Former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum came out as bisexual Monday in an interview with broadcaster Tamron Hall.
“You put it out there whether or not I identify as gay, and the answer is I don’t identify as gay, but I do identify as bisexual,” Gillum told Hall.
It’s the first time the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor in Florida has spoken publicly about his sexuality.
“Coming out as bi+ looks different for every person,” tweeted Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ civil rights group. “No matter the circumstances, all people deserve respect. @AndrewGillum sharing his story will no doubt help others who may be struggling with coming out on their own terms.”
Gillum’s supporters celebrated his decision on social media.
Gillum’s conversation with Hall on her new syndicated talk show marks his first sit-down interview since he was found inebriated in a Miami Beach hotel room in March with a man who had reportedly overdosed. A photo of Gillum unconscious at the scene was leaked. Gillum, who was not charged in the incident, spoke about the event that derailed his once-promising political career. He also opened up about his struggles with mental health and alcohol abuse after losing the 2018 governor’s race to Republican Ron DeSantis by less than 35,000 votes (less than half a percentage point).
“When that photo came out, I didn’t recognize the person on the floor,” Gillum told Hall. “That was not anything more than a person being at their most vulnerable state. Unconscious, having given no consent and someone decided to use a moment where I was literally laying in my own vomit.”
He said that he checked into a rehabilitation center to be treated for alcoholism and depression following the incident. He credits therapy and his wife for helping him get through the fallout.
“I’m still here by the grace of God,” he said. “So much of my recovery has been about trying to get over shame.”
Chick-fil-A said Monday that it no longer plans to open a restaurant in the San Antonio airport, even though the Texas city relented after more than a year of legal wrangling that began when some city leaders opposed the fast-food chain getting a spot, citing donations made by company owners to anti-LGBTQ causes.
“We are always evaluating potential new locations in the hopes of serving existing and new customers great food with remarkable service.” Chick-fil-A said in a statement. “While we are not pursuing a location in the San Antonio airport at this time, we are grateful for the opportunity to serve San Antonians in our 32 existing restaurants.”
In May last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to look into whether the city had broken federal law or transportation department regulations. He said the fast-food chain’s exclusion from the airport amounted to discrimination “due to the expression of the owner’s religious beliefs.” The complaint prompted an FAA investigation that ended July 24 with an informal resolution for San Antonio to allow Chick-fil-A to seek a lease in the city-owned airport.
Some Texas leaders broadly supported the company. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill in 2019 in defense of Chick-fil-A and religious freedom. And on Monday, Paxton, also a Republican, heralded the agreement between San Antonio and Chick-fil-A.
“This is a win for religious liberty in Texas and I strongly commend the FAA and the City of San Antonio for reaching this resolution,” Paxton said in a statement. “To exclude a respected vendor based on religious beliefs is the opposite of tolerance and is inconsistent with the Constitution, Texas law, and Texas values.”
The FAA did not immediately returns calls seeking comment.
“The city itself offered to resolve the FAA investigation informally following Chick-fil-A’s publicly stated change-of-position on its charitable giving policy,” a city spokesman told San Antonio TV station KSAT. “The city maintains that at no point did it discriminate against Chick-fil-A.”
Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A has faced opposition elsewhere over its donations worth millions of dollars to groups that oppose same-sex marriage.
A Navy veteran is suing the US government after doctors allegedly forgot to tell him he tested positive for HIV in the 1990s.
The South Carolina man says he was unaware he was living with HIV for more than two decades after government health workers failed to inform him of his test results.Read More
A federal lawsuit explains how he was tested in November 1995 at a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centre in Columbia, South Carolina as part of routine lab work.
The veteran, named only as John Doe in the filing, was under the care of the department after being involved in a 1976 shipwreck which left him with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
However, “in clear contravention of the standard of care, Mr Doe was not informed of the positive HIV test until decades later”, the lawsuit states.ADVERTISING
In fact, it wasn’t until 2018 that the veteran says he was made aware of his status.
In 2014, a nurse practitioner at the Columbia facility had noted the 1995 test results in a memo. Mr Doe still wasn’t informed, the suit states.
