The “anti-gay” white couple who stood outside their mansion and pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters will “definitely” speak at the Republican Party convention this month.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who are both personal injury lawyers, made headlines around the world after they were filmed pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters from the steps of their palatial mansion in Portland Place, Missouri.
On Monday, August 17, the McCloskey’s lawyer told the New York Times that the couple would “definitely be speaking” at the Republican National Convention (RNC).
Albert Watkins said in an interview that Mark McCloskey, who threatened Black Lives Matter protesters with an AR-15, would speak at the Republican convention with his handgun-toting wife, Patricia, by his side.
However, Watkins added that Patricia was not expected to speak as “she is not built for this”.
The lawyer said that the couple would take part in a video presentation at the RNC, and added: “They, like many Americans, are horrified, if not mortified, at the prospect of their constitutional rights being compromised by the constitutional rights of others.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, they once sued their neighbourhood’s trustees to demand they enforce a document called the Trust Agreement, which prohibited unmarried people from living together.
Neighbours said it was because the McCloskeys “didn’t want gay couples living on the block”.
As the McCloskeys unsuccessfully appealed the case all the way to the state Supreme Court, trustees voted to impeach Patricia, accusing her of being anti-gay in 1992.
However, during a deposition in 2002 Mark refuted the claims, and said: “Certain people on Portland Place, for political reasons, wanted to make it a gay issue.”
The lead U.S. foreign aid agency has proposed a new policy on gender and women’s empowerment that eliminates any mention of transgender people or contraceptives, running counter to its own long-standing practices in deciding what programs to support.
The draft policy released by the U.S. Agency for International Development on Wednesday was billed as an update and replacement to the original 2012 policy, released under the Obama administration. Though written subtly, the agency’s gender policy is parsed closely by experts and grantees as a clue to the kind of initiatives the agency will prioritize, and it guides USAID’s grant-making and development work worldwide.
The updated policy has been in the works for months and has been the subject of much scrutiny and internal controversy. It states its goal as “a prosperous and peaceful world in which women, girls, men, and boys enjoy equal economic, social, cultural, civil, and political rights and are equally empowered to secure better lives for themselves, their families, their communities, and their countries.”
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USAID did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Perhaps the starkest difference is how the old and new policies refer to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people — indeed, whether those populations are mentioned at all. The 2012 policy mentions LGBT people twice — once in a footnote and once in a reference to partnering with LGBT advocates to advance gender equity. It also used the phrase “gender identity” eight times, in recognition of the transgender experience, in which a person’s assigned sex does not accord with their own gender identiity.
The new policy doesn’t use the acronym LGBT or its more inclusive variants or the words “lesbian,” “gay,” “bisexual,” “transgender” or “identity” at all.
“It sends a message when an overarching umbrella policy that is supposed to inform all of USAID’s practices and initiatives is missing those factors,” said Gayatri Patel, director of gender advocacy at CARE, a humanitarian organization, though she added it is difficult to know yet how the new policy will impact future USAID programming.
That omission sparked an internal email exchange among USAID officials this week, which was seen by ProPublica. A USAID official passed along a comment from a colleague, noting the exclusion of those words. In a response sent around an hour later, Timothy Meisburger, USAID’s director of the Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance, wrote that while staff should feel free to comment on the policy, they should “keep in mind that the policies of the current Administration may differ from those of previous Administrations, and that it is our duty as civil servants to faithfully execute the policy of the current Administration.”
Meisburger, a political appointee who joined the agency in 2017, did not respond to a text message and email requesting comment.
In a section on inclusivity, the 2012 policy is specific, saying it applies to people “regardless of age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographic area, migratory status, forced displacement or HIV/AIDS status.”
The new policy is far more vague, saying in its inclusivity section that the agency wants to ensure “all people, including those who face discrimination and thus may have limited access to a country’s benefits, legal protections, or social participation, are fully included and can actively participate in and benefit from development processes and activities.”
