Eight cities in the United States scored a zero out of 100 on the 10th annual Municipal Equality Index, which evaluates cities and towns based on the level of LGBTQ inclusion found in their local laws, policies and services.
LGBTQ advocacy groups Human Rights Campaign and Equality Federation evaluated 506 municipalities — including the country’s 50 state capitals and 200 largest cities — on 49 criteria for the index. The criteria included nondiscrimination protections, policies for municipal employees and city leadership.
This year’s zero-point earners span from South Carolina to Wyoming, and they all came in at zero on last year’s index, too. But on the flip side, 22 percent of cities earned a perfect score, up from 8 percent in 2012, the report’s inaugural year.
“If you’re scoring a zero, it’s because you’re making that choice. There are definitely some low-hanging fruit ways to get off of that zero place,” said Cathryn Oakley, the founding author of the index and the state legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign. “That is a statement on their end about how they’re willing to engage in these issues.”
Here are the eight cities that scored a failing grade on this year’s Municipal Equality Index:
Florence, Alabama
Downtown Florence, Ala. Robin Zeigler / Getty Images
Located in the northwest corner of Alabama, Florence sits on the Tennessee River, has a population of about 40,000 and is home to the University of North Alabama. The city made headlines in 2017, when several members of white nationalist groups, some dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes, staged a protest during northwest Alabama’s first Pride parade.
Jonesboro, with a population of nearly 80,000, is Arkansas’ fifth largest city. It sits in the northeastern part of the state and is home to Arkansas State University. Earlier this year, a Pride Month book display — which included the children’s book “The GayBCs” — ignited a backlash at a public library in the city, The Jonesboro Sun reported.
Southaven, Mississippi
The Southaven Municipal Complex in Southaven, Miss.Google Maps
Southaven sits on the border of Mississippi and its northern neighbor, Tennessee, and is just 13 miles from Memphis. The city, which has about 55,000 residents, made news in 2019 after a same-sex couple said they were kicked out of a local Baptist churchbecause the women wouldn’t end their “forbidden” marriage and “repent.”
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
The historic Rose District of Broken Arrow, Okla. Denis Tangney Jr. / Getty Images
Located just outside Tulsa in the northeastern part of the state, Broken Arrow is the fourth largest city in Oklahoma, with a population of about 113,000. Oklahoma is the only state to have two cities earn zero points on this year’s Municipal Equality Index.
Moore, Oklahoma
Veterans Memorial Park in Moore, Okla.Google Maps
Moore, a city of about 63,000 residents, is part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, which sits in the middle of the state. Moore made national news back in 2017 after Ralph Shortey, a “family values” Republican who had served in the Oklahoma Senate, was found with a 17-year-old male in a local motel (Shortey was eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison on child sex-trafficking charges).
Clemson, South Carolina
Tillman Hall on the campus of Clemson University in Clemson, S.C.Maddie Meyer / Getty Images
Home to Clemson University, this small South Carolina city, with a population of 17,700, sits in the northwest part of the state near the borders of both Georgia and North Carolina. While the city of Clemson scored a zero out of 100 on this year’s Municipal Equality Index, the university scored a 3 out of 5 on the LGBTQ nonprofit Campus Pride’s annual index. The university also opened Lavender Place, an LGBTQ “living-learning community,” in August.
Pierre, South Dakota
The State Capitol in Pierre, S.D.Getty Images/iStockphoto
With a population of roughly 14,100, Pierre is the second-least populous state capital in the country, following Montpelier, Vermont. Home to the state’s legislature, the city hosts many of the state’s protests concerning LGBTQ issues. In January, Pierre made national headlines when a group of LGBTQ advocates protested against a proposed law that would ban people from changing the sex designation on their birth certificates. A South Dakota House committee later rejected the bill in February.
Rocks Springs, Wyoming
Rock Springs, Wyo. Jacob Boomsma / Getty Images/iStockphoto
Rock Springs is a city in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, with a population of about 23,500. Despite scoring a zero out of 100 on this and last year’s Municipal Equality Index, a Rock Springs church made history after hosting what it called the state’s first LGBTQ pride worship service in 2019, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.
Recent calls to ban books on race and LGBTQ issues in school libraries by elected officials are a dangerous new low amid the continued weaponization of issues like transgender athletes in school sports and the restriction of lessons on safer sex practices.
But these moves by school board members like Rabih Abuismail and Kirk Twigg in Virginia’s Spotsylvania County — and Republican governors like Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Greg Abbott of Texas — go beyond previous political fearmongering tactics around identity. Given that studies by the Trevor Project show that LGBTQ teenagers are four times as likely to attempt suicide as their heterosexual peers, they are playing politics with young people’s lives.
Access to stories about people like us, and by us, are critical for marginalized communities, especially the youngest, most vulnerable members. As a person who was called almost every homophobic slur imaginable between the ages of 11 and 14, I speak from experience. And it was a piece of queer literature that got me through the worst of it.