He saw another VA doctor in 2015 who asked if he knew who his infectious disease doctor was. When he replied that he didn’t have one, the doctor reportedly asked the veteran if he knew whether he was living with HIV. Even still, the suit states, Mr Doe wasn’t made aware of his positive status.
Finally, in September 2018, the veteran visited an emergency room not affiliated with the department. It was here that he says he was diagnosed with HIV and AIDS, and immediately began treatment.
According to the suit, the veteran had by this time developed a number of related illnesses including an infection of his brain tissue.
“[He] needlessly suffered for decades with co-existing conditions common in HIV infected persons, including lymphadenopathy, neurotoxoplasmosis, muscle aches and joint pain,” the lawsuit says.
“Had defendants acted within the standard of care, Mr Doe would not have suffered the losses he has suffered, and will continue to suffer in the future, and more likely than not, he would not have developed AIDS.”
The veteran’s lawyer Chad McGowan said he is responding to antiretroviral therapy, but has “had essentially 25 years of wear and tear for having no treatment”.
“He feels extremely guilty about the girlfriends he’s had over the last 25 years because he didn’t know.”
The Department of Veteran Affairs told the Associated Press it “does not typically comment on pending litigation”.
HIV is treated with antiretroviral drugs which prevent the virus from replicating in the body. It’s recommended that anybody diagnosed with HIV begins treatment immediately.
According to the Terrence Higgins Trust, a person who is diagnosed and starts treatment early can expect to live as long as person without HIV.
Once the treatment has lowered the levels of the virus in a person’s blood – their viral load – they are unable to pass on HIV and the virus is no longer able to damage their immune system. This is known as being undetectable (meaning tests can no longer detect HIV in a person’s blood). Undetectable equals untransmittable.
A newsreader has been ordered to pay $10,000 in compensation to a trans woman for liking Facebook comments that wrongly branded her “a male bully”.
The dispute began when Canberra radio broadcaster Beth Rep misgendered Bridget Clinch, Australia’s first transgender soldier, in a string of Facebook posts in March 2018. Clinch complained to the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Human Rights Commission, and mediation led to Rep writing an apology and paying Clinch AU$ 700.
However, the ACT said Rep then “added fuel to [the] conflict” by liking many of the offensive comments posted under the apology, including “Bridget Clinch is a male bully”, “I hate Bridget and I don’t even know who he is” and #istandwithbeth.
Rep argued that she didn’t write the comments and had ‘liked’ them to highlight their importance rather than show agreement, but the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal disagreed.
“The respondent could have deleted the comments made against the apology. They were rude, offensive and unacceptable,” said senior tribunal member Bryan Meagher, according to ABC. “Once she was aware of the comments and did not remove them, she is responsible for them.”
By leaving them on the post she had continued to incite hate, the ACT said, actively stirring the debate and encouraging more people to leave vilifying and victimising comments towards the trans woman.
“Even if the respondent was not minded to deactivate comments, there was no need to react to them,” Meagher said. “It was simply not necessary. To do so unnecessarily added fuel to a conflict that the apology was supposed to end.”
Rep was ordered to pay $10,000 to Clinch in compensation, to delete “all posts, statements, information, suggestions or implications” on the matter and to refrain from sharing similar posts in future.
It will likely be a tough blow to Rep, who described herself to the tribunal as a “radical feminist” who believes in resisting what she called “aggressive trans activism”.
An Australian court has given permission for a 16-year-old trans girl to receive gender-affirming hormone therapy, overruling her mother who opposes her transition.
The girl, given the name Imogen during proceedings, had “expressed a consistent, persistent and insistent view that she wishes to move to… gender affirming hormone treatment”, the judge said in his ruling at the Family Court.
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Justice Garry Watts said Imogen is legally competent to consent to the treatment, correctly diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and that hormone therapy is in her best interests.
Her father, who supports her transition, said the judge’s decision came as a relief.
“We got the result last night and we had a bit of a cry,” he said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Imogen’s father described the judge as “very fair” in hearing both sides, and invested in finding out what was in his daughter’s best interests.
Imogen, who has described herself as female since she was seven, will now be able to access the feminising hormone oestrogen.