In a section on maternal health, the new draft policy mentions only “fertility awareness” and “healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies” as family planning methods, even though USAID has funded the provision of contraceptives in developing countries for decades. The 2012 policy discussed the global lack of access to contraceptives.
That change is in line with the Trump administration’s yearslong effort to advance its socially conservative views on family planning in the global arena.
“For the gender policy to be silent on that is another glaring omission,” Patel said.
Gender experts and advocates said the new policy falls far short of providing the up-to-date technical expertise that the agency needs to grapple with gender issues in development.
Officials at USAID warned that favoring Christian groups in Iraq could be unconstitutional and inflame religious tensions. When one colleague lost her job, they said she had been “Penced.”
“The field has progressed in the eight years since 2012,” said Susan Markham, USAID’s former senior coordinator for gender equality and women’s empowerment. “But this document does not do that. It is not based on technical advances or knowledge. It’s clearly a political document about the word gender.”
The proposed USAID policy also adopts the phrase “unalienable rights,” which did not appear in the 2012 version. That phrase mirrors the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, a panel launched by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2019.
When he unveiled the commission’s draft report in July, Pompeo derided the “proliferation of rights.” Critics say establishing such a hierarchy of rights endangers the lives and safety of vulnerable groups like LGBT people and women around the world. The commission’s draft report asserted that the two foremost unalienable rights, in the view of America’s founders, were the right to property and religious liberty, and describes same-sex marriage as a “divisive social and political” controversy.
The new policy is in tension with another set of USAID rules, the Automated Directives System, which lays out the agency’s organization and functions. A section of that rulebook dealing with gender, updated in 2017, addresses lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and emphasizes the importance of gender identity when conducting analysis.
Officials at USAID have repeatedly pushed back release of the revised gender policy. It was originally slated for release in late 2019, said three people familiar with the process, and was delayed in part by the coronavirus pandemic. The policy rewrite has also been shrouded in secrecy, with outside advocates and even gender experts within the agency getting little chance to offer input until the very final stages.
Members of the public have until early next week to submit comments on the draft.
One official involved in the policy update process was Bethany Kozma, the USAID deputy chief of staff. Before joining the Trump administration in 2017, Kozma advocated against Obama-era guidelines that schools allow transgender students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity. During her time in the administration, she has played a key role in advancing conservative causes globally, such as opposing references to sexual and reproductive health in United Nations documents.
In the last few months, USAID’s leadership has been seeded with several right-wing political appointees, including Mark Kevin Lloyd, a Tea Party activist with a history of making and sharing anti-Islamic comments, who was named the agency’s new religious freedom adviser; Kozma, who was elevated to a higher position as the agency’s deputy chief of staff; and Merritt Corrigan, the agency’s former deputy White House liaison, who had made repeated anti-LGBT statements on social media. Corrigan left USAID this month after she unleashed a tirade against the agency on Twitter, though she later claimed she did not send those tweets.
Two officials in Uganda are facing charges of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment in connection with the arrest of 20 men from an LGBT+ shelter.
In March harrowing footage emerged of a “bogus” coronavirus raid on the the Children of the Sun Foundation LGBT+ shelter in Kampala. The men were seen being whipped, chained, interrogated and publicly humiliated by a municipal mayor.
While some were released on health grounds, the majority spent almost 50 days in jail, during which time they were denied HIV medicine, legal counsel, and the ability to apply for bail.
The case attracted the attention of international human rights activists, and after sustained pressure the men were finally freed with all charges dropped and an order to be compensated US$1,341 each by the Ugandan government.
A criminal case is now underway thanks to the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum (HRAPF), which initiated private proceedings after local police refused to take it on.
In a press release, the group decried the “myriad of forms of violence, ranging from taunting, flogging, scalding, subjection to corporal punishment, as well as denial of access to food, sanitary facilities and medication”.
According to 76 Crimes the Chief Magistrates Court of Wakiso has now issued a summons to the town councilman who headed the raid and beatings, Hajj Abdul Kiyimba, as well as prison officer Philimon Woniala.
