Trans people in Pakistan are being deprived of support during the pandemic lockdown, according to alarming reports from the country.
Regions across Pakistan have imposed a lockdown, with the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country standing at 5,300.
Pakistani outlet The News reported concerns about the lack of support for trans people – many of whom were living in extreme poverty even before the lockdown, and have been left to fend for themselves as NGOs who previously helped them have stopped working.
Trans people ‘ignored as if we are not humans’.
Shakila, a trans woman from Peshawar, told the newspaper: “We are the most unfortunate human beings on Earth because neither the federal nor the provincial government has bothered to consider our plight.
“The government and the philanthropists are giving relief package to others, but have ignored us as if we are not humans.”
She added: “It hurt us when the federal and provincial governments announced relief packages for industrialists and government servants, but ignored the most neglected section of the society.”
Another trans woman, Nazo, also from Peshawar, told the newspaper that with work dried up and no relief available, trans people are struggling to make ends meet.
She said: “[Before], we were worried about our security, but now we are worried about food, shelter and medicines.”
Transgender people protest in Pakistan in 2019, prior to the lockdown, demanding an end to discrimination (Photo: RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP via Getty Images)
Iftikhar Shalwani, a commissioner in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, previously said that help would be provided for trans people to ensure they would not be left hungry or out on the streets.
He told the Express Tribune: “We are committed to providing them with all possible help.”
Pakistan extended free healthcare to trans people.
Prime minister Imran Khan said that his government was “taking responsibility” for trans people, who are routinely denied treatment and can face harassment or ridicule from hospital staff and patients.
The 2017 national census recorded 10,418 trans people in Pakistan, out of a population 207 million, though charities estimate there are at least 500,000 trans people.
Seven per cent of trans people in Pakistan are HIV-positive, meaning that treatment is vital to their health.
In the year since the Trump administration banned transgender individuals from serving in the military, a number of advocacy groups have challenged the policy and many active service members say they’ve been forced to choose between continued service and their dignity and basic health care needs.
When the administration implemented the ban on April 12, 2019, it ended an Obama-era policy that allowed trans men and women to serve openly and to receive transition-related medical care while enlisted.
“The Trump-Pence administration has shamefully told thousands of qualified transgender military members that we aren’t good enough and our service doesn’t matter.”
ARMY STAFF SGT. PATRICIA KING
The current policy allows service members who received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria prior to April 2019 to continue to serve in their preferred gender. Any currently serving troops diagnosed after that date must serve according to their sex as assigned at birth and are prohibited from seeking transition-related care. Prospective recruits who have received a gender dysphoria diagnosis are barred from enlisting or enrolling in military academies.
The Defense Department stands by the year-old policy, and while it is widely viewed and referred to as a “ban,” the Pentagon insists it is “not a ban on transgender persons.”
“If you are a transgender individual, you are welcome to serve,” Jessica R. Maxwell, a Defense Department spokesperson, said in an email, adding that the policy “actually prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity for accession, retention or separation.”
What the policy does, Maxwell added, is end “presumptive accommodations” for people with gender dysphoria, which she referred to as a “serious health condition.”
Ending these “presumptive accommodations,” means transgender individuals would have to forgo gender-affirming health care and serve in the military according to their sex assigned at birth, not their preferred gender, a situation that is untenable for many, if not most, trans people.
Army Staff Sgt. Patricia King, second from right, together with other transgender military members, from left, Army Capt. Alivia Stehlik, Army Capt. Jennifer Peace and Navy Petty Officer Third Class Akira Wyatt, testify about their military service before a House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel on Feb. 27, 2019.Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
A number of LGBTQ advocacy groups are challenging the Pentagon’s policy and its justification for restricting the military service of transgender individuals, and five of these challenges are currently in court.
But as these cases slowly advance in the courts, prospective and active trans service members say they are forced to live with the consequences of the policy.