In the seventh grade, a friend of my parents gave me three boxes of books that belonged to her gay son, who had recently died of AIDS. Before she closed the last box, she looked at one of the books and hesitated.
“I think you might like this one,” she said, placing it inside. She looked at me with what I now know was an expression of recognition.
When I got home, that was the first book I pulled from the box: Patricia Nell Warren’s “The Front Runner.” The text on the back gave me a chill.
“Billy Sive is young, proud and gay — and he doesn’t care who knows it.”
The words felt almost like an accusation. Even growing up in the Bay Area with LGBTQ-friendly parents, the message had been drilled into me at school that queerness was inherently bad. Eventually, my curiosity won out and I began to read it.
The 1974 novel tells the story of a college track coach, Harlan Brown, and his star athlete, Billy. As the pair fall in love, Harlan comes to terms with his internalized homophobia. As I read the book, I started to deal with my own.
The story also includes lesbian and trans characters and a scene depicting the Stonewall Riots — the first time I learned about the pivotal 1969 event that ignited the LGBTQ rights movement in New York. Warren, a lesbian, made history with the novel when it became the first book of contemporary gay fiction to reach the New York Times Best Seller list. In spite of its then-common tragic ending, it contained a lot of hope. (The international LGBTQ running club that started in San Francisco took its name from the book.)
My freshman year of high school, I discovered a new world of queer literature in the school library. Perhaps not coincidentally, that was also the year I officially came out. But even after devouring books by James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, Jan Morris, Carson McCullers and other LGBTQ authors, I never forgot “The Front Runner.” You never forget the life vest someone throws you when you’re drowning.
Perhaps the most disturbing statements made by Virginia school board members Twigg and Abuismail in advocating a ban on “sexually explicit” literature like Adam Rapp’s queer-themed “33 Snowfish” was that they’d like to burn such books. I don’t think I need to remind you what fascist political party hosted book bonfires in 1930s Berlin.
But don’t think it’s just the books they want to destroy: It’s also the ideas and the people they represent.
Perhaps if these officials had ever read a book, they’d know what history has to say about people who plunder libraries for kindling.
Gender-affirming healthcare for trans and non-binary people is being attacked, legally and politically, in the UK.
We’ve seen this with Keira Bell’s well-funded court case, which almost succeeded in making it so that trans kids needed court approval to get puberty blockers; we see it with the fact that the trans healthcare crisis means that a trans person in London going to their GP today for a referral to a gender clinic might wait as long as 26 years for a first appointment, going by the current rate of intake; and we see it every time a politician bleats about “only women having cervixes“, a lie that comes as many trans men and non-binary are struggling with access to timely cervical screenings and reproductive healthcare.
Transphobic rhetoric about how gender-affirming surgeries are “mutilation” and lies about how hormone replacement therapy leads to “sterility in 100% of cases” are widespread, shared by blue-tick “gender critical” activists, heterosexual newspaper columnists, and steadily creeping into parliamentary debates.
But why are cis people so bothered about gender-affirming healthcare for trans people, when they themselves get gender-affirming healthcare all the time?
Let me explain with a story. A couple of years ago, a housemate of mine was prescribed a testosterone-blocking medication called spironolactone by her GP. She has PCOS and the doctor said that spironolactone would help treat some of the symptoms she was experiencing, like increased hair growth on her body and face.
She left the appointment, prescription literally in hand, and picked up the medication from the chemist a few minutes later. After trying spironolactone she realised that she liked the side-effects of that even less, so she stopped taking it. And then, she asked me if I knew any trans women who might want the meds she had left over – because trans women, too, are prescribed spironolactone to block their testosterone.
But the vast majority of trans women in the UK can’t get spironolactone from their GP. If they wanted to block their testosterone, which many trans women do, they’d start with a GP appointment, which would lead to a referral to a gender clinic, then a wait of several years before a psychiatric assessment and a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Then, they could be prescribed a testosterone blocker – and, most likely, also the hormone oestrogen.
This inequality in access to hormones is not limited to spironolactone. When I wanted to try taking testosterone, I first had to go to my GP for a referral that meant I then spent several years on an NHS gender clinic waiting list. Finally I had two hours-long appointments, one with a social worker and one with a clinical psychologist, discussing everything from my childhood to my sex life to my mental health. I received the precious diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which permits me to obtain gender-affirming hormones and surgery. Then, finally, I was prescribed testosterone gel.
If I’d been a cis man, say in my forties, struggling with a low sex drive, depressed and feeling a bit moody, then I also might’ve gone to my GP as a first port of call. But there the similarity ends. As a cis man, my GP could order a blood test and, if my testosterone levels were low, send me to a specialist (after a wait of weeks, rather than years) who could prescribe me testosterone gel. Note: no several years spent waiting, and no need to obtain a clinical diagnosis to prove myself.
