Faced with tremendous pressure during the coronavirus crisis to lift its policy barring gay men from donating blood, the Food & Drug Administration announced on Thursday it has eased the restrictions.
While the previous policy, established in 2015, barred men who have had sex with men in the 12 months from making a donation, the new policy would shorten the deferral period, requiring abstinence for only three months.
The FDA indicated it would make a change in a notice to stakeholders on Thursday, indicating the decision was based on “evaluation of the totality of the scientific evidence available.”
“To help address this critical need and increase the number of donations, the FDA is announcing today that based on recently completed studies and epidemiologic data, we have concluded that the current policies regarding the eligibility of certain donors can be modified without compromising the safety of the blood supply,” the notice says.
In addition changing the recommended deferral period for men who have had sex with men from 12 months to 3 months, the FDA informs stakeholders of other changes.
Among them are easing ban on donations for women who have had sex with men who, in turn, previously have had sex with a man. For these women the deferral period has similarly been changed from 12 months to 3 months.
Further, the new policy eases recommended 12 month deferral for individuals with recent tattoos and piercings to three months, and eases from an indefinite ban to a three month ban for donations from people who have a past history of sex in exchange for money, or injection drug use.
Other changes are implemented easing policy related to blood donors who have travelled to malaria-endemic areas, such as countries in Africa, or to European countries where the donors faces potential risk of transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
The FDA issued the notice to stakeholders at the same time it published on its website a 17-page official memo outlining the changes, declaring they were made to address the shortage in the blood supply amid the COVID-19 crisis and therefore would not wait for a public comment period.
“As a result of this public health emergency, there is a significant shortage in the supply of blood in the United States, which early implementation of the recommendations in this guidance may help to address (even though the recommendations in this guidance are broadly applicable beyond the COVID-19 public health emergency),” the memo says.
The three month deferral period is consistent with recommendations from the American Red Cross, which before the coronavirus had called on the FDA to shorten the deferral period.
Professor Gita Ramjee, a highly acclaimed scientist who dedicated her life to fighting and preventing HIV, has sadly died of coronavirus.
Ramjee, 64, was a South African researcher internationally renowned for her work expanding disadvantaged women’s access to HIV treatment.
On March 31 she tragically passed away from coronavirus complications, having just returned from a symposium in the UK. She was working on trials for a gel that could potentially reduce HIV infection.
“The passing of professor Ramjee comes as a huge blow to the entirety of the healthcare sector and the global fight against HIV/AIDS,” the deputy president of South Africa, David Mabuza, said in a statement.
“In her, we have indeed lost a champion in the fight against the HIV epidemic, ironically at the hands of this global pandemic.
“In her honour, we should heed the call to flatten the curve by strengthening our responses to this global pandemic as well as continue the fight to achieve zero new HIV infections.”
Deeply saddened by the loss of an #HIVprevention pioneer, Gita Ramjee. She was a tireless champion of science, research, women’s reproductive health and rights — and may we all build on her legacy and make her calling, her dream a reality
Ramjee held an honorary professorship at the the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, as well as the University of Washington and the University of Cape Town.
In 2018 she was awarded the Outstanding Female Scientist award from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership in recognition of her work on HIV prevention, notably the field of microbicide research.
The international scientific community are now paying tribute, with the head of UNAids Winnie Byanyima describing her death as “a huge loss” at a time when the world needed her most.
“Gita was a vibrant person, a real fighter,” her colleague, professor Gavin Churchyard, told the BBC. “If she sets her mind on something, nobody better stand in her way.
“That will be my lasting memory of her – how she fought with everything to advance access to healthcare for women in disadvantaged communities.”
Many other scientists and researchers took to Twitter to share their grief at her passing.
A gay rights leader in Uganda says 20 members of the local LGBT community have been detained after police raided their shelter and accused them of violating coronavirus-related social distancing measures.
“It is evident that they were arrested because of their homosexuality,” Frank Mugisha [photo] said Wednesday, expressing concern for their safety as “some of them are on AIDS medication.” Gay sex is criminalized in Uganda.