“The Trump-Pence administration has shamefully told thousands of qualified transgender military members that we aren’t good enough and our service doesn’t matter,” Patricia King, the U.S. Army’s first out transgender infantryman, said in a statement shared with NBC News. “Our nation’s brave service members and their families deserve better.”
History of the ban
On July 26, 2017, President Donald Trump tweeted that the U.S. military would no longer “accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity.”
“Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” he wrote.
At the time, studies estimated that 2,450 to 15,000 transgender people were serving in the U.S. military, and a 2015 survey of over 27,000 transgender individuals from the National Center for Transgender Equality found trans respondents reported twice the rate of military service as the general population.
In a presidential memo in August 2017, Trump directed the Defense Department to “return to the longstanding policy and practice on military service by transgender individuals that was in place prior to June 2016 until such time as a sufficient basis exists upon which to conclude that terminating that policy and practice would not have the negative effects discussed above.”
The memo allowed currently serving trans members to remain, but ordered the cessation of Defense Department or Homeland Security resources to “fund sex reassignment surgical procedures for military personnel, except to the extent necessary to protect the health of an individual who has already begun a course of treatment to reassign his or her sex.”
Trump’s proposal went against the military’s own recommendations regarding transgender service members, which were arrived at as part of a policy review that began in 2015 by the secretary of defense at the time, Ashton Carter. Under Carter, a Pentagon-commissioned study concluded that there were no reasons to exclude trans individuals from military service. The Obama administration thenlifted the ban on transgender people serving in the military in June 2016, permitting those already in the armed forces to be open about their gender identities and setting a date to allow the recruitment of openly transgender individuals.
Democrats came out against the ban, as did some prominent Republicans, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam war and former POW who said in 2017 that any service member who meets appropriate military standards should be permitted to serve.
“When less than 1 percent of Americans are volunteering to join the military, we should welcome all those who are willing and able to serve our country,” McCain said.
In addition to the five lawsuits that are still working their way through the courts, lawmakers have introduced legislation and attempted to amend the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act to rescind the ban over the past year.
Legal challenges
Several LGBTQ advocacy organizations have filed lawsuits challenging the ban, and four federal courts issued orders forbidding the government to enforce it.
“Taking up resources to discharge someone who has incredible things to contribute makes no sense.”
JENNIFER LEVI, GLBTQ LEGAL ADVOCATES AND DEFENDERS
Kara Ingelhart, an attorney at Lambda Legal working on one of the cases, Karnoski v. Trump, called the Supreme Court decision “disappointing” but said the high court has not yet heard the merits of the case. She pointed to U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman’s December 2019 ruling requiring the government to turn over some 35,000 documents cited in its decision to ban trans service members. The judge said the plaintiffs were entitled to all the documents and information used to justify the administration’s restrictions on trans service members.
“We are currently in the thick of discovery and moving forward as if we were going to trial,” Ingelhart said.
Jennifer Levi, director of the Transgender Rights Project at GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD, saidshe’s confident the ban will be found unjustifable.
“We anticipate trials where the court will evaluate and see quite clearly the absence of any rational justification or any legitimate justification of the ban,” she told NBC News. “There is no justification for banning a group of people from serving in the military who can meet all the generally applicable standards … It undermines the concerns for the stability and strength of the military.”
Last month, GLAD and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed anew suit on behalf of a Navy officer who has served two extended tours of duty over nine years and is now facing involuntary discharge because she is transgender. She came out as trans after the ban went into effect in April 2019, and is therefore not protected by the “grandfather clause” that permits those already enlisted to continue to serve. The current policy mandates the discharge of any service member who comes out as transgender and seeks to undergo a gender transition.
“It is just an example of just how irrational the ban is,” Levi said. “Taking up resources to discharge someone who has incredible things to contribute makes no sense.”
Serving under a ‘cloud of otherness’
The transgender military ban affects both active personnel and prospective recruits.
“It’s disheartening that the president of the United States has taken an opinion on my fitness to serve in the military without knowledge about what makes me, and so many other transgender people, just as good candidates to serve in the military,” said Ryan Karnoski, one of the plaintiffs on the suit brought by Lambda Legal.
