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Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds donates childhood home to LGBT+ youth charity
Dan Reynolds, professional tall man and Imagine Dragons singer, has donated his childhood home worth $1 million for it to become an LGBT+ youth centre.
As part of LGBT+ advocacy group Encircle’s ‘$8 Million, Eight Houses’ campaign, the 34-year-old reflected on the difficulties queer youth face.×ADVERTISING
Reynolds, an outspoken LGBT+ ally, and his wife Aja Volkman are to donate the Las Vegas, Nevada, property to be converted into one of Encircle’s new facilities, which will offer vulnerable queer youth a crucial lifeline.
Both Reynolds and Volkman will serve as honorary co-chairs of Encircle’s new campaign, according to NME.
Dan Reynolds: ‘I’ve watched throughout my life the difficult path that LGBT+ youth have’
“Encircle is about bringing young LGBTQ+ people and their families together, by including the community and strengthening the bonds that connect us,” Reynolds and Volkman said in a joint statement.
“Being a part of this organization means so much to both of us and we know the house Dan grew up in will be a loving and supportive home to every young LGBTQ+ person who crosses the threshold.”
Appearing on daytime talk show Good Morning America Thursday (25 February), Reynolds, alongside fellow donators Apple CEO Tim Cook and Utah Jazz basketball team owner Ryan Smith, discussed the campaign.
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“I’ve watched throughout my life the difficult path that LGBT+ youth have, especially coming from homes of faith,” he said.

“Now to know, with my mum and dad’s blessing, I was able to purchase the home for them and it’s going to be the first Encircle home in Las Vegas – that’s powerful for me.”
Encircle operate various safe houses in Utah in Salt Lake City, Provo and St George, and a fourth in Heber on the way. The campaign being part of an effort to expand to Arizona, Idaho and Nevada.
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“Studies repeatedly have shown that LGBT+ youth across the country struggle with depression and suicidality far more than their heterosexual peers, and the pandemic has made that sense of isolation so many feel harder than ever before,” Encircle CEO Stephanie Larsen said in a statement to the press.
“We strive to give these kids a positive and loving environment that builds support within their communities where they can realize their full potential, and it works — we have not lost a single youth to suicide.”
Republicans launch Equality Act rival that would ‘undermine’ LGBT+ rights in the name of religious freedom
Republicans are launching a rival to the Equality Act which will allow them to discriminate against LGBT+ people on the basis of religious freedom.
The “Fairness for All” Act was reintroduced by Utah Congressman Chris Stewart on Sunday (28 February), days after the Equality Act was passed by the House of Representatives, as a way to “harmonise religious freedom and LGBT+ rights”.
Like the Equality Act it would outlaw LGBT+ discrimination in employment, housing, jury selection, credit and federally assisted programs – except, of course, when that discrimination is based on religious beliefs.
“It is hard to really love our neighbours when we are fighting with them over whose rights are more important,” Stewart complained. “This country can accommodate both civil liberties for LGBT individuals and religious freedom.
“We have wasted enough time, energy, and money fighting over who deserves which legal protections. It is time to define the federal protections for our LGBT and religious friends and neighbours.”
The Fairness for All Act promises to build on LGBT+ protections in federal, state and local law while simultaneously preserving the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which enshrines the First Amendment right of religious freedom.
This means small business owners and faith-based charities, such as shelters and foster care agencies, would be free to refuse LGBT+ people if they feel their existence runs “contrary to their conscience and beliefs”.
The bill also protects the tax-exempt status of religious organisations, colleges and universities, allowing them to “uphold their religious standards” without losing funding.
According to a press release it is “the largest expansion of religious freedom and LGBT civil rights under federal law in a generation” – and Stewart somehow insists this is not a contradiction.
“There’s room to do both,” he told 2News. “Some people say, ‘You’ve got to do one, or you can do the other, but you can’t do both,’ and that’s just not true.”
The Fairness for All Act already has 20 Republican co-sponsors and the support of the Mormon Church, the Seventh-day Adventist Church and multiple other faith advocacy groups.