In both cases, testosterone gel is being used as a gender-affirming treatment. But the way the same medication is prescribed is hugely different.
Gender-affirming healthcare: Not just for trans people!
It’s not only hormones that cis and trans people alike use to affirm their genders.
I would, and happily will, argue that in many cases a cis person who is going to the gym, getting tattoos, shaving their legs, wearing a bra, dying their hair or wearing make-up is acting in a way that, for them, affirms their gender – however unlikely they might be to recognise that that’s what they’re doing.
But there’s no crowdfunded £250,000 court case saying that cis men shouldn’t have access to Viagra. Perhaps it would’ve been money better spent.
And that’s because when cis people affirm their genders – be it through the clothes they wear, their haircuts, their jewellery or, yes, the surgical operations they undergo to better assert their gender – it’s not a big deal. It’s commonplace. So commonplace, in fact, that we don’t even see it that way.
Yet when trans people affirm our genders through the way we dress, our haircuts, our jewellery or, sometimes, through medical interventions like taking hormones or having surgery, it’s a very big deal to cis people. It is perceived not just as healthcare, like what they have, but trans healthcare. And as such, they feel the need not only to tightly control it, but to argue against it and to make it harder for us to have it.
And for those of us who talk publicly about aspects of our own personal medical transitions, they feel it’s OK to tell us exactly why they think what we’ve chosen to do with our bodies is disgusting – in language that would rightly be lambasted if it was aimed at cis people. It’s expected that trans people will accept a certain level of abuse if we talk publicly about the gender-affirming healthcare we’re accessing, in a way that a cis woman taking hormonal contraception or a man dying his greying hair might be surprised to experience.
The answer is not to restrict cis people’s access to gender-affirming healthcare, but to make it easier for trans people to get hold of. Hormones should, as trans civil rights activists have long argued, be available at GP’s and sexual-health clinics under the model of informed consent – in other words, the same way in which the same hormones are already available to cis people. And why is it that some medication is available at big supermarkets, while other medication is not? Codeine and anti-histamines at Tesco, but not testosterone? Why?
The earlier examples of testosterone and spironolactone are not the only hormones where we see this health inequality between trans and cis people play out. We see the same thing with oestrogen: readily available to cis women as a hormonal contraceptive at their GP, yet extremely hard to get hold of for trans women, who must go through a specialist gender clinic and psychiatric assessment to access the same drug.
In fact, most trans healthcare is actually cis healthcare, if you think about it – very few of the speech and language therapists, laser hair-removal specialists, or surgeons constructing penises for trans men, originally trained to offer their services to trans people. Their services were for cis people first, and then adapted for trans people.
And the fact that cis people are happy to have these different forms of healthcare for themselves yet so vehemently against it when trans people want it takes us back to the question: Why are cis people so bothered about gender-affirming healthcare for trans and non-binary people? Perhaps it’s not the healthcare that they have a problem with, after all.
Same-sex couples can wed in Switzerland from July 1 next year, the government said on Wednesday, enacting the results of a groundbreaking referendum on the issue in September.
Voters approved the “Marriage for All” initiative by a nearly two-thirds majority, making Switzerland one of the last countries in Western Europe to legalize gay marriage.
In a two-stage process, same-sex couples who have married abroad will have their status recognized from the start of January. Previously, the couples were seen as a registered partnership in Switzerland.
The new law will start six months later, which means couples will be allowed to marry or convert their registered partnership from July 1, 2022.
Preparations for the marriage can be submitted before this date, the government added. No more registered partnerships will be allowed after this date.
Advocates expect several hundred people to take advantage of the law change in the first year it comes into effect.
“We are really happy with the outcome of the vote, and that it is now being put into law,” Maria von Kaenel, co-president of the Marriage for All campaign, said on Wednesday.
“We have been fighting for marriage equality for 30 years and the referendum result was a historic moment.”
It is 18 years today since the controversial and homophobic legislation known as Section 28, introduced under Margaret Thatcher, was repealed in England and Wales.
The clause – an amendment to the Local Government Act 1988 – banned local authorities and schools from promoting homosexuality and was brought forward by Thatcher’s government.
The legislation has been labelled “toxic and regressive” by deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey, who introduced the clause that led to its repeal, and told PinkNews that Section 28 left young people feeling “alone and vulnerable”.
“I am proud to have moved the clause that abolished Section 28 once and for all. But we still have so far to go,” Davey said, in 2019.
“From trans rights, to tackling the persistent discrimination faced by the LGBT+ community: the fight is far from over.”
Section 28 was introduced by Margaret Thatcher amid renewed anti-gay sentiment
More than three decades have passed since Thatcher’s government introduced the anti-LGBT+ legislation, but its shadow still looms over schools and local authorities in the UK today.