At 25, Karnoski has an M.A. in social work and is pursuing a Ph.D. in social welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. He hopes to be given the opportunity to apply his skills to a health services career in the military.
“The ban has been frustrating, but I’m refusing to look at it like a setback,” he said.
According to Ingelhart, the ban continues to be a source of concern and frustration for clients like Karnoski.
One of the other plaintiffs in the case with Karnoski is a woman known as Jane Doe, who chose anonymity because she remains in active service. She did not come out as transgender prior to the implementation of the ban last April.
“Because she didn’t do that within the artificially imposed window, she is now prohibited from doing so without the loss of her career,” Ingelhart said. “She is not being able to make that choice for herself without risking her career and the livelihood of her family.”
While there are openly transgender people currently serving in the military, Peter Perkowski, legal director of the Modern Military Association of America, a nonprofit organization advocating for LGBTQ service members and veterans, said, “They are doing it under a cloud of otherness.”
“That’s not healthy for them,” Perkowski said. “Even though they were spared, at least for now, discharge or separation, that doesn’t mean they are not feeling the effects of this ban.”
Perkowsi said these service members are subject to mental health issues as a result, in addition to outright discrimination and even being pressured to leave the military.
Blake Dremann, an active duty lieutenant commander in the Navy and the treasurer of SPART*A, an LGBTQ military group, said those who are grandfathered in are having to deal with a cloud of suspicion as to whether they are fit to serve.
According to the latest Pentagon memo, transgender individuals may seek waivers to be able to enlist or serve in accordance with their gender identity. The waiver process has turned out to be complicated, Dremann said, as one must obtain separate waivers for gender dysphoria, another to serve as one’s preferred gender, and another to receive maintenance hormone therapy. “They take a long time,” Dremann said.
Further, many active service members he has spoken to worry about the consequences of a denial of the waiver.
“What is the course of action then? Does it go back to the member and they could ‘change their mind’ or does that immediately start discharge?” Dremann asked.
The current public health crisis highlights the costs of denying qualified people the ability to serve.
“How many trans people have left the military or chose not to join the military that would have gone into critical health care professions?” said Jennifer Peace, a transgender Army captain who has been serving for over 15 years. “With ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ we spent over $300 million from the early ‘90s to its repeal. What money are we spending now? It’s so unfortunate we are making the same mistakes.”
Thousands of military personnel are being called upon to help in the fight against the coronavirus.
“I think about the trans military service members, especially in the medical service corps, that are fighting on the front lines against the coronavirus not just here but overseas as well,” Karnoski said.
“It’s really frustrating that this issue is something they have to be focusing any amount of attention on,” he said of the trans military ban.
Next steps
The policy could be changed through the courts, but the slow nature of litigation and the current composition of the Supreme Court leads some advocates to believe redress is more likely through Congress or the ballot box.
“Our message right now is that the only way this changes is with a change in administration, but that doesn’t stop us from working with our members of Congress,” Dremann said.
Levi said, “The challenge to this military ban has just highlighted how wrong it is to exclude people because of who they are.”
When his officers raised concerns about catching the coronavirus, a South Florida police chief tried minimizing their worries by claiming a Broward County deputy’s COVID-19 death was caused by his “homosexual” lifestyle, the officers alleged.
Chief Dale Engle, the head of the Town of Davie’s police department, made the remarks during an angry tirade against the officers after a patrol briefing on April 7, according to a complaint filed to town administration by a state police union that represents the officers.
Engle was placed on administrative leave Saturday evening “pending further review of allegations,” the town administration said in a statement. The remarks allegedly came four days after BSO Deputy Shannon Bennet, a 12-year veteran at the sheriff’s office, died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Sharon Kleinbaum was installed in 1992 as rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in Manhattan, considered the largest LGBTQ synagogue in the nation. At the time, AIDS was killing thousands of gay New Yorkers each year.