But the Human Rights Campaign called the legislation “deeply dangerous”, warning that it would create “substandard protections” for LGBT+ people.
“The ‘Fairness for All’ Act is anything but fair, and it certainly does not serve all of us,” the advocacy group said when the bill was first tabled in 2019.
“It is an affront to existing civil rights protections that protect people on the basis of race, sex, and religion and creates new, substandard protections for LGBTQ people with massive loopholes and carve-outs, and upends critical federal programs that serve children in need.
“This legislation is deeply dangerous for many reasons,” it continued, “mainly because it would erode protections that already exist for people based on race, sex and religion, rolling back protections that have been on the books for decades.
“It would expand the number of places and situations in which lawful discrimination could occur.”
Even if it doesn’t pass, the bill could influence revisions of the Equality Act, which needs to gain Republican support in order to overcome a potential Senate filibuster.
Four men, including a teen just 16, arrested in brutal murder of a trans person in India
Four men, including a 16-year-old, were arrested Friday (26 February) for the brutal killing of a trans person, Surya Pujari, in northern Mumbai, India.
Pujari, regarded as a trans community leader in the sleepy Malad suburb, was slain 4:30pm Wednesday (24 February) outside the Roomaniya Hotel.
According to Bangur Nagar Police, a group of men jumped Pujari outside the business. A struggle ensued, during which one of the assailants grabbed a knife and slit their neck, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported.
Witnesses poured out onto the scene, hearing Pujari’s screams for help as they fought the gang off. The suspects fled as passers-by rushed them to a local hospital but they passed away on arrival.
“The murder seems premeditated as Surya’s daily activities were known to the killers,” investigators said at the time. Noting that Pujari’s valuables, including their wallet and jewellery, had been left untouched.
Men ‘tried killing Surya Pujari three to four times over personal enmity’, police say
Rajesh Yadav, 23, Vinay Yadav, 22, and Dheeraj Vishwakarma, 20, alongside a 16-year-old were arrested by authorities.
The four had fled the area after the killing, switching off their mobile phones, but police identified and tracked them down based on local survivance footage and witness statements.
The men, the police said, had been sparring with Surya Pujari, their neighbour, in which the victim allegedly stirred up fights with the suspects daily. The spats, they said, were often petty.
Police nabbed the men after a sting operation, after which the men confessed to the killing, Vishal Thakur, deputy commissioner of Police Zone-12, told reporters.
“We arrested four persons who later confessed to the crime,” he explained. “It was revealed that they had tried killing the victim three to four times earlier over personal enmity but did not succeed.
“A case has been registered against them.
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“They said they were Surya’s neighbours in Prem Nagar and used to get intimidated by Surya every day,” a spokesperson for the force said.
“Surya, who was the head of the transgender community in Malad, allegedly used to threaten them and others in the locality.”
Trump mocks trans athletes in first sinister speech since leaving the White House
Donald Trump mocked trans athletes in a sinister first speech since leaving the White House in January.
The disgraced former president gave his first public address since leaving office at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday (28 February).
n a speech that dragged on for an hour and a half, Trump repeatedly hit out at Joe Biden, pushed the false idea that the election was stolen, and characterised immigrants as “predators”, “rapists” and “drug smugglers”.
Around 42 minutes into his speech, Donald Trump turned his attention to trans athletes, lambasting Joe Biden for advancing protections for LGBT+ people.
“Joe Biden and the Democrats are even pushing policies that would destroy women’s sports,” Trump said to cheers from a mostly maskless crowd.
Trump incorrectly claimed that “a lot of new records are being broken in women’s sports”. Directly addressing women in the audience, he added: “Hate to say that ladies, but you got a lot of new records that are being shattered.
“For years the weightlifting, every ounce is like a big deal for many years,” Trump said, imitating a person struggling to lift weights.