Mugisha said the 20 were among 23 people accused of violating the president’s orders during a police raid on Sunday. Three were freed because of ill health, he said. Mugisha said the house in Kyengera, a town near Kampala, is a known shelter for LGBT people seeking community as well as treatment for AIDS.
Multiple people who had been at the party later posted on social media confirming that they, or someone they knew who had also attended, had been diagnosed.
Over the weekend, a second person has died after contracting the virus at the festival.
Ron Rich, 65, who lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was a musician and formerly a high school band director.
He was also a prominent figure in the local LGBT+ community, volunteering for Outshine Film Festival, Lambda Legal and the National LGBTQ Task Force.
The National LGBTQ Task Force wrote on Facebook on Tuesday, March 31, that it was “mourning the passing of a loyal volunteer, Ron Rich, who succumbed to COVID-19 over the weekend”.
It continued: “Ron was a familiar face to the guests who attended the Task Force Gala, Winter Party Festival and our Fort Lauderdale house parties over the past five years as his big smile and warmth had him mostly serving on our hospitality team… He will be missed.
“We extend our condolences to his family and friends.”
His friends took to social media to express their grief after his death.
Onre Soto wrote: “I’m heartbroken by the news I got last night… My best friend Ron Rich passing Saturday night.
He was truly honest [and] sincere… We [are] all grieving for his family. I will miss you forever, until we meet again.”
Another friend, Theo Vernon, wrote: “I am devastated this morning. My good friend Ron Rich has passed away due to the COVID-19 virus.
“I student taught at Grissom under him and worked with him my first year teaching at Grissom high school in 1985. He was an amazing mentor, musician and we became great friends.”
Israel Carreras passed away last week after attend the Winter Party.
Israel Carreras, 40, who had no prior health conditions, was the first person to pass away after contracting coronavirus at the Winter Party.
Carreras’ partner, Franco Conquista, told WSVN: “He started to feel sick after the event. We went together.
“I went to his place, taking care of him for two days, and I also had it. He couldn’t breathe, so he wanted to go to the hospital, and then, he was at the hospital for four or five days.
“Then, they put him to sleep because he was really agitated, and then, he never woke up again.”
Conquista added that he was currently at home in isolation, grieving his partner, and called for others to stay at home.
He said: “This poor boy was only 40 years old. It can kill anybody, so just stay home and think of other people.”
Amid the coronavirus crisis, state health officials responsible for gathering data on COVID-19 are declining to collect and report whether or not patients identify as LGBTQ — a practice that angers LGBTQ advocates who say those answers could yield important information to combat the disease.
The lack of data, advocates say, will essentially blind the public to the coronavirus’ impact on LGBTQ people — a population that may be particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 — as the epidemic continues to rise and health officials warn the death toll in the United States will hit its peak in the coming weeks.
An estimated 100,000 to 240,000 Americans may die as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, U.S. government health advisers said this week.
The deputy director of the National LGBT Cancer Network, who goes by the name Scout and has a Ph.D. in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University, said the lack of data on the coronavirus’ impact on LGBTQ people reflects the absence of LGBTQ data collection in medical surveys writ large.
“The common phenomenon of not collecting LGBTQ health surveillance data hurts us in so many ways. Now it will hurt us by masking the impact of COVID-19 on our communities,” Scout said. “Considering an estimated 3.3 million of us use tobacco products, and therefore have a higher risk of negative outcomes if we get coronavirus, not collecting LGBTQ+ status in health surveillance data is horrible. We will mourn our losses but never be able to measure them.”
The Blade reached out to several states where the confirmed cases of coronavirus infection are at their highest and as of this week surpassed 5,000 cases, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Additionally, the Blade sought LGBTQ demographic information on the COVID-19 impact from jurisdictions local to the D.C. region and states that have had greater incident rates of COVID-19 cases.
The only jurisdiction to report having collected data on whether COVID-19 patients identify as LGBTQ was D.C,, where the department of health affirmed Tuesday to the Blade that process was underway.