“The CBST community knows what it takes to live through a plague,” Kleinbaum says in a message posted on the synagogue’s website after New York became an epicenter of COVID-19.
Yet the pandemic poses challenges that weren’t present during the AIDS crisis — notably that she’s fulfilling virtually all her duties without face-to-face contact. She mostly works from her apartment in far-northern Manhattan, where she lives with her wife and dogs, 10 miles from the synagogue.
“That I cannot be with people physically is very hard,” Kleinbaum said.
During the AIDS crisis, she recalled, there were no such worries.
“I could be with people. I could hold their hand in the hospital. I could be with their loved ones.”
The Associated Press followed 10 New York City residents on Monday, April 6, as they tried to survive another day in the city assailed by the new coronavirus. For more, read 24 Hours: The Fight for New York.
One key challenge these days is technology, given the congregation’s reliance on digital communications.
“I’m not fluent with tech on the best of days,” Kleinbaum says. “I need to be more fluent very quickly.”
Yet she’s grateful for the ability to lead services online.
“I was shocked about how spiritually deep it felt,” she says. “I was prepared for it to be an alienating experience, and it wasn’t.”
Late Monday morning, she convened an online meeting with 14 staff members. Three have endured bouts with COVID-19; one lost a parent to the virus, another has a spouse who is battling it.
By phone, Kleinbaum spoke to a woman in the congregation who was traveling to a cemetery to bury her mother — under state orders, only 10 people were allowed at the funeral.
“I let her know that she’s not alone, that people in the congregation are thinking about her,” Kleinbaum said.
She also spoke to a congregant whose spouse, in hospice care at their home, is close to dying.
“It’s made worse because I can’t visit them,” she said.
Despite such difficulties, Kleinbaum is grateful — just to be there.
“I feel like God wants me to be alive right now,” she says. “Maybe for this you were born.”
On March 30, the eve of Trans Day of Visibility, Idaho governor Brad Little signed two anti-trans bills into law.
One barred trans people from updating the gender on their birth certificate, the other barred trans girls and women from playing sport at school or college.
This is being done in the name of safety and fairness in sport for cisgender women and girls.
But the scientific evidence for excluding trans women and girls from sport on the basis this will maintain fairness for cisgender women and girls doesn’t exist, as Dr Vinny Chulani, director of the Phoenix Children’s Hospital Adolescent Medicine Program, explained in an interview yesterday with them.
“This is a decision that is really not based on science,” said Chulani, an esteemed practitioner in the field of LGBT+ care.
“There are so many characteristics that contribute to excellence in sports. And the same attributes don’t always carry over from one sport to the next. You need different skills for golfing than you need for archery, basketball, soccer, or gymnastics.
“Plus, there’s not really any sound body of evidence that speaks to the advantage that testosterone confers. When you take a look at some of the studies that have been done on transgender females in terms of their athletic ability, it overlaps with the range that you would find in cisgender women.
Chulani added that there were huge misunderstandings about sex, gender and bodies among legislators and those advocating for the exclusion of trans women from sport.
“Bills like Idaho’s fail to recognise the diversity within the transgender female population.
“They also fail to understand the biology of puberty and where we are presently in terms of treatment, specifically with puberty blockers.
“Remember that when you take a look at pre-pubertal bodies, assigned male and assigned female bodies look a lot alike; it’s not until puberty that they go their different ways under the influence of sex steroids…
“Nowadays, if you have a patient in early puberty who was assigned male at birth and has gender distress or gender questions, we can use puberty blockers to suppress male puberty.
“They would not develop the traits that would theoretically afford them the advantage. Yet this child, under Idaho law, would still be excluded.”
Chulani went on to talk about what he sees as a huge problem with the bill – how to implement a law that will “force women to prove their womanhood”.
With the burden of proof on those accused of not being women, those who cannot afford blood tests or genital exams to offer up medical evidence to schools and colleges that they are female will not be able to play sports.
“The other thing that’s crazy about this is that it’s being applied to kids in K-12,” Chulani said.