“All of a sudden somebody comes along and beats it by a hundred pounds. Nah. Young girls and women are incensed that they are now being forced to compete against those who are biological males,” he said, adopting wording commonly used by anti-trans pressure groups.https://www.youtube.com/embed/g9ITyMTesmo?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1
“It’s not good for women, it’s not good for women’s sports, which worked so long and so hard to get to where they are. The records that stood for years, even decades, are now being smashed with ease,” Trump lied.
The former president claimed that women’s sports will “die” if trans women are allowed to compete.
He went on to claim that cisgender women’s records will “easily be broken by somebody who was born a man”. Needless to say, Trump provided no evidence to back up his claims.
“I think it’s crazy, I think it’s just crazy what’s happening,” he said.
“I don’t even know, is that controversial?” he asked the audience, who responded with cheers.
“Somebody said, ‘Well that’s going to be very controversial.’ I said, ‘That’s OK, you haven’t heard anything yet.’”
Donald Trump branded a ‘transphobic liar’
Trump has been slammed by LGBT+ rights organisations for his harmful and baseless claims about trans athletes.
Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, lambasted Trump’s comments as “offensive and dangerous” – but added that they were “unsurprising”.
“His historic anti-LGBTQ agenda is part of the reason he’s no longer president and we’ll never get tired of reminding him of that,” he said.
The HRC tweeted: “Trans men are men, trans women are women, and Trump is a transphobic liar.”
Meanwhile, GLAAD tweeted: “He’s getting cheers from the CPAC crowd for attacking trans Americans. His administration deployed multiple departments to target trans people looking for a job, going to school, trying to see a doctor, or to access a safe shelter.”:
This is not the first time Trump has used his platform to attack trans athletes. During his presidency, he backed legal attempts, led by anti-LGBT+ evangelical law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, to ban trans girls from playing school sports.
In March 2020, the Trump administration officially declared that it believes trans girls should be treated as “biological males” when playing sports at school.
Trump repeatedly targeted LGBT+ people throughout his four years in office, leading to celebrations from advocacy organisations when Joe Biden won the election in November.
The former president has now been relegated to pushing his hateful views at conservative conferences after he was permanently banned from Twitter – his favourite platform – in January after he incited a riot at the United States Capitol in Washington DC.
Conservatives opposing the Equality Act don’t speak for most people of faith, and they know it
For years the religious right has trumpeted a lie: that its opposition to LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections has to do with, or is even required by, religion. It has even, on occasion, distorted the meaning of religious freedom to make this argument.
But as its opposition to the Equality Act, which passed the House on Thursday, shows, the idea that LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections undermine protections for religious Americans is an egregious mistruth.
The Equality Act would expand protections for religious Americans by updating the public spaces where the Civil Rights Act applies. Under current federal law, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against someone in a retail store or a taxicab, for example, for being visibly Christian (or Muslim or Hindu — or anything else). The Equality Act would ensure that Americans’ religious freedom is protected in those places, preserve all of the religious liberty provisions of our current civil rights laws and protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations.
That truth was not an obstacle to the legislation’s opponents. “The Equality Act would discriminate against people of faith,” a group of Catholic bishops warned; Franklin Graham warned that it was “very dangerous.” Similar exhortations have been made against the bill in past years: Televangelist Pat Robertson told his audience in 2019, “If you want to bring the judgment of God on this nation, you just keep this stuff up,” and radio host Eric Metaxas that year called the legislation “madness.”
The religious right’s loud, often bigoted opposition to the Equality Act obscures the fact that most Americans who self-identify as religious support this legislation.
As the weakness of the religious right’s arguments has become more and more visible, and as more and more Americans who identify as religious reject the edicts to discriminate, its fearmongering about the dignity of LGBTQ people has shifted, both over the past decades and more recently. These days, it focuses on scaring Americans about transgender people, from their participation in youth sports to the standards of medical care for transgender youth, about which it spouts vicious fictions. All of its fearmongering is based on falsehoods or stereotypes, like those that have been proven incorrect in states that already have nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ youths playing sports.