“We believe that because the [prisoners] were perceived as LGBT+, the accused chairman and prisons officer and others who may torture, believe they can get away with such acts with impunity,” said Melanie Nathan, executive director of the African Human Rights Coalition.
“It is time to set an example – that even though LGBT+ people are criminalised under the penal codes of Uganda, there is no exception or excuse to torture any individual under any circumstances.”
She reiterated the unwarranted nature of the arrests, stating that while the men weren’t technically arrested for being gay, “if they were not perceived as such, they would not have been targets for arrest at all.”
She continued: “All said and done if ever there is a case exposing the exploitation of criminalisation of gay people, [this] is that case.”
The civil case against Kiyimba, Woniala and the state will be heard on September 23.
A longtime broadcaster for the Cincinnati Reds was suspended Wednesday after using an anti-gay slur on a hot mic during a game against the Kansas City Royals.
“If I have hurt anyone out there I can’t tell you how much I say from the bottom of my heart I am so very, very sorry,” he said.
Brennaman also acknowledged the uncertain fate of his job.
“I don’t know if I’ll be putting on this headset again,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be for the Reds. I don’t know if it’s going to be for my bosses at Fox. I want to apologize for the people who sign my paycheck, for the Reds, for Fox Sports Ohio, for the people I work with, for anybody that I’ve offended here tonight.”
Shortly afterward, the Reds announced his suspension.
“The Cincinnati Reds organization is devastated by the horrific, homophobic remark made this evening by broadcaster Thom Brennaman,” the statement said. “He was pulled off the air, and effective immediately was suspended from doing Reds broadcasts.”
The Reds “will be addressing our broadcast team in coming days,” the statement said, adding that the organization has a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination.
“In no way does this incident represent our players, coaches, organization, or our fans,” the statement said. “We share our sincerest apologies to the LGBTQ+ community in Cincinnati, Kansas City, all across this country, and beyond.”
Brennaman’s father, Marty Brennaman, a former broadcaster and play-by-play announcer for the Reds, told the Cincinnati Enquirer on Wednesday that the language heard on the air doesn’t represent his son.
“As a dad, I hurt for him,” Marty Brennaman said. “What he said is not a reflection of who Thom Brennaman is. I know that’s not him. But I also feel terrible for the people the comment offended.”
Marty Brennaman said “an open mic is the biggest enemy you have.”
“The worst feeling in the world, if you’re not on the air, is that you say something and you hear it coming back into your headset,” he said.
Chris Seelbach, the first openly gay person elected to Cincinnati’s city council, condemned Brennaman’s comments Wednesday night on Twitter.
“The Brennaman family are Cincinnati sports icons with a powerful voice in our community, which makes it even more disgusting and totally unprofessional to hear such language used,” Seelbach wrote.
“It’s incredibly disappointing to hear Mr. Brennaman use such language of hate when our country is begging for unity,” the councilman said.
Fox Sports Ohio didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
MLB responded to a request for comment by referring NBC News to the Reds statement.
Footage which has alarmed LGBT+ activists in northern Belgium shows a group of boys barricading a street in broad daylight before pinning their victim down, hurling homophobic insults and violently punching them.
A week on since the video, of an attack in Leuven, went viral on Twitter, an investigation by Het Laatste Nieuws found that the perpetrators are tied to a gang called “Criminal Justice” who “hunt” queer people while proudly broadcasting their attacks onto social media.
Via Telegram, the group reportedly chat to around 600 other members who revel in seeing LGBT+ people being pummelled live on camera, chat logs seen by the outlet showed, with the 12 August clip being just one of a horrid array of incidents of violence.
Victim of anti-LGBT+ Belgium gang: ‘I had to get on my knees and apologise.’
Reporters found that the Telegram group is clogged with messages glorifying violently attacking LGBT+ people, while others actively search online for new victims. One message read: “Gays must be slaughtered.”