“That means the rules for participating in K-12 sports will be more stringent than those governing the Olympics.”
Finally, Chulani said, it’s important not to lose sight of what this bill really is: part of a larger anti-trans movement.
“This law in Idaho has to be viewed in the context of the march that we are seeing in legislative houses across the country,” he said. “Let’s not be ignorant, right? This is part of a larger anti-transgender agenda.”
The study’s authors found that transgender and nonbinary youth often lack access to critical support systems to educate them about safer sex practices. The research team conducted three-day focus groups with 30 young people ages 13 to 24 and found that respondents widely lacked “affirmative and culturally competent” resources to understand their sexual health needs.
These resources ranged from a lack of LGBTQ-inclusive sexual education courses to parents who did not affirm the respondent’s gender identity when discussing topics related to sexual and romantic intimacy.
“Youth really need adults to be there for them, to meet their needs, and to be open and respectful of them,” the lead author, Holly Fontenot, a professor at the Boston College School of Nursing, told NBC News. “If youth had adult caregivers, teachers or health care providers that could provide that affirmation, they feel supported and then they might have better overall health outcomes.”
Written by researchers from the Fenway Institute, the University of Chicago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Boston College, the study notes that trans and nonbinary youth are less likely than their peers to engage in safe sex practices. According to researchers, this group is more “likely than cisgender youth to report first sexual intercourse before age 13 years, intercourse with four or more partners, drinking alcohol or using drugs before intercourse, and not using a condom at last intercourse.”
Fontenot said the research found that one of the roots of these disparities is a widespread feeling among trans and nonbinary youth that they are “isolated and left out of the conversation” about sexual health in classrooms and at home. One participant in the study admitted that they “really don’t know what counts as sex,” because the definition they had been given from parents and educators “is very heteronormative” and “doesn’t apply to LGBT people.”
“When they do ask for help, youth might feel stigmatized, diminished or have negative experiences with the adults in their lives instead of ones that affirm who they are and tell them that they’re loved and supported,” Fontenot said.
Others said they had no one to turn to — even in their own peer group — for advice that’s inclusive of their gender identities. “I don’t really get any support, but I would like support in knowing that it’s OK to question who you want to have sex with, and it’s OK to explore your body,” one member of the focus group is quoted as saying.
The lack of a support network left many of the trans and nonbinary young people surveyed without the basic skills to discuss intimacy and consent with their sexual and romantic partners. The majority of respondents described open communication with potential partners as “challenging,” and many said they struggled “with self-advocacy, particularly when negotiating sexual preferences with cisgender partners.”
“Participants noted that sex requires more communication when experiencing gender dysphoria, and inability to negotiate safe behaviors might lead to feeling ‘abused or taken advantage of,’” the study noted.
Fontenot said these responses show that it’s “really important” for adults to model healthy relationships for trans and nonbinary youth.
“If you’re already feeling different and afraid, then you’re really not going be able to advocate for yourself in terms of safer sex behaviors,” she said. “It goes to that affirmation and support for youth. If they feel they have inherent self-worth and that they’re a member of society that’s loved and respected just like any other person, then they’ll carry that into whatever romantic relationship they may form in the future.”
Sean Cahill, a co-author of the study and the director of health policy research at the Fenway Institute, an LGBTQ-focused research center, said these lessons apply not only to parents and teachers but also health care providers who work with trans and nonbinary young people.
“For example, school nurses can support youth in school but also work with community partners to develop educational resource lists for youth and their parents and guardians,” he said in a statement.
Fontenot said the study suggests several ways in which all adults can be better advocates for trans and nonbinary youth, whether in a professional or personal capacity. For instance, young people who participated in the focus groups expressed a desire for more “coaching and guidance around healthy communication,” and Fontenot encouraged parents to turn to LGBTQ advocacy organizations or resources geared toward LGBTQ youth if they aren’t sure how to have those conversations.
