because of their HIV status, has brought renewed attention to policies surrounding HIV employment discrimination.
A lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana said the former officer, Liam Pierce, was up for a job with the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office in New Iberia until he disclosed his status during a pre-employment medical exam. According to the LGBTQ legal advocacy group, Pierce — who had moved to Louisiana in 2005 to assist in the relief effort following Hurricane Katrina — had experience working as a police officer, volunteer firefighter and paramedic.
Scott Schoettes, an attorney for Lambda Legal and the director of its HIV Project, said everything “seemed perfectly on track” for Pierce to land the job.
“He had good interviews and talked to them about an alleged misconduct at a previous job,” Schoettes told NBC News. “They said that wasn’t a problem.”
Schoettes was referring to a job Pierce lost with the Abbeville Police Department in Louisiana for discharging a firearm in front of two inmates held in custody.
Schoettes said everything changed, though, when Pierce informed the medical team evaluating him for employment about his HIV status. He alleged the plaintiff was told by doctors that having HIV “was not a disqualification for the job,” but shortly after his results were sent to the sheriff’s office, Pierce was denied the position. The department cited the incident at Abbeville as a pretense, but Schoettes said Pierce “immediately recognized where this was coming from.”
“This was a result of his HIV status, because he basically had the job until his medical evaluation,” Schoettes said. “He was pretty frustrated and upset.”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found in 2018 that Pierce had probable cause to bring legal action regarding his claim, and he settled out of court on Tuesday with the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office. As a condition of the settlement, the department’s staff will undergo education and training regarding HIV, and the office’s hiring guidelines will include a statement that “discrimination on the basis of disability, including HIV status, is prohibited.”
Pierce said in a statement that it “feels good to finally be vindicated” eight years after his case was initially filed. “I hope that my case helps others avoid going through my experience,” he said.
Pierce’s experience is not isolated, according to the EEOC. While employment discrimination based on HIV status has been banned under the Americans With Disabilities Act since 2008, the federal agency reported that 155 people brought claims of workplace discrimination based on their HIV status in 2019. Although that accounts for just 0.6 percent of overall ADA discrimination claims brought to the EEOC, people living with HIV only make up about 0.3 percent of the U.S. population.
Pierce’s case is at least the second involving alleged HIV-related workplace discrimination to make national headlines so far this year. In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit unanimously upheld a preliminary injunction against an Air Force policy discharging active duty service members based solely on their HIV-positive status. According to the court, the U.S. government “cannot reconcile these policies with current medical evidence” regarding HIV transmission.
The case is the first time federal courts have ruled on behalf of servicemembers living with HIV, according to Lambda Legal, which filed the lawsuit. It is now headed back to a lower district court to weigh in. Lambda Legal is also representing service members from other branches of the military in two companion lawsuits.
Jim Pickett, senior director of prevention, advocacy and gay men’s health at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, said these cases illustrate the stigma to which people living with HIV are still subjected, despite decades of medical advancements. He said the fear that working with an HIV-positive police officer or airman will make their co-workers vulnerable to transmission is “based on pure ignorance and discrimination.”
“It’s not based on science,” he said. “HIV is not easily transmittable.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is “extremely rare” for individuals to contract HIV in the workplace. A guide to occupational HIV exposure posted on its website cautions that risk of transmission “varies by the type of exposure” but says, for instance, that the incidence of spreading HIV by being “splashed with body fluids” is “near zero.” Even among health care workers, arguably the most at-risk group for occupational HIV transmission, there have been only 58 confirmed cases ever in the United States.
It’s even less likely for individuals living with HIV to transmit the virus to another person if they are taking daily medications to suppress the virus. According to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS, studies show that people who are undetectable, meaning that their viral load is so low it cannot be detected through HIV testing, “cannot transmit HIV sexually.”
But Pickett explained that despite these facts, it has been “very hard” for advocates to change “entrenched” beliefs about HIV dating back to the early days of the crisis, particularly the idea that people living with the virus are “dirty and bad.”
“There’s still this strong segment of society where facts don’t matter,” he said. “We can see this with anti-vaxxers and climate denialists, and we can see this with people right now who are going out and fighting public health authorities and governors to open up the economy because they think the coronavirus is an overblown hoax.”
Experts said these misconceptions about HIV and those affected by the virus will continue to prevent people from speaking out about the routine discrimination they experience. Aisha Davis, director of policy at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, said it’s “really difficult to know exactly how many people” are experiencing targeted bias in their places of employment because these individuals are often “suffering in silence” to avoid bringing “more attention to themselves.”
“When you’re talking about a population of people who already fight stigma on a day-to-day basis, there’s an acceptance of a certain amount of discrimination that they experience,” Davis told NBC News. “The assumption is usually that this is something that everyone experiences. It’s terrible, but it’s the status quo.”
Despite federal protections under the Americans With Disabilities Act regarding workplace discrimination, many states still have decades-old laws on the books criminalizing the transmission of HIV between sexual partners. According to a 2017 report from the legal advocacy group Center for HIV Law and Policy, 36 states had some form of legislation on the books mandating a misdemeanor or a felony charge for exposing another individual to HIV. Davis said these kinds of laws, although seemingly unrelated to workplace discrimination, can erode the faith of people living with HIV that their state and federal governments are on their side, even in areas where they are protected.
“A lot of people don’t think that the policy or the regulation is actually going to protect them, so we need cases like these,” she said of the lawsuits brought by Pierce and the airmen. “We need to see these wins, and we need to amplify these wins, because people need to know that it’s not just a pretty piece of paper or some really nice words. We need to know that it’s something that every person has access to.”
Schoettes said he hopes the two cases send a message to people living with HIV and prospective employers that not only is it illegal to refuse to hire someone based on their HIV status, but it’s also irrational.
“A person living with HIV is capable of doing any job in the world safely,” he said.