But facts have never stopped Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., before. She captured the essence of opposition to Equality Act on the House floor Wednesday in a speech scorning all transgender Americans and laced with religious rhetoric. She then proceeded to do the opposite of “love your neighbor” by singling out and attacking the transgender daughter of Rep. Marie Newman, D-Ill., in tweets and then with a sign outside her own Capitol Hill office, about which she also tweeted.
Still, it is not just the lies the religious right tells about transgender youth or religious freedom that should rankle other Americans of faith: Its loud, often bigoted opposition to the Equality Act obscures the fact that most Americans who self-identify as religious support this legislation.
The vast majority of Americans — 83 percent — favor laws that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations and housing. That includes majorities of every major religious group in the country, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. Even 59 percent of white evangelical Protestants — the largest and most reliably conservative bloc of religious voters — support the type of protections in the Equality Act.
As the weakness of the religious right’s arguments has become more and more visible, its fearmongering about the dignity of LGBTQ people has shifted.
Americans of all religious backgrounds also reject the distorted “religious freedom” framing of the religious right’s opposition to the Equality Act, as outlined Wednesday by Greene. When given a choice between these two statements —”Everyone is free to follow their religious beliefs and practices in their personal lives, provided they do not cause harm to others,” and “Everyone is free to follow their religious beliefs and practices in every part of their lives, including performing their jobs, even if that means excluding certain groups of people” — 89 percent of Americans, as well as majorities of all major religious groups, chose the former.
All of this is among the reasons that over 100 faith-based organizations have endorsed the Equality Act, including Catholic, evangelical Protestant, mainline Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Unitarian Universalist and Hindu groups. And faith groups that recognize the dignity of LGBTQ people have a faithful ally in the White House: President Joe Biden — one of the most overtly religious presidents since Jimmy Carter — has made the Equality Act a priority for his administration.
Despite not representing the majority of Americans of faith on this issue, the religious right will do all it can in the coming weeks to derail the Equality Act by purporting to represent those very Americans. It is certainly its prerogative to advocate against civil rights, but Americans deserve to know that faith communities and people of faith largely support this historic legislation.
And most religious Americans understand that the response to LGBTQ discrimination most in keeping with the highest callings of the tenets of their various traditions is to enact laws that protect everyone.
Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, delivered a powerful witness on the House floor Thursday when he said, “God created every person in this room,” referring to his LGBTQ colleagues. “Are you saying that God made a mistake? This is not about God. It’s about men who choose to discriminate against other people because they have the power to do so.”
He then cast his vote with the majority of his colleagues, representing the majority of Americans, in favor of this historic civil rights legislation.
Diverse group of cities have highest rates of gay households
Once known for singer Anita Bryant’s anti-gay rights campaign and a ban on gay and lesbian adoptions, Florida is now home to two metro areas with among the highest concentrations of gay and lesbian coupled households in the U.S., according to a new report released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Orlando and Miami had the fourth and sixth highest percentages respectively of same sex coupled households in the U.S., according to the report released this week using data from the bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey.
San Francisco, Portland and Seattle topped the list. Austin was No. 5 and Boston came in at No. 7. But they were joined in the top 10 by some unexpected metro areas like Baltimore, Denver and Phoenix. Noticeably absent were three of the nation’s largest metros: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Though they have some of the nation’s most visible LGBTQ communities, the vastness of their metro areas dilutes the concentration.ADVERTISEMENT
The appearance of these metros on the list shows that tolerance isn’t limited to large coastal cities, gay rights advocates said.
“You often think of LGBTQ people in large cities like San Francisco, but we’re everywhere,” said Jeremy LaMaster executive director of FreeState Justice, a Baltimore-based LGBTQ advocacy organization for Maryland.
The report focused on same sex couples, both married and unmarried, and not gay and lesbians who are single. About 1.5% of all coupled households nationwide were same sex. The cities on the top 10 list ranged in concentration from San Francisco’s 2.8% to Baltimore’s 2%.
In the District of Columbia, which was categorized along with states in the report, 7.1% of coupled households were same sex.
In Florida, acceptance of LGBTQ communities has been driven at the local level, with passage of human rights ordinances, fast-growing populations from all over the world and gay-friendly companies from the hospitality and entertainment industries, said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, an LGBTQ advocacy group.