The legislation meant that councils were prohibited from funding of books, plays, leaflets, films, or other materials showing same-sex relationships, while teachers weren’t allowed to teach about gay relationships in schools.
This clause was the Conservative government’s vitriolic and traditionalist response to calls for equality from lesbian and gay rights activists in the late 1980s.
The homophobic legislation Section 28 was introduced by Margaret Thatcher in 1988. (AFP via Getty/ GERRY PENNY)
Thatcher captured these venomous anti-gay views in her infamous speech at the 1987 Conservative Party conference, which was met with rapturous applause.
“Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay,” she said. “All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life. Yes, cheated.”
LGBT+ activists railed against the legislation – but the government didn’t listen
On the day the clause was passed in the House of Lords, a group of lesbians abseiled into the House of Lords in protest, making national news broadcasts.
The legislation – so loathed, so reviled by supporters of LGBT+ equality – caused 20,000 Mancunians to take to their city’s streets to march against it. It also prompted Sir Ian McKellen to come out publicly as gay.
Section 28 was introduced following a difficult period for the LGBT+ community in the UK. There had been some progress, but the outbreak of HIV/AIDS led to the widespread demonisation of gay and bisexual men in the 1980s.
The Conservative Party capitalised on this anti-gay sentiment. In the run-up to the 1987 general election, they issued posters claiming that the Labour Party wanted LGBT+ friendly books like Young, Gay and Proud and The Milkman’s on His Way to be read in schools.
Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay. All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life. Yes, cheated.
In 1987, a British Social Attitudes Survey found that three-quarters of the population thought homosexuality was “always or mostly wrong”. Just 11 per cent said it was “never wrong”.
Just before the general election of 1987, the Earl of Halsbury introduced theLocal Government Act 1986 (Amendment) Bill, also known as an act to refrain local authorities from promoting homosexuality.
Owen Franken/Corbis via Getty
This bill was successfully passed through the House of Lords, and even passed the first stage on the way to becoming law in the commons, but it went no further. Section 28 was not dissimilar to the legislation that the Earl of Halsbury tried to introduce.
The anti-LGBT+ legislation left teachers afraid to broach LGBT+ issues in schools.
Soon after the Tories were re-elected, Tory MP David Wilshire put forward an amendment to the new Local Government Bill – known first as Clause 27, and later as the notorious Clause 28 – based on the Earl of Halsbury’s Bill, which was subsequently passed through Parliament.
Marchers at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride event, Piccadilly, London, 4th July 1998. One marcher is holding a Socialist Worker placard, calling for the scrapping of Section 28. (Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The night before Section 28 became law, a group of lesbians famously stormed the BBC’s Six O’Clock News in protest.
The effects of Section 28 soon became apparent, with some schools and councils shutting down LGBTQ+ youth support groups – and many teachers too afraid to teach about same-sex relationships.
The legislation was ultimately repealed in 2003, and David Cameron issued an apology for the harm it had done in 2009 – but despite this, its implications are still felt far and wide and teaching around LGBT+ issues still remains a taboo topic in many schools.
This year, Thatcher was portrayed by queer icon Gillian Anderson in the most recent series of The Crown. However, proving that Section 28’s horrific history can be all too easily forgotten, the show skipped over the issue entirely.
A settlement was reached Thursday in the nearly decade-old case of a Christian flower shop owner in Washington state who refused to provide a same-sex couple flowers for their wedding despite the state’s anti-discrimination laws.
The U.S. Supreme Court left intact the state court rulings against Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, in July. Shortly afterward, Stutzman petitioned for a rehearing.
Stutzman withdrew her petition Thursday and agreed to pay a settlement of $5,000 to the couple, Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed.
“We took on this case because we were worried about the harm being turned away would cause LGBTQ people. We are glad the Washington Supreme Court rulings will stay in place to ensure that same-sex couples are protected from discrimination and should be served by businesses like anyone else,” the couple said in a statement. “It was painful to be turned away and we are thankful that this long journey for us is finally over.”
The case dates to 2013, when Stutzman refused to provide flowers for the couple’s wedding. She said it would violate her Southern Baptist beliefs and her “relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Using an argument similar to that of Colorado baker Jack Phillips in the hot-button 2018 Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Stutzman argued that her floral arrangements are works of art and that having to create them for same-sex weddings would trample on her freedom of expression.
A lower court ruled in 2015 that Stutzman broke a Washington law that bars businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. The state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the couple in 2017 and then again in 2019, findingthat selling flowers for a wedding “does not inherently express a message about that wedding.”
Ingersoll and Freed will donate the $5,000 to a local chapter of PFLAG, an LGBTQ advocacy group, and they also plan to match the donation, Thursday’s statement said.
Last Saturday, Que Bell led a vigil for Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual observance to honor the memory of transgender homicide victims that began in 1999.