Around 400 photographs and video recordings are on the chat, the outlet said, including the Leuven attack, and allegedly include incidents in Blankenberge, Antwerp and Roeselare.
Attackers said they were willing to use knives and firearms, the chat logs showed, while testimonies from victims have described the Criminal Justice playbook as once of humiliation and psychological abuse.
One victim told HetLaatste Nieuws that in Groenplaats, Antwerp, he and a friend were targeted by the group. “A little further down the road from us, two men were playing loud music,” he said.
“When we left, they suddenly started to chase us. And a little later I was threatened via Instagram.
“I agreed to talk to them, which I shouldn’t have done. They threatened me badly.
“I had to get on my knees and apologise. What if I hadn’t? Then I would have been beaten badly.”
More chat records show that those involved in the Leuven attack – where the perpetrators shouted the Moroccon anti-gay slur “zemmel” at the victim – believed the victims involved were gay.
The mother and father of hate crime victim Matthew Shepard gave their full blessing to Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night (August 18).
Judy and Dennis Shepard joined several of Biden’s former rivals, including Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, in wholeheartedly pledging their support for Biden, announcing their state’s votes and helping to formally nominate the Democrat.
Speaking from their home in Wyoming, the couple praised Biden’s efforts in helping to extend federal protections to LGBT+ people like their late son.
“After our son’s death in Wyoming, Joe Biden helped pass the legislation to protect LGBTQ Americans from hate crimes,” Dennis Shepard said during the Democratic National Convention roll call.
“He understands more than most our grief over Matt’s death. But we see in Joe so much of what made Matt’s life special: his commitment to equality, his passion for social justice, and his boundless compassion for others.”
The votes announced by the Shepards — who were joined in the roll call by Indiana’s Pete Buttigieg, gay Maine state rep Craig Hickman and representatives for the other 53 states and territories — mean that Biden is now the official Democratic nominee, and Kamala Harris the vice presidential nominee.
Matthew Shephard murdered at 21.
Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old gay college student who was beaten, tortured and left to die in an anti-gay hate crime in 1998. His killers claimed that they had only intended to rob him but were moved to murder when Shepard made sexual advances towards them.
The case became one of the most prominent examples of the “gay panic” defence being used in an attempt to justify a homophobic hate crime, and it sparked a campaign to extend protections towards the LGBT+ community.
An Idaho judge has granted an injunction against enforcement of the state’s discriminatory law excluding trans athletes from the student sports teams corresponding to their true gender.
The anti-trans bill, HB500, was signed into law by Republican governor Brad Little in the midst of the pandemic in March, alongside its sister bill HB509 that bars trans people from changing the gender marker on their birth certificate.
In June, a judge ruled that HB509 is a violation of transgender people’s constitutional rights, in a lawsuit filed against Idaho by LGBT+ advocacy group Lambda Legal.
And on Monday (August 17), another lawsuit against the anti-trans laws saw victory as a judge granted an injunction against enforcement of HB500 pending a case against it being heard in court.
District court judge David Nye said that the state’s interest was not justifiable but rather “an invalid interest of excluding transgender women and girls from women’s sports entirely”.
Nye’s order recognises that both HB500 and HB509 were not motivated by legitimate policy goals but purely “motivated by a desire for transgender exclusion”, said the Human Rights Campaign, one of the organisations fighting Idaho’s laws in court.
“Today’s decision is a huge, positive step forward for transgender athletes in Idaho and around the country,” said Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign.
“Everyone should be able to play sports, and gender identity should not be a barrier to participation.
“We’re hopeful that the court will ultimately make the right decision to strike down HB500 in totality, so that athletes such as Lindsay Hecox and others can continue to excel at the sports they’ve poured themselves into, without having their identities used as a wedge against them.”
Idaho anti-trans laws would put athletes at risk of genital exams.
HB500 would place an outright ban on trans girls and women playing on female sports teams, and would place all female athletes at risk of invasive genital examinations to “prove” that they are not trans before being allowed to play.