While Orlando already had a visible gay community with out elected officials and workforces like Disney World with large numbers of gays and lesbians, the collective grief from the massacre at the gay Pulse nightclub in 2016 helped push that acceptance into more conservative corners of civic life such as local churches.
“Miami is a port city and Orlando is the epicenter of amusement parks and hospitality, so it makes perfect sense,” Smith said of the high concentrations of same sex households. “The cities have led the way for sure, rebuilding Florida’s image from a really hateful history.”ADVERTISEMENT
That history stretches back to the 1970s. That’s when Bryant, an early-1960s pop singer and brand ambassador for the Florida Citrus Commission, headed a campaign that led to the repeal of an ordinance in Miami-Dade County prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in one of the earliest organized fights against gay rights. Florida also was the last state in the U.S. to end its ban on gay and lesbian adoption when a court ruled it violated equal protection rights in 2010.
Austin, Orlando and Phoenix have been among the metropolitan areas with the largest population growth in recent years.
Phoenix’s general meritocracy, which comes from being a relatively young community with a constant influx of new arrivals, has made it welcoming to gay and lesbians, said Angela Hughey, president of ONE Community, a business coalition that advocates for inclusion and equality.
“It’s a very broad city and we are in every neighborhood,” Hughey said Thursday.
In Baltimore, residents have had an appreciation for a camp aesthetic that now would overlap with queer culture. A favorite son, after all, is filmmaker John Waters, and the city celebrates the unconventional, as evidenced by the annual HONFest where celebrants sport beehive hairdos and cat-eye sunglasses. The city also has a vibrant vogue ball scene.
“Part of me feels like I need to give a shout-out to John Waters,” said LaMaster, referring to the filmmaker behind cult movies made in Baltimore, such as “Pink Flamingos” and “Hairspray.” “But it’s not just John Waters. There is a rich heritage and history that can be found here.”
LaMaster, who lived in New York City before moving to Baltimore, said the Maryland city lacked the visible gay scene found in a neighborhood like Chelsea in New York City. But Baltimore made sense for same sex couples wanting to set up households in a state that has been a leader in laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as allowing second-parent adoptions, he said.
“The work isn’t done. That’s my takeaway,” La Master said. “Even though there has been tremendous progress, I think there’s always room for improvement.”
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Anti-LGBTQ coalition targets Equality Act in the name of America’s children
A new initiative backed by a coalition of right-wing organizations is courting lawmakers and parents in an effort to stop the passage of the Equality Act — a federal LGBTQ rights bill — and promote policies targeting transgender Americans at the federal and state levels.
Backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Policy Alliance, Heritage Foundation and other national and local groups, the Promise to America’s Children coalition says it is fighting “a culture – and sadly, a government – around us seek to sexualize our children for the sake of a political agenda.”
“It’s no surprise that the ugly wave of state attacks on trans kids traces back to a few, very familiar national anti-LGBTQ groups.”
SARAH KATE ELLIS, GLAAD PRESIDENT AND CEO
As part of this effort, policymakers and parentsare asked to sign pledges protecting children’s “minds,” “bodies” and “relationships with their parents.” Elected officials can even sign up on the coalition website to receive model legislation on the policies it promotes.
“Every child deserves an education that is suited for their specific needs and development as guided by their parents, and one that is free from graphic sexual curriculum or content, the promotion of abortion, and politicized ideas about sexual orientation and gender identity,” the policymaker pledge reads.
On its website, the Promise to America’s Children coalition says anyone who signs the pledge is not signaling support or opposition to legislation, “with the exception of the federal Equality Act, which clearly violates all principles of this Promise.”
The Equality Act is federal legislation that seeks to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces, public funding and jury service. The House passed the recently reintroduced legislation Thursday, but it will likely face an uphill battle in the Senate, where a 60-vote threshold is required to bypass a filibuster.
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Civil rights groups say this new conservative coalition is an attempt to roll back the rights of LGBTQ Americans, particularly the transgender community, and stall passage of comprehensive nondiscrimination laws on the federal and state levels.