Bell has led these vigils before. He is the executive director of the Knights and Orchids Society, a nonprofit group based in Selma, Alabama, that supports Black transgender, queer and gender-nonconforming people, and he has been an advocate for more than a decade. But this year will be different.
“This is literally the first time that I’ll have to write down my best friend’s name for a TDOR celebration,” Bell said, using the initialism for Transgender Day of Remembrance. “It’s really going to hit differently.”
Bell’s best friend, Mel Groves, died Oct. 11 after having been shot multiple times. Groves, 25, a Black transgender man, was studying plant and soil science at Alcorn State University in Lorman, Mississippi. Just before he died, he was about to become the full-time community garden manager for the Knights and Orchids Society.
Mel Groves, a farmer from Jackson, Miss.Courtesy Mel Groves
But on Saturday, Bell will light a candle in Groves’ memory.
Groves is one of at least 47 transgender or gender-nonconforming people — and one of 28 Black trans people — to have died by violence in 2021, which has surpassed 2020 to become the deadliest year on record for trans people, according to the Human Rights Campaign, which has been tracking fatal anti-trans violence since 2013. A disproportionate number of the deaths have been in the Southeast.
State legislatures across the country this year have also considered a record number of anti-transgender bills — more than 100 — many of which target trans youths, specifically trans girls. Advocates say the rhetoric coming out of legislatures is connected to the violence, because it describes transgender girls as boys and vice versa and, in many cases, characterizes trans people as “predators”on sports teams or in bathrooms.
Transgender Day of Remembrance is also known as Transgender Day of Remembrance and Resilience — the latter part an effort to remind people that while trans people face disproportionate discrimination and violence, they are also leading grassroots efforts to make things better for their communities.
Deadnaming, misgendering and clearance rates
Bell said that he and Groves’ friends and family ultimately want the person who killed Groves brought to justice but that he doesn’t have confidence in the police investigation.
When the Jackson Police Department first reported on Groves’ death, it used his legal name and misgendered him, causing local news outlets to repeat the mistakes. Groves’ loved ones had to reach out while grieving his loss to ask news outlets to update their stories to reflect who Groves actually was. Some updated their stories; others said they couldn’t change them without confirmation from law enforcement authorities or Groves’ immediate family. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/nt4ufYW?_showcaption=true&app=1
A week after Groves died, Jackson police provided the same statement to NBC News that they first issued, which used his birth name (also known as deadnaming) and misgendered him. The police department hasn’t responded to a request for comment about whether it plans to update the statement.
Bell said police officials need to be more educated about what the trans community faces; otherwise, he said, they will be unable to solve the case. He recalled one officer’s public statement that he would investigate Groves’ death just like any other.
“That is totally avoiding the issue,” Bell said. “I want you to be knowledgeable enough to know that, when something happens to trans people, how your department should be reacting to it and how you can help, versus being so defensive about acknowledging that this happened because it was a trans issue.”
Bell said police need to understand that anti-trans violence is connected to discrimination and higher rates of homelessness, among other issues that trans people face, or “we’re never going to be able to solve the problem.”
Jaida Peterson, a transgender woman, was found dead in a hotel room in Charlotte, N.C., on April 4, 2021.AP / NBC News
Anti-trans fatal violence cases nationwide appear to have a lower average clearance rate — the percentage of cases in which someone has been arrested, charged and turned over to a court for prosecution — than fatal violence cases in general, said Brendan Lantz, an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University.
Lantz and his research team at the university’s Hate Crime Research and Policy Institute are creating the first database to track fatal violence against the transgender community. Although the Human Rights Campaign and other nonprofit groups track such deaths, the database Lantz’s team is creating, which will date to 2012, also tracks characteristics of the offenses, victims’ background information, perpetrators’ information, handling by police departments (including whether victims were misgendered or deadnamed) and whether cases have been solved, among other information.
Preliminary data, which Lantz said are subject to change, show that the nationwide clearance rate for fatal anti-trans violence is about 44 percent, which is well below the national average of 60 percent to 70 percent.
Early patterns also show that there’s “very likely a correlation between the prevalence” of deadnaming or misgendering by police and the likelihood of clearing a case, he said.
Evidence is important when police are trying to solve a homicide, he said, “and if we’re not even using the correct name, obtaining that evidence isn’t particularly easy to do, right?”
“Witnesses are less likely to come forward, and a lot of issues enter the equation,” he said.
Transgender rights groups say anti-trans sentiment, reflected in bills considered in dozens of states, affects how trans people are treated, including by police. Police initially misgendered victims and used their birth names in reporting on 30 of the 46 known deaths, an NBC News analysis found.
Since 2013, about 80 percent of trans people in deaths involving trans people with available data were initially misgendered by the media or law enforcement, according to a report released Wednesday by the Human Rights Campaign. An NBC News analysis of this year’s cases found that victims in 73 percent of investigations were misgendered or deadnamed by police, compared to 59 percent of cases in which someone was arrested and charged.