However, Fontenot acknowledged that the availability of “competent sexual health resources that are really medically informed and accurate” remains scarce online, which can be a major barrier to access in rural areas. Only 27 states and Washington, D.C., mandate both sex education and HIV education, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual health research and policy nonprofit.
Five states — Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama — still have “no promo homo” laws on the books, which prohibit sex education and health teachers from discussing LGBTQ people in a positive light, if at all. (South Carolina, Arizona and Utah only recently had such laws repealed or struck down.)
“That’s an area that needs great improvement because I don’t think our country’s in a place where schools across the nation are going to be delivering inclusive sex education,” Fontenot said of LGBTQ-inclusive online sex ed resources. “We have to think about alternative venues to deliver comprehensive sex education that’s inclusive of multiple identities.”
This week Trump welcomed his new White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, a combative TV pundit with a long history of anti-LGBT+ comments.
McEnany has previously worked as Trump’s spokesperson for his re-election campaign and as a pro-Trump commentator on CNN during the 2016 presidential election.
She’s frequently appeared on television to defend him and his policies, revealing some particularly unsavoury views as she does so.
The LGBT+ advocacy group GLAAD has compiled a list of her most egregious comments, which include opposing a bill to ban conversion therapy and repeatedly framing the issue of transgender bathroom access as a “predatory” threat to women and girls.
McEnany has previously argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality is a threat to religious rights, and described late justice Antonin Scalia’s criticism of a pro-marriage equality ruling as “awesome“.
And she dismissed claims of LGBT+ discrimination prior the Supreme Court ruling as nothing more than “farcical blabber.”
“Throughout her career, Kayleigh McEnany has used her role as a commentator to attack LGBTQ people through the press,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement.
“Whether it be her opposition to marriage equality or her attacks on transgender people, McEnany has shown that she knows how to, and even enjoys using the media to spread dangerous, anti-LGBTQ messages to wide audiences.
“Unfortunately, in her new role as press secretary, she will have the power to continue doing so, but now with the White House name attached to hers.”
McEnany has already come under fire for her early statements on the coronavirus, which dangerously downplayed the risk.
“We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism come here,” she boldly stated on Trish Regan Primetime. “And isn’t that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama?”
Since McEnany made the comments on February 25, over 402,000 people in the US have been infected with the coronavirus and nearly 13,000 have died.
Despite her rocky start, she won’t have to try too hard to do better than her predecessor Stephanie Grisham, who didn’t conduct a single press briefing during her nine-month tenure.
As coronavirus continues its spread across the world, it takes with it a disgusting wave of anti-Asian racism. But the LGBT+ Asian community is fighting back.
Asian LGBT+ activists spoke to the Bay Area Reporter about the current situation and the action they’re taking as they attempt to take care of themselves, as well as their communities.
Amazin LeThi is a queer Vietnamese athlete and founder of LGBT+ advocacy organisation the Amazin LeThi Foundation. She was the first out athlete to compete for Vietnam at the South East Asian Games and is using her platform to speak out against coronavirus fuelled racism.
She said: “Obviously, there has always been racism toward the Asian community, but we’ve never seen anything that has been so quick and so globally widespread as this.
“Sometimes it just feels like they just consider the whole continent of Asia, China. They just see an Asian person and because the coronavirus came from Asia, we are all part of the problem.
The coronavirus may have come from China, but in terms of how it’s being spread across the world, it’s everyone. It’s a global virus.
Gerald Esguerra, head of the Filipino LGBT Europe Out&Proud advocacy committee in Amsterdam, said: “It’s alarming in a way and it’s kind of weird, right?
“We lost humanity. It doesn’t necessarily mean that if you’re Asian you are carrying the virus.”
Esguerra has noticed increased racism in Amsterdam, a city he says is usually very welcoming. Wanting to support his community, he has been working on setting up virtual programmes to help queer Filipinos in Europe and in the Philippines.
In terms of the perpetrators, he added: “The only way that we can win this is through proper education and information dissemination to people.”
Social distancing leaves LGBT+ Asian communities vulnerable.