“The same few sources have been responsible for peddling anti-LGBTQ legislation for many years, and this legislation is simply the latest iteration of their losing political fight against equality,” Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel for the Human Rights Campaign, said of state bills associated with the organizations in the coalition.
“While extremist groups push copycat bills down to states, these state legislators should understand that their constituents — including a large majority of Republicans — believe transgender people should be allowed to live freely and openly,” Oakley added. “The only thing these bills do is harm kids who are simply trying to navigate their adolescence.”
Emilie Kao, an attorney at the Heritage Foundation, said the coalition’s efforts were accelerated by the reintroduction of the Equality Act.
“Regardless of whether one agrees with the idea that people can have gender identities at odds with their biological sex, bills that treat Americans as criminals if they don’t agree with a government-imposed ideology about the treatment of gender dysphoria is a gross violation of our most basic freedoms of speech and conscience,” Kao told NBC News. “The Equality Act will turn disagreements over marriage and sexuality into discrimination by misusing civil rights law as a sword to coerce conformity rather than as a shield to prevent unjust discrimination.”
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Kao declined to disclose what model legislation the coalition is offering on its website. Prior to the coalition’s official launch this week, LGBTQ advocates said anti-transgender bills were introduced in 20 states in a coordinated assault by conservative groups. At least one of those conservative groups, the Alliance Defending Freedom, is part of this newly formed coalition.
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Bethany Moreton, a history professor at Dartmouth College, said the guise of protecting children when promoting conservative ideology is not uncommon. She cited Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign in the late 1970s that worked to overturn gay nondiscrimination ordinances in Miami by referencing how such measures would harm local children. Over the past 20 years, the religious right has repeatedly lost political battles when it comes LGBTQ issues, so this new pledge is continuing in the “Save Our Children” vein in an effort to appeal to a broad base, according to Moreton.
“Their sort of arsenal of acceptable arguments have shrunk, and one of them is doubling down on child vulnerability,” Moreton said.
While the Promise to America’s Children coalition is new, groups within the coalition have already had success in assisting lawmakers with legislation intended to curtail transgender rights. One such example is Idaho’s HB 500, a bill that bars trans women from participating in high school sports that was passed in 2020, which was written with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom, according to Barbara Ehardt, the legislator who drafted it. A similar bill in Montana was drafted directly from HB 500, Laura Sankey Keip, a staff attorney in the Montana Legislature, confirmed.
The coalition, which launched Tuesday, already has 24 state representatives as signatories to the group’s pledge, three of whom have introduced legislation targeting transgender individuals. Ohio state Rep. Jena Powell and North Dakota state Rep. Ben Koppelman, both Republicans, have introduced bills that would restrict trans women from participating in high school sports, mirroring HB 500, and Kansas state Sen. Mike Thompson, also a Republican, has introduced a bill that would criminalize doctors providing gender-affirming health care to teenagers.
There are more than 45 pieces of anti-transgender legislation making their way through statehouses this year, according to a legislation tracker from Freedom for All Americans. That is more than the legislative session of 2016, which produced the largest volume of anti-trans bills in statehouses, according to civil rights groups.
“It’s no surprise that the ugly wave of state attacks on trans kids traces back to a few, very familiar national anti-LGBTQ groups,” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, said. “They have opposed LGBTQ equality for decades, fighting marriage equality and now targeting trans youth. Bills claiming to protect children or women’s rights do neither and put trans kids in further danger.”
Rand Paul criticized for trans ‘gender mutilation’ remarks in Rachel Levine hearing
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., compared gender-affirming surgery to “genital mutilation” during confirmation hearings Thursday for Dr. Rachel Levine, President Joe Biden’s nominee for assistant secretary of health.
If approved, Levine will become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Paul, a former ophthalmologist, was questioning Levine about transition-related care for transgender youth when he said that “genital mutilation is considered particularly egregious because … it is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children.”