In Australia, any form of medical transition for under-18s – puberty blockers, hormone treatment, or gender-confirming surgery – used to have to be approved by a court.
Since a 2013 ruling, it’s been possible for parents and children to access puberty-blocking drugs without a judges approval.
In 2017, another court ruled that trans youth and their parents could consent to hormone treatment without needing to go to court. But the role of the court in assessing disputes – like in Imogen’s case, where one parent supports her transition and one opposes it – had remained unclear.
This week’s Family Court decision “improves certainty” for families and transgender young people, said the Inner City Legal Centre in Sydney.
In his judgement, Justice Watts said that the court will only intervene in access to hormone treatment for trans youth if a parent or doctor disputes the child’s legal competency to consent, the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, or the proposed treatment.
In Imogen’s case, her mother disputed all three. But Watts said that Imogen was an “adolescent of intelligence and maturity”, legally competent to consent and that hormone treatment is in her best interests.
The Inner City Legal Centre said “the court’s judgment confirms that the existing law is that a medical practitioner seeing a young person under the age of 18 cannot initiate stage one, two or three treatment without establishing parental consent”. If there is a dispute, the court must intervene.
A New Jersey man was charged for detonating an explosive device at a lesbian-owned gym long considered by locals as a “safe haven” for LGBT+ people.
Dwayne A Vandergrift Jr, 35, was charged by federal authorities on September 4 for not only causing devastating damage to the Gloucester City gym, but for unlawful possession of two destructive devices and unlawful possession of a short-barrelled rifle, according to a press release from the US Attorney’s Office for New Jersey.
At around 4am on August 26, Vandergrift tacked the explosive device on the front door of GCity Crossfit Gym, according to surveillance footage.
Sprinting off, the resulting explosion shattered the glass and desolated the door.
An LGBT+ Pride flag decorating it on lithely hanging on the hinges, prompting the gym’s owners as well as the local community to suspect the incident was a hate crime.
LGBT+ gym allegedly bombed by man who searched how to produce makeshift explosives only days before the attack.
Owned by Jenai Gonzales and her wife Ann Panarello, the gym is a “known safe-haven in the area for LGBT+ youth” and many of its personal trainers and staffers are queer, athletic apparel Lifting Culture owner Steven Vitale wrote on his website.
As much as the gym’s owners suspect the attack was motivated by queerphobia, the Attorney’s Office does not specify a motive.
Federal and local law enforcement officers combed Vandergrift’s home on 28 August, finding inside bomb-making materials as well as several weapons, tactical vests, ammunition and around 85 marijuana plants.
Investigators tapped his home computer to find that he had in recent days searched for ways to jerry-rig explosives, including pipe and pressure cooker bombs. He was arrested later that day and is presently in custody.
Vandergrift faces a total prison term of at 20 years as well as a maximum fine of $250,000.
Though the attack left the local LGBT+ community shaken, Vitale wrote: “G-City Crossfit had, and will continue to have, a large gay Pride flag displayed prominently in their front door.”
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the national Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance results for 2019. It’s clear from the national data that many LGBTQ young people continue to suffer higher health and suicide risks than their peers. This follows the same trends present in an HRC analysis of the 2015 and 2017 data — LGBTQ students are more likely to experience victimization, violence and suicidality. In many areas of the data, transgender students are facing more disparities in 2019 than they were in 2017.
The data show that 43% of transgender youth have been bullied on school property. 29% of transgender youth, 21% of gay and lesbian youth and 22% of bisexual youth have attempted suicide.
Since the YRBS began including data on sexual orientation in 2015 and gender identity in 2017, we’ve seen consistently that LGBTQ youth face greater health disparities than their cisgender straight peers. This data continues to make clear a truth that we’ve long known — that LGBTQ students are not getting the support, affirmation and safety they need and deserve. We must ensure that adults are doing everything possible to support LGBTQ youth, especially those who are living at the intersections of multiple marginalized identities. Complete and robust data collection for our entire community is vital to putting systems and structures in place to support LGBTQ students. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation will continue to provide resources for LGBTQ students and educators across the country and will work with our network of youth-serving professionals to be sure they have the resources and tools they need.