‘A sense of survival mode’
Trans advocates say some policymakers and national advocacy organizations are quick to suggest police reform as a solution.
But while many of them agree that improving police competence and investigations is important, they say the strategy addresses the issue only after the fact — when people have already died.
That leaves many in the transgender community feeling unsafe, which has led some of them to take their safety and well-being into their own hands.
“When you get tired of depending on a system to protect you that you know was not designed to protect you or to support you, you realize that you’re literally wasting time and resources putting money into a system that is not going to change,” Bell said. “So instead … we decided to start investing in the things that we could tangibly change.”
Advocates like Bell say community organizations should be given more resources and support, because they know how to best keep their people safe and help them thrive — by providing them with gender-affirming health care, as the Knights and Orchids Society does, or housing, as a number of trans-led groups across the country do.
Mariah Moore, a national trans rights activist and a co-director of the House of Tulip, a nonprofit collective creating housing solutions for trans people in Louisiana, said: “It’s so important that we support community-led initiatives, because those folks leading those initiatives are actually folks who have that lived experience and are able to speak to the needs and actually distribute those resources directly to impacted community members.”
Trans United Leading Intersectional Progress, or TULIP, is a nonprofit collective creating housing solutions for trans people in Louisiana.House of Tulip
Bell echoed that sentiment with respect to funding for nonprofit groups. He said that many people support and know of national advocacy organizations but that the groups aren’t providing emergency housing or money for trans people.
“I’m committed to this work to always keep trans folks safe,” he said, adding that he has been evicted twice in the past because he has provided a place for people experiencing homelessness to stay, some of them as young as 13.
“That comes out of a sense of survival mode,” he said. “I don’t have a lot, but what I do have I want to share with the folks who are like me who also don’t have.”
In neighboring Georgia, Toni-Michelle Williams, the executive director of the Atlanta-based Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative, a Black trans- and queer-led organization that builds community safety through organizing and leadership training, said the group has supported more than 160 people through its Taking Care of Our Own Fund, which provides funding for emergency bail, housing, health care and other needs.
The group provided the support with less than 3 percent of $15 million, Williams said, which represents this year’s budget increasefor the Atlanta Police Department.
“Just imagine what we could do for our communities — Black trans and queer folks, sex workers, formerly incarcerated people — with at least 3 percent of that funding,” she said. “I definitely just want to encourage people to continue to push and to join our side around what it means to reallocate funding from these large institutions that have so many resources. Our communities are in need of them.”
Looking ahead, Bell said he’s determined “not to lose another Mel.”
“I want to do everything I can to make sure that we don’t have any more Mel Groves — that we don’t have another person who slips through the cracks, that for whatever reason we have the resources to make sure that folks have a fighting chance,” he said.
A memorial was held for Mel Groves in Jackson, Miss., in October.Courtesy TC Caldwell/The Knights and Orchids Society.
He added that he feels as though he has done a disservice to trans people who have been killed in the past. “Because what I don’t want people to remember about Mel is that he was the 39th person murdered,” Bell said. “And that’s often what happens when we lose somebody, is that the tragedy of their death is highlighted over their legacy, their purpose and all the good things that they have contributed to the world during their time.”
He wants people to remember that Groves was a promising scientist and that his professors bragged about him and his research after his death. He loved Nat King Cole, he had a smile that made people want to talk to him, and he always offered to share food with his friends.
People living with HIV could be at long last “liberated” from a “burdensome” daily pill regimen, as a new long-lasting injectable is approved for use in Britain.
In news dubbed “brilliant” by a leading HIV activist, the NHS has been given the go-ahead to roll out injections taken every two months to manage the virus.
Currently, people living with HIV are offered antiretroviral medicines that must be taken every day to suppress the virus – usually one to four daily pills. Effective treatment reduces a person’s viral load – the amount of virus in their blood – to an undetectable level.
When the virus is undetectable, it cannot be transmitted, and a person with HIV can live a long, healthy life.
The new treatment approved by England and Wales’ National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Scottish Medicines Consortium on Thursday (18 November) is a combination of two jabs taken every two months.
Around 13,000 people will be eligible in England, NICE estimated.
HIV jabs will do away with the ’emotional burden’ of daily pills, says leading activist
Many people struggle to take the tablets they need to keep HIV at bay, Matthew Hodson, executive director of HIV outreach charity NAM aidsmap, told PinkNews. The stigma around HIV can discourage people, while others may simply forget.
“Taking daily pills becomes an emotional burden,” Hodson said, “a constant reminder that their health is at risk without medication.
“For some, who are unable to be open about their need for HIV treatment, it can create considerable obstacles to necessary adherence required for HIV medication to be effective.
“For many, a switch to injections just six times a year will be a liberation.”
HIV works by slipping into the human genome and tricking the machinery of white blood cells into making copies of HIV. As white blood cells are the body’s natural defenders, this weakens people’s immune systems.