Sen. Paul compares gender-affirming health care for minors to ‘genital mutilation’
Erroneously claiming that Levine supports “surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia,” Paul asked Levine if she believed minors are capable of making “such a life-changing decision as changing one’s sex?”
Levine, a pediatrician, responded that transgender medicine is “a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care that have been developed,” and promised to discuss specifics if she is confirmed.
Paul continued his line of questioning, asking if she supports permitting the government to override a parent’s consent to give a child puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and “amputation surgery of breasts and genitalia.” Levine provided a similar response, leading Paul to accuse her of evading the question.
He further questioned criticism of prescribing hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 by the same people who support hormones for transgender teenagers.
Dr. Colt Wasserman, a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, who provides gender-affirming care to trans minors, told NBC News that Paul’s questions and concerns are “not based in medical fact whatsoever.”
Wasserman said gender-affirming care is understood and supported by major medical associations and physicians “to be a life-affirming practice that, through an informed consent process, patients, parents and their providers come together to support gender-diverse youth in the medical environment in a wide range of ways, which typically doesn’t involve any kind of procedural intervention.”
“There’s a lot of concern about surgery or irreversible decisions,” when it comes to the health care that transgender youth receive, Wasserman added, but surgery is not a component of that care.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health states in its Standards of Care regarding transgender adolescents that surgery “should not be carried out until (i) patients reach the legal age of majority in a given country, and (ii) patients have lived continuously for at least 12 months in the gender role that is congruent with their gender identity.” The standards add, “The age threshold should be seen as a minimum criterion and not an indication in and of itself for active intervention.” The legal age of majority is at least 18 across the U.S.
Duke Health’s Center for Gender Care for Children and Adolescents, for example, will offer children under 16 therapies to delay puberty and provide hormone replacement therapy for those 16 and older.
“During this time, your child must meet with their local therapist weekly to manage the emotional changes that happen during hormone therapy,” according to the clinic’s website.
Access to gender-affirming care has also been found to have a positive impact on the mental health of trans young people. A studypublished in January 2020 found that transgender people who used puberty blockers had lower rates of suicidal thoughts as adults when compared to trans people who couldn’t access them.
Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, deputy executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said Paul’s language was hurtful to Levine and all the trans people watching her hearing.
“There is a lot of misinformation out there about health care for transgender young people, in particular, but what’s really important to know is that all of the leading medical institutions have researched this and really recognize that it’s primary care,” Heng-Lehtinen said. “It’s different for every trans young person, just because any kind of medical care is different for any kind of individual patient, so it’s personalized, but this is legitimate health care.”
Heng-Lehtinen cited the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics as medical organizations that support the rights of transgender adolescents to receive appropriate care with the support of providers and parents.
LGBTQ rights advocates swiftly condemned Paul’s comments and praised Levine’s testimony.
“While Rand Paul is a doctor, his own history makes it clear that he has no respect for science or medicine,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Brian Sims, a Democrat and longtime Levine ally, told NBC News.
Sims, who is gay and recently announced his bid for lieutenant governor, called Levine “a world-class public-health expert.”
“While I remain excited about what Dr. Levine’s selection by President Biden means for her and the LGBTQ+ communities, I’m even more excited about what it means for the country.”
Later in Thursday’s hearings, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chair of the Senate health committee, called Paul’s remarks “ideological and harmful misrepresentations.”
But the American Principles Project, a conservative lobbying group that opposes gay marriage, transgender rights and abortion, defended Paul’s “immense courage” in challenging Levine.
“It is important that the American people are aware of just how extreme Joe Biden’s nominees are and what they are likely to support as members of his administration,” the group’s executive director, Terry Schilling, said in a statement. “Dr. Levine’s radical ideology ought to be a disqualifier for any position at HHS, never mind one as important as assistant secretary for health, and we urge the Senate to reject this confirmation when it comes up for a vote.”
Levine was most recently Pennsylvania’s secretary of health, and helped steer the commonwealth’s coronavirus response. She received high marks for remaining what The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called “the calm in the eye of the Covid-19 storm.” She was, however, criticized for her policy of returning nursing home residents who had been treated for Covid-19 in hospitals back to their facilities.