Judge Nye’s decision comes as athletes in Idaho begin preparing for the sports season ahead – including Lindsay Hecox, a cross-country runner on Boise State University’s women’s track team and one of the plaintiffs suing Idaho over its anti-trans law.
Before the judge granted the injunction against HB500, Hecox would have been prohibited from participating in the upcoming athletic season.
This would have put Idaho in conflict with the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s own trans-inclusive policy.
As the judge noted, HB500 puts Idaho in “stark contrast to the policies of elite athletic bodies… which allow transgender women to participate on female sports teams once certain specific criteria are met”.
Idaho is the first and only state to categorically ban trans women from participating in women’s sports.
Three gay Democrats will jointly deliver the Democratic National Convention keynote address on Tuesday (August 18) — becoming the first LGBT+ people ever to do so.
The trio of rising stars are Pennsylvania representative Malcolm Kenyatta, Georgia rep. Sam Park, and Long Beach, California mayor Robert Garcia.
Usually the keynote speech is delivered by a single individual, but this year Kenyatta, Park, and Garcia will be among 17 Democratic trailblazers to share the address, offering “a diversity of different ideas and perspectives on how to move America forward”, a DNC spokesperson said.
By speaking in one of the most prestigious slots at the convention the three LGBT+ members will break new ground for queer representation in politics, but they already boast several historic firsts between them.
Park is the sole LGBT+ Asian-American lawmaker in the Georgia General Assembly. He regularly braves open homophobia as he works to pass progressive legislation in the Conservative stronghold state, including a bill to bring healthcare access to low-income households.
“It’s important for us to introduce and work on passing legislation we think would benefit the state to at least demonstrate to those we represent what exactly it is that we are fighting for,” he told NBC News.
“Being in the minority, it’s difficult to pass legislation, but that still doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”
Democratic National Convention 2020 keynote to also platform queer Latino and Black politicians.
Garcia, who is Latino, is the youngest mayor in Long Beach history as well as the first LGBT+ person ever to hold the position. Over the past few months he’s been leading the fight against coronavirus in his city, even as he lost his mother and stepfather to the deadly virus.
And Kenyatta is the first gay Black man to be seated in the Pennsylvania General Assembly.
“As somebody who inhabits all of these intersections, growing up in an incredibly poor neighbourhood to a working poor family, as one of only two openly LGBTQ members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the only one that’s a person of colour, I see all the different ways that frankly our systems are broken,” he told LGBTQ Nation earlier this year.
Kenyatta predicted the conference is going to be a “huge historic moment across the board”.
“Being a young person, a Black person, and a queer person — all those different intersections bring a certain perspective,” he told the Pennsylvania Capital Star.
“And I think it’s important because this president has tried very hard to divide folks up along race, class, gender and economic status. He is actively working to make life more difficult for the people he has sworn to serve. So all of the intersections that embody us are people Trump has gone after.”
An equal marriage campaigner in the Czech Republic has warned that the country could follow in the footsteps of Poland and Hungary in embracing anti-LGBT+ hatred.
In the Czech Republic, campaigners are also fearful of a backslide on the issue.
Although registered partnerships are legal in the Czech Republic the country does not permit same-sex marriage or joint adoption by same-sex couples. Politicians have largely rejected calls for progress on the issues, while polling indicates that less than half of the population supports change.
In an interview with Radio Prague International, equal marriage campaigner Adéla Horáková warned about the danger of politicians tapping into homophobic rhetoric as a “pure calculation” to benefit themselves, as seen in Poland.
Czech Republic ‘in danger of following Poland and Hungary’
The campaigner, from Jsme fér (We Are Fair), said: “We are not Poland and Hungary, but there’s a real danger we might be walking down that path.
“If you look at some of the statements, for example, from some of the politicians from the Civic Democrats, acclaiming and congratulating the politics that Kaczynski is doing.
“For example, [Alexandr Vondra, MEP for the conservative Civil Democrats] is hailing their style. He knows very well what they are doing. He knows the hatred they are spreading, he knows the muzzling of democracy, or the deconstruction of democracy, they are doing, and knowing this he still calls their style ‘good conservative politics’.