The two injectables, cabotegravir and rilpivirine, work by suppressing how many HIV particles are in the blood, their viral load. It makes the viral load so low that the virus cannot be detected or even transmitted between people.
The jabs are just as effective as currently available oral drugs, clinical trial results have shown.
Both medicines have been licensed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which carries out safety checks on drugs that pass clinical trials.
Now that they have been recommended by NICE draft guidance , they can receive crucial funding from local health authorities.
“It is important that HIV treatment continues to adapt and innovate to ensure that as many people as possible can benefit,” Hodson added.
“Effective treatment means we can now enjoy the same life expectancy as those without the virus and we can no longer pass HIV on during sex; getting treatment to all people with HIV in a way that supports our circumstances holds the key to ending this epidemic.”
Hodson said he hopes such innovation can be brought to pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, the drug which when taken correctly prevents people from acquiring HIV.
“Many of the barriers to effective PrEP use are down to the need for daily pills – or the two-one-one on-demand strategy for cis men who can plan their sexual activity,” he explained.
“Injectables, implants and even very long-lasting pills are all in the pipeline, and these could have a huge impact on our ability to prevent HIV.”
As state legislatures around the country pursue anti-LGBTQ legislation in what advocates have said is the “worst year” for LGBTQ rights in modern history, a report released Thursday highlights how cities are quietly moving the needle in the opposite direction.
In their 10th annual Municipal Equality Index, or MEI, two LGBTQ advocacy groups, the Human Rights Campaign and the Equality Federation, evaluated 506 municipalities — including the country’s 50 state capitals and its 200 largest cities — on how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people are included in their local laws, policies and services.
They found that over the last decade, the average MEI score rose 44 percent to 85 points this year from a score of 59 points in 2012, the report’s inaugural year.
“I literally gasped when I did the math,” said the founding author of the MEI, Cathryn Oakley, the state legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign. “The things that those points represent, they’re things that matter for people’s lives.”
To boost their scores, cities would have had to implement or improve upon any of the MEI’s 49 criteria, which include nondiscrimination protections, pro-LGBTQ policies or benefits for municipal employees and city leaders.
But while the report shows an expansion of LGBTQ rights in cities and towns around the country, its findings coincide with the pursuit of hundreds of bills that target LGBTQ people in state legislatures.
The bulk of the state legislation proposed this year has been aimed at transgender minors, including bills that seek to prohibit trans students from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities and those that restrict transition-related health care.
Other bills include a requirement that parents sign off on any mention of gender identity or sexual orientation in school curriculums.
Twenty-five anti-LGBTQ bills have been signed into law, including measures in Tennessee, Texas and Arkansas, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Oakley reasoned that the divide between state legislatures and city governments comes down to the motives of city officials compared to those of state officials, which she described as “less aspirational” and “practical.”
“They’re used to coming up with pragmatic solutions that are going to benefit people now,” she said of city officials. “They don’t get as bogged down in the hyperbole and misinformation.”
This year, city officials across the country have continued to advance LGBTQ rights as the wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation makes its way through state legislatures.
In May, the Pittsburgh City Council passed a bill that adds LGBTQ-owned businesses to the list of minority- and women-owned businesses eligible for government aid and support. The City Council in Columbia, South Carolina, passed a ban on conversion therapy for minors in June. And several cities in North Carolina passed nondiscrimination ordinances throughout the year, with Raleigh doing so just last month.
Thursday’s report also found that cities in states with anti-LGBTQ laws or without LGBTQ protections have still moved the needle on queer rights. It found that 72 cities earned MEI scores over 85 points this year, despite hailing from states without nondiscrimination statutes that explicitly protect sexual orientation and gender identity.
Other highlights from the report include a rise in the proportion of municipalities scoring a perfect 100 — 22 percent this year, compared to 8 percent in 2012 — and a year-over-year rise in the average score of every region of the country.
However, Gabriele Magni, an assistant professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, who was not involved with the report, argued that because the study pools data from cities with big populations, which generally have large pockets of Democratic voters, the findings may be somewhat skewed.
“We should be happy, but we should not be complacent about this. This is probably further evidence of the increasing divide between cities and rural areas when it comes to LGBTQ rights,” Magni said. “Cities governed by Democrats are making progress. State legislatures where rural areas have more voice, where Republicans have more power, they’re going in the opposite direction.”
Eight cities in the report, including Florence, Alabama; Jonesboro, Arkansas; and Southaven, Mississippi, scored an average of zero points.
A lawsuit filed Tuesday challenges North Carolina’s requirement that transgender individuals who want to update their birth certificate undergo “sex reassignment surgery.”
Lambda Legal, a leading LGBTQ civil rights group, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina on behalf of three transgender North Carolinians: Lillith Campos, a 45-year-old woman who lives in Jacksonville, and two minors — “C.B.” a 16-year-old boy from Chapel Hill, and “M.D,” a 14-year-old girl from Carrboro. (The names of the two minors have been altered in court documents to protect their privacy.)