She is also no stranger to transphobic attacks from conservatives. For example, in a Jan. 19 article about her nomination, the far-right media outlet Breitbart misgendered and deadnamed Levine repeatedly. (Deadnaming refers to using a transgender person’s former name.)
Shortly after the nomination, Pennsylvania state Rep. Jeff Pyle posted a picture on Facebook mocking Levine’s appearance. After widespread criticism, Pyle, a Republican, deactivated his Facebook page and claimed that he had “no idea” the post “would be … received as poorly as it was,” The Associated Press reported.
Levine is the first trans person to be nominated for a Senate-confirmed position, and “whenever you’re the first trans person, a target gets put on your back,” Heng-Lehtinen said.
“My heart really goes out to her for having to endure those attacks, and I’m grateful that she is so skilled at navigating it as she is, but she shouldn’t have to do that,” he said. “For Senator Paul to kind of blurt out these myths and misconceptions about trans people and try to use that against her, I think really shows how much transphobia is still out there. So as historic as it is for a trans person to be able to be up in front of the Senate, and that’s an important first step, it also reveals just how far we have to go.”
Paul’s questions come at the end of a long week for LGBTQ advocates. The House debated and passed the Equality Act on Thursday, and multiple states, including South Carolina and Utah, held hearings on bills that would ban transgender athletes from competing in school sports.
Nat Mulkey, a transgender medical student at Boston University who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said they had the privilege of being able to step away from the news “when it feels personally attacking and harmful,” but that not every trans person does. Mulkey said Paul’s language would negatively affect trans young people.
“It’s not a hyperbole, or an overstatement to say that it is deadly,” Mulkey said of the senator’s language. They said allowing young trans people an “authentic and private experience with their doctor to discuss these issues and not have the invalidation at such a national level is so important to fostering their health and their lives in general.”
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions must vote on whether to recommend Levine’s nomination to the full Senate. It is not yet known when that vote will happen.
Biden administration withdraws White House support for trans school sports ban case
The Biden administration has withdrawn government support for a federal lawsuit seeking to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ high school sports.
The lawsuit in Connecticut was filed by several cis runners who argue they’ve been deprived of wins, state titles and athletic opportunities by being forced to compete against two trans sprinters.
The Trump administration inserted itself into the case last year when then-Attorney General William Barr signed a statement of interest, arguing the state’s policy runs against Title IX, the federal law that allows girls equal educational opportunities.
But Biden’s government has now retracted this statement and pulled all support from the anti-trans plaintiffs. “The government has reconsidered the matter,” said Connecticut US Attorney John Durham said on Tuesday (February 23).
Attorneys for the plaintiffs declined to comment.
The Justice Department’s withdrawal came ahead of a Friday hearing in the case over the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
The news was celebrated by Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who firmly told the AP: “Transgender girls are girls and every woman and girl deserves protection against discrimination. Period.”
Biden had previously signalled he would oversee a reversal of the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies, saying he would “flat out change the law”when he took office.
He made good on this promise in January when he repealed Trump’s trans military ban, and the latest move in Connecticut will be seen as a continuation of these progressive efforts.
Unfortunately this won’t be the end of the matter, as advocates fear a string of anti-trans bills in at least 20 states represents a “coordinated attack”against the American transgender community.
Supporters of such bills argue that transgender girls are naturally stronger, faster and bigger than their cis counterparts.
However, it has been widely noted that any athlete – male or female, transgender or cisgender – can have competitive advantages for multiple reasons besides hormones such as testosterone, including body size, access to training, and more.
‘Saturday Night Live’ is home to America’s greatest comedic minds. But when you put…
In actual fact there is no sound body of scientific evidence proving that trans athletes’ physiological characteristics provide them with an “unfair advantage” in sports.
“These bills are not addressing any real problem, and they’re not being requested by constituents,” said the Human Rights Campaign. “Rather, this effort is being driven by national far-right organisations attempting to sow fear and hate.”