Ellen Kahn, HRC Senior Director, Programs and Partnerships
In 2019, many states collected gender identity data. Data for 14 of these states across more than 107,000 youth are included in publicly available files on the CDC’s website. Below are initial key findings from HRC’s original analysis of these 2019 data:
29% of transgender youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property, compared to 7% of cisgender youth; transgender youth were more likely in 2019 to have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property than reported in 2017
16% of gay and lesbian youth and 11% of bisexual youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property, compared to 7% of straight youth
43% of transgender youth have been bullied on school property, compared to 18% of cisgender youth; transgender youth were more likely in 2019 to have been bullied on school property than reported in 2017
29% of gay or lesbian youth and 31% of bisexual youth have been bullied on school property, compared to 17% of straight youth
29% of transgender youth have attempted suicide, compared to 7% of cisgender youth
21% of gay and lesbian youth and 22% of bisexual youth have attempted suicide, compared to 7% of straight youth
These data underscore the need and urgency for youth-serving professionals to be well equipped to meet the needs of LGBTQ youth. The HRC Foundation has many resources for LGBTQ students and educators, including our Welcoming Schoolsprogram, resources for LGBTQ youth and resources specific to COVID-19. If you’d be interested in speaking with an HRC expert about this data, I’d be happy to help connect you. After all, youth-serving professionals who have attended the annual HRC Foundation’s Time to THRIVE conference are 64% more likely to say they are prepared to promote physical safety of LGBTQ youth than youth-serving professionals who haven’t attended Time to THRIVE.
An outspoken Christian preacher and activist is accusing his daughter’s school of violating her First Amendment rights by forcing her to change out of a shirt proclaiming that “homosexuality is a sin.” He is contemplating legal action. Brielle Penkoski, the daughter of Rev. Rich Penkoski, attends Livingston Academy, a public high school in Livingston, Tennessee. During the school day on Tuesday, Aug. 25, she was allegedly asked to change out of a black T-shirt shirt bearing white letters asserting that “homosexuality is a sin.”
The shirt references the New Testament passage of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. When she refused to change out of the shirt, she was sent home from school, her father told The Christian Post in a recent interview. Penkoski, who regularly speaks out in opposition to things like homosexuality and Drag Queen Story Hour events, runs an organization called Warriors for Christ, which describes itself as a “pre-denominational ministry” that has a global online presence.
Call it the convention that dared not speak our name. LGBTQ people earned not a single mention during Republicans’ pageant in red, through four nights of televised speeches last month.
This refusal to acknowledge the existence of more than 15 million LGBTQ people, 5 percent of the populace and residents of every ZIP code in America, shows a paralyzing hypocrisy. The Republican Party depends on anti-gay intolerance to rev up its base at election time but has to feign tolerance when the broader public is watching, knowing bigotry turns off a key slice of getable voters.
The GOP platform, held over from 2016, embraces the brutal practice of reparative therapy to coerce youth to renounce their emotions and identity. Most Republican candidates oppose and even seek to nullify existing protections in law that protect the safety of LGBTQ people, including in medical settings, marriage and the adoption process. Still, the party covets the support of donors who cringe at overt homophobia. Stuck in this dilemma of the party’s own making, silence can be as good as it gets.
The run-up to the GOP convention included two anti-LGBTQ slurs that were anything but quiet. In Kansas City, the baseball play-by-play announcer of the Cincinnati Reds, Thom W. Brennaman, was caught on a microphone talking about “a fag capital of the world.” During the game, and despite apologies, Brennaman, who happens to be a past donor to the Republican Party and candidates, was suspended and banished from the broadcast booth.
Several commercial sponsors and professional sports have at long last put anti-gay slurs on a par with other forms of bigotry as disqualifiers. Conservative politics have not caught up. Witness U.S. Senate candidate Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, who last month labeled his opponents as “liberal, socialist pansies,” a dated anti-gay epithet.
The silence observed at the GOP convention is familiar to those of us who contended for years with Republican parents and relatives. No mention was a concession or, as perhaps they let us know later, an indulgence of our presence at the dinner table or the reunion.