Glenn Magpantay, executive director of the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance, is using online resources to tackle the effects of racism as social distancing continues, creating a “series of virtual community sessions”.
He said: “Social distancing and rise in anti-Asian violence have left the LGBTQ+ API [community] disproportionately vulnerable and our community is hurting.
“The online course includes skill building and support groups and is working hard to support our community leaders who are supporting their communities.”
Even Asian communities who are in self-isolation are still at risk of race-based hatred.
Got this reply on Grindr after all he had was my photo and my greeting. There’s so much I wanna say…
1. Not surprised. These apps have always been hostile spaces. Many Bumble, Tinder, Hornet, etc, users have no idea, because POC are never given space to talk about #racism.
Founding San Francisco Bay Times contributor, pioneering lesbian, and civil rights activist Phyllis Lyon has died at age 95, according to Bay Times columnist Kate Kendell, who was mentored by Lyon and served as the former executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Lyon died on the morning of Thursday, April, 9 of natural causes.
Lyon was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on November 10, 1924. After earning a degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, she worked as a reporter and journalist for several years. In 1950, she met Del Martin and the two became partners a few years later. In 1955, the couple moved to a Castro Street apartment and, with three other lesbian couples, helped to found the Daughters of Bilitis, which was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the U.S.
After moving to a home in Noe Valley, which remained their longtime permanent residence, they began publication of The Ladder in 1956. It was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the country, and continued until 1972.
In 1964, Lyon and Martin helped to found the Council on Religion and the Homosexual with Glide Memorial Methodist Church. This was the first group in the U.S. to use the word “homosexual” in its name. Three years later, they became the first lesbian couple to join the National Organization for Women, and subsequently helped to expand that influential organization’s policies to include lesbian rights.
The couple in 1972 were among the first members of the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club. That same year, they authored the groundbreaking book Lesbian Woman, which is considered to be a foundational text of lesbian feminism. This work was followed by Lesbian Love and Liberation, published in 1973.
In 1978, the pair chaired San Franciscans Against Proposition 6 (Briggs Initiative). With Cleve Jones and numerous other LGBTQ community leaders, they also became founding contributors of the San Francisco Bay Times. The following year, activists founded Lyon-Martin Health Services and named it after them. Now a program of HealthRight 360, Lyon-Martin Health Services continues to provide specialized, non-judgmental healthcare to women and to LGBTQ individuals.
Lyon and Martin were early supporters of now Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi when she was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1987.
The film Last Call at Maud’s, released in 1993, chronicled the lives of Lyon and Martin, along with other Bay Area-based lesbian community leaders and members. The 2003 documentary No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon as well as the book and film Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Birth of the Lesbian Rights Movement are among other works that highlight their achievements.
The couple in 1995 served as delegates to the White House Conference on Aging. In 2000, they made the brave decision to sign on as a plaintiff couple in In re Marriage Cases filed against the California law enacted by the passage of Proposition 22. On February 12, 2004, launching the “Winter of Love,” Martin and Lyon were issued a marriage license by the City and County of San Francisco after then mayor Gavin Newsom ordered that marriage licenses be given to same-sex couples who requested them.
The marriage license of the devoted couple, along with those of several thousand other same-sex couples, was voided on August 12 of the same year by the California Supreme Court. It took four more years before Lyon and Martin could be legally wed yet again. The mayor presided over the memorable ceremony that took place on June 16, 2008, making them the first same-sex couple to be married in San Francisco after the California Supreme Court decision concerning In re Marriage Cases legalized same-sex marriage in the state. Martin passed with Lyon by her side just four years later.
It was not until June 26, 2015, that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage, thereby legalizing it in all fifty states.
After Martin’s passing, Lyon remained very active in the San Francisco LGBTQ community by lending her support to numerous organizations, promoting civil rights causes, and attending numerous events, including those produced by “Betty’s List” and the San Francisco Bay Times. She was thrilled when the play The Daughters, based on her and others’ lesbian activism, held its world premiere at the San Francisco Playhouse on October 9, 2019.