“He’s certainly not the only one who is either admiring the style of Orban and Kaczynski or silently supporting it and maybe hoping to follow.
“So there is a very real danger we might be walking in the same direction and we need to very quickly, and very clearly, say that this is not where we’re going.
Horáková continued: “We need to ask our politicians and hold them accountable for not making role models out of these countries.
“We can be civil, we can be neighbours, we certainly need to cooperate, but we need to say very clearly that this is not the direction in which we’re going.”
LGBT+ people face ‘uneducated indifference’, campaigner says.
The central European country sits on a striking legal dividing line on the issue of LGBT+ rights in Europe – bordered by Germany and Austria, which permit equal marriage, as well as Poland and Slovakia, which emphatically do not.
There is a stark divide in Europe on LGBT+ rights
No former Warsaw Pact countries to the east of the Czech Republic have adopted equal marriage, while nearly all of western Europe with the exception of Italy and Switzerland have.
Horáková said that the current situation in the Czech Republic, however, is mostly one of indifference towards LGBT+ people.
She said: “It is often not a real respect, which is what we would need and want, but maybe an uneducated indifference, which we sometimes call tolerance – I’m not so sure if that’s the right word.
“But I would say that maybe uneducated indifference is a good place to start, on the way to respect.”
GMB Union, one of the UK’s biggest trade unions, has demanded that the UK government finally reform the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) and tackle transphobia.
The union, which counts more than 600,000 members, urged minister for women and equalities Liz Truss to introduce much-needed reforms in a letter earlier this week (August 11).
“As a trade union we represent all workers, including many trans workers,” the trade union wrote in its letter to Truss.
“We know the levels of discrimination and abuse trans and non-binary people face in the workplace as well as wider society: many employers do not adequately understand trans issues, nor do a large number of service providers that trans people rely on.”
GMB Union comes out swinging for trans rights in powerful letter to equalities minister Liz Truss.
GMB Union drew Truss’s attention to research conducted in 2017, which showed that almost half of trans workers had been bullied or harassed at work, while a third reported having their gender identity revealed without their consent.
The trade union hit out the the overly complicated process by which trans people can get legal gender recognition in the UK, calling the barriers “significant”.
“Under the current process there are significant financial, emotional and medical barriers to legal recognition because those going through the process must provide evidence of a gender dysphoria diagnosis and demonstrate they have been living in their gender for two years.
Going back on the commitment to reform the GRA for the better will have a detrimental impact on the safety and lives of trans and non-binary people.
“Further to that, access to health care is inadequate with waiting lists for initial appointments, between one and two years and with only seven such clinics in the UK,” they added.
GMB Union went on to question why the UK government has not yet released the results of its extensive 2018 public consultation on the Gender Recognition Act.
They also noted the results of a recent YouGov poll, commissioned by PinkNews, which showed that a majority of women support self-declaration for trans people.
“Self-declaration is already the law in many countries such as in Ireland were a person over the age of 18 can change their gender by way of a ‘statutory declaration’,” the group said.
Rolling back trans rights would be ‘discriminatory’, trade union says.
GMB Union said they appreciated Truss’s recent pledge that trans rights will not be rolled back.
“We were concerned about press reports that the government was looking at restricting trans people’s access to single-sex facilities and services,” GMB Union said.
“This would be a seriously regressive and discriminatory step against expert advice. It would force trans women to use male facilities despite strong evidence that this puts them at risk of violence.
“Since the Equality Act, trans people have been able to access facilities that match their gender for over a decade.
“In line with your commitments with LGBT+ equality and medical best practice, we ask the government to reform the Gender Recognition Act based on self-declaration,” the union added.
“We urge you to put forward policies that would tackle discrimination against trans and non-binary people and not expose them to harm in particular by denying them access to safe spaces.
“Going back on the commitment to reform the GRA for the better will have a detrimental impact on the safety and lives of trans and non-binary people.”