But times are changing. By disappearing any mention of gay people, the GOP convention reflects a state of denial that is itself disappearing.
More than 75 percent of Americans claim an openly LGBTQ friend, coworker or family member (and where exactly are the outliers hiding?). Polling in 2019 at the outset of the first-ever serious campaign for president by an “out” candidate, Pete Buttigieg, showed that 68 percent of Americans were comfortable or enthusiastic about a bid like his for the nation’s highest office.
That message of inclusion and pride was both shown and told at the Democratic convention the week before. Buttigieg, a military veteran, spoke plainly about coming out and getting married. Lori Lightfoot, the lesbian mayor of Chicago, Danica Roem, the transgender state delegate from Virginia and Robert Garcia, the gay mayor of Long Beach, all had significant moments on camera. So did Judy and Dennis Shepard, parents of gay hate crime victim Matthew Shepard, in Wyoming.
The late conservative commentator Marvin Liebman argued that homophobia was a glue that held the Republican Party together. A gay man who came out late in life, he gave many conservative operatives their first jobs and lived long enough to make them reckon with the inconvenient fact of his sexuality, repressed for decades but expressed without shame in the seven years before his death in 1997.
Coming out still takes courage, as many a teenager can testify. The policies of the Trump administration, whether to take away anti-bias protections in health care, to deny transgender students access to restrooms of the gender they identify with or to ban transgender people from the military, perpetuate stigma and make the path of openness no easier.
At Republicans’ convention in Cleveland in 2016, one month after the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, this president showed he could say “LGBT.” But in his quest for re-election, while flouting laws against using federal installations as props and staging areas during four nights on television, the large and diverse community of LGBTQ Americans never got named a single time. That refusal to value the lives and votes of one in 20 Americans—and those who love us unconditionally—is another testament to the cowardice of this presidency and the party that made it possible.
Hans Johnson has advised LGBT organizations and ballot measure campaigns in nearly every state. A longtime Washingtonian and former Blade columnist, he now lives in Los Angeles.
A man in Perth, Australia, has been jailed for five years after he failed to disclose that he was living with HIV to four sexual partners – all of whom later tested positive for the virus.
The 30-year-old, who has not been named to protect the identities of his victims, told the four men that he did not have HIV before having condomless sex with them, the West Australian reports.
A court heard that the accused had actually been diagnosed with HIV in 2012.
In 2013, he told a man that he did not have HIV before having condomless sex with him. His sexual partner was later diagnosed with the virus.
In 2014, he told another man through the dating app Squirt that he did not have HIV. A year later, the two met and had condomless sex. Just weeks later, his sexual partner became ill, and he tested positive for HIV four months later.
In 2012 the accused embarked on a long-term relationship, and told his boyfriend that he did not have HIV. They started having condomless sex in 2014, but his boyfriend’s suspicions were aroused in 2015 when he found antiretroviral medication.
The boyfriend went for a HIV test and discovered that he too had the virus. They separated a year later.
Following that incident, the accused met up with a man through Tinder and had condomless sex with him after claiming that he did not have HIV. That man also tested positive.
Man who lied about HIV status ‘extraordinarily selfish’.
The offender was arrested in January 2018 and charged with unlawfully engaging in an act that was likely to endanger his victims’ life, health or safety.
In his sentencing, district court Judge Troy Sweeney said the man had been “reckless” by failing to disclose his HIV status to the four men.
The man claimed that he had struggled with his diagnosis and was afraid of being ostracised by his community, but Sweeney accused him of burying his head “in the sand”.
He told the man that he had failed in his “duty” to his fellow human beings by not telling the men that he had HIV.
“Your behaviour was so extraordinarily selfish, so utterly self-absorbed,” the judge told him.
“Apart from the illegality of what you did, it was so grossly immoral to fail to take precautions and to fail to be honest with these four men with whom you were sexually involved.”
His sentence was backdated to July 2019 and he will be eligible for parole after serving three years.
Today, people who live with HIV can have an undetectable viral load when taking effective medication – meaning they cannot pass the virus on through condomless sex.
However, when the viral load is not controlled through antiretroviral medication, it can be passed on through sex.