Lyon celebrated her 95th birthday on Sunday, November 10, 2019, with Kendell and Rocket Science Associates CEO Joyce Newstat. It was a joyous day for all that was commemorated with a special issue of the San Francisco Bay Times. As Kendell shared, “We drove, ate, laughed, talked. And felt grateful every second.”
On the occasion of Lyon’s final birthday, numerous friends paid tribute to her for the San Francisco Bay Times. Those tributes may be found at: https://bit.ly/3bTzXDV
Kendell shares that the family wishes to thank the devoted caregivers and community members whose devotion and commitment gave Lyon joy and security in her final years.
Survivors are her beloved sister Patricia Lyon, her devoted daughter Kendra Mon, son-in-law Eugene Lane (dubbed by Lyon an honorary lesbian), granddaughter Lorri Mon, grandson Kevin Mon, his wife Ellen, and Lyon’s great granddaughter Kexin Mon.
The family requests that gifts in honor of Phyllis be made to the Lyon-Martin Health Clinic: https://bit.ly/3b8C1bv
It’s a surprise to no one when the New York Times writes, “Tensions persist between Trump and medical advisors over coronavirus.” We already know our president is a moron and gets a failing grade for how he is handling the coronavirus crisis.
Trump talks about filling sports stadiums while thousands are dying from a virus we know is passed by close contact. We also know despite Trump’s total incompetence the United States will survive this pandemic. We will mourn the loss of lives caused by Trump’s failure to effectively address COVID-19. Despite his efforts to blame others — whether the Chinese for lying or the Democrats for impeaching him — the reality is he has failed us.
The LGBTQ community has seen a president put his head in the sand during a crisis before. The first cases of AIDS in the United States were seen in 1981 and the term AIDS was first used in 1982. President Ronald Reagan would not use it until 1985 and it was 1987 until he declared it “public enemy number one” in a speech to the College of Physicians.
Today we look at various timelines on what and when Trump did anything about COVID-19 and they all point to his refusal to act soon enough. PolitiFact details Trump’s response from the time we heard about the cases in China. Other timelines detail more of his activities in between responses when he spent his time golfing or holding mass political rallies where he insisted it was a Democratic hoax. No matter what timeline you look at, it’s clear Trump refused to deal with the pandemic. Still today he makes light of it while people are dying by the thousands claiming it will be like a ‘miracle’ when it suddenly ends. His responses can be explained by one thing: He is seeing his second term in office slip away from him.
We must be thankful some Democratic governors like Jay Inslee in Washington, Gavin Newsom in California, Andrew Cuomo in New York and Republican Larry Hogan in Maryland, among others, were willing to act on their own to try to save as many people in their states as possible. They called out the president but that is all they could do. Trump is still lying about the national stockpile of equipment and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the quintessential know-nothing, is making statements like, “It’s our stockpile” in response to governors’ requests for help with materials.
Some of the federal government’s failure to lead goes back to the days after Trump was elected in the surprising results of 2016. He never expected to be president and every day since has proven what an error the country made when it elected a failed businessman turned reality TV star. Many key positions in government remain unfilled or are filled with acting officials hampering response to the coronavirus. There was never a full transition of government after Trump fired all the Obama appointees as soon as he took office.
I agree with former President Bill Clinton who recently said, “I have always believed that our country’s strength is our people. We see that every day, in the heroic work of health care workers, first responders, and everyday people reaching out to lend each other a hand. The rest of us must take care of all the workers who are taking care of us and keeping our country going, and our families and loved ones, however we can.”
Americans as a whole are showing we can and will do that. Let’s not focus on the few who selfishly pretend this epidemic is not real or the rules for co-existence and shared responsibility for each other are not something they have to consider. Those few governors who still refuse to issue ‘stay at home’ orders or the outrageous pastors who are still asking their congregants to come to their churches. Thankfully they are in the minority and most of the rest of us will manage to survive them.