Lillith Campos.Lambda Legal
“As someone who can’t afford surgery, it’s demoralizing and dehumanizing that my birth certificate doesn’t reflect who I am,” Campos said at an online news conference Tuesday morning. “Having incorrect documentation makes me feel like a second-class citizen.”
She added that the current policy forces trans people to out themselves, “even if they don’t feel safe doing so.”
According to the filing, a birth certificate that aligns with an individual’s gender identity “is a critical and ubiquitous identification document,” vital to accessing employment, education, housing, health care, banking, credit, travel and many government services.
For children, lawyers for the plaintiffs argue, birth certificates are often the only form of government identification they have, and are required for enrollment in school, recreational sports and summer camp.
“My daughter is a 14-year-old girl and the state’s requirement for surgery is unrealistic and creates a barrier for my child to have a normal childhood,” M.D.’s mother, Katheryn Jenifer, said at the news conference.
“Not having an accurate birth certificate has exposed my daughter to discriminatory treatment and exclusion in school, sports and other places,” she added. “No child should go through life knowing the state doesn’t recognize her as who she is.”
Jenifer said M.D. saw the case as a chance “to be the voice for kids like her that maybe don’t have support like she does.”
“She knows this could bring unwanted attention,” she Jenifer added, “but she feels it’s important enough that she wants to be a part of it.”
While the state imposes a surgical requirement, designated as “sex reassignment surgery,” the suit maintains it doesn’t provide a legal definition for the phrase.
“The decision is left to the subjective whims of each clerk,” it reads, resulting in “arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement of the statute — rendering the statute unconstitutionally vague.”
Lambda Legal Senior Attorney Omar Gonzalez-Pagan called the surgical requirement “inconsistent with standard medical practice” and said it presented “a significant barrier — sometimes insurmountable — to many transgender people, particularly those who may not be able to afford gender confirmation surgery, or who may not want or need it.”
The litigants argue the surgical requirement violates their constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the 14th Amendment, as well as their First Amendment guarantee to freedom of speech.
Rather than financial compensation, Gonzalez-Pagan said, they’re seeking an acknowledgement that the surgical policy is unconstitutional and a requirement that the state allow trans people to update their birth certificate without surgery.
In addition to attorneys with Lambda Legal, the plaintiffs are being represented by the North Carolina firms Baker Botts LLP and Brooks Pierce McLendon Humphrey & Leonard LLP.
Mandy Cohen, the secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, has been named as a defendant, along with Assistant Secretary of Public Health Mark Benton and ClarLynda Williams-DeVane, state registrar and director of the North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment on the lawsuit.
According to Lambda Legal, 34 states allow individuals to update the sex designation on their birth certificate without surgical intervention.
In fact, surgery is not required to update the gender marker on a North Carolina driver’s license, just a form from a health professional affirming their client’s gender identity.
Fourteen states still have a surgical requirement to change gender markers on birth certificates.
West Virginia requires a court order to amend the gender designation on a birth certificate, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality. The state’s Vital Registration office will not issue a new birth certificate, instead striking through the existing name and gender and typing the new information above.
Tennessee law specifically prohibits amending sex on a birth certificate “as a result of sex change surgery,” a policy Lambda Legal is also currently challenging. Like transgender North Carolinians, though, trans residents in Tennessee can change the listed gender on their driver’s licenses and state identification cards without surgery.
In an email to NBC News, Gonzalez-Pagan said the decision of when and where to bring a challenge “depends on multiple factors, including our assessment of the law and whether we have encountered people affected by these policies that are willing to step up and take on such a challenge.”
The goal, he added, is to eradicate each of these barriers one by one “and to have one victory build upon the other.”
North Carolina has been a nexus point for LGBTQ equality in recent years: In 2016, after Charlotte passed an ordinance expanding its existing nondiscrimination protections to include gender identity and sexual orientation — including allowing transgender people to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity — the state’s General Assembly held a special session to pass House Bill 2, nicknamed the “bathroom bill.”
That measure prevented any municipality in the state from adding sexual orientation or gender identity to nondiscrimination laws, effectively blocking Charlotte’s efforts and sparking national boycotts that were projected to cost the state billions in lost revenue.
HB 2 was eventually repealed in 2017 as part of a compromise that placed a three-year statewide moratorium on nondiscrimination ordinances. Since then, Charlotte and several other cities have updated their nondiscrimination policies to include LGBTQ people.
And just last month, the state’s lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson made national headlines and faced calls to resign after a video surfaced showing him describing the LGBTQ community as “filth.”
“There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality — any of that filth,” Robinson, the state’s highest Republican executive officeholder, said in a clip from a June speech at a Baptist church.