“DC Health is collecting information about LGBTQ+ status of coronavirus patients,” said Alison Reeves, a D.C. Department of Health spokesperson. “However, that data is incomplete and will not be made public at this time.”
Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said any reporting on COVID-19’s impact on LGBTQ people would likely be an undercount “due to the fast spread of the virus and the extraordinary shortcomings in the United States’ response to the pandemic.”
“Unfortunately, many of our pre-existing public health surveillance systems did not yet incorporate basic demographic data about LGBTQ people, and many health care institutions haven’t yet implemented this data collection in their patient record systems either,” Tobin said. “That’s inexcusable, but it’s also not likely we’ll be able to correct those deficiencies in the middle of a fast-moving global pandemic.”
Jurisdictions other than D.C. either didn’t respond to the Blade’s request to comment, or affirmed they didn’t collect data on whether coronavirus patients identify as LGBTQ.
In Michigan, where Detroit has become a new epicenter for the coronavirus epidemic, a spokesperson for the state department of health confirmed LGBTQ status of patients isn’t asked by health officials.
“That’s not something captured in the Michigan Disease Surveillance System where cases are reported, so we wouldn’t be able to determine that information,” said Lynn Sutfin, a spokesperson for Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services didn’t respond to a follow-up email inquiry on why LGBTQ status isn’t collected in the state medical data system.
In New York, a spokesperson said the NY Department of Health is “not tracking COVID-19 cases by sexuality,” then when asked why that was the case referred the Blade to recent remarks from Gov. Andrew Cuomo on COVID-19.
“This virus does not discriminate,” Cuomo said. “It doesn’t discriminate by age. It doesn’t discriminate by party. It affects all Americans, and what you’re seeing in New York is going to spread across this country.”
Privacy issues around asking COVID-19 patients whether they identify as LGBTQ were cited by one state contacted by the Blade about LGBTQ demographics on the epidemic.
In Washington State — where the coronavirus spread early on the during the epidemic, but has since stabilized compared to other states — the state department of health affirmed it doesn’t collect data on whether coronavirus patients identify as LGBTQ.
Danielle Koenig, a Washington State Department of Health spokesperson, said, “We don’t have sexual orientation information on patients.” When asked why that was the case, Koenig replied, “We don’t publish more specific demographic data to protect patient privacy.”
Tobin sought to assuage concerns about privacy issues on collecting LGBTQ information in health surveys by saying state officials could keep it confidential and that information could be used to augment health care.
“Providers and our leaders need to make sure that everyone who needs help is getting it, and discrimination won’t be tolerated,” Tobin said. “Though it may take much longer than it should, we need to ensure going forward that LGBTQ-inclusive demographic data is included in all our health surveillance and electronic health record systems, that this information is voluntary and confidential, and that it’s used to improve access and quality of care.”
The departments of health for New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia didn’t respond to the Blade’s request to comment, and the California Department of Health referred the Blade to a page on its website showing the information state officials record for COVID-19. (It doesn’t include whether patients identify as LGBTQ.)
Emphasizing changing forms to include LGBTQ questions amid a pandemic may not be realistic, Tobin cited several examples for why they would have been useful, including finding out whether LGBTQ people have particular health vulnerabilities and the right way to tailor public health messages.
“The health care system runs on data,” Tobin said. “Collecting information in patient records helps promote honest communication between patients and staff to make sure their health needs and concerns are addressed. It helps us determine whether certain populations are seeking or receiving specific services at different rates, or having different outcomes.”
The lack of data collection on whether coronavirus patients identify as LGBTQ appears to be the result of a general practice as well as the official CDC form specific for COVID-19 data collection, which doesn’t include questions seeking to identify whether a patient is LGBTQ.
The CDC form seeks to obtain information on patients who tested positive for COVID-19 based on age, sex and ethnicity, but no where does it ask their sexual orientation.
For the query on sex, the form allows states to record the patient’s answer as “male,” “female,” “none,” or “other.” Although those options provide some flexibility to patients who are non-binary, it doesn’t explicitly seek to ascertain whether a COVID-19 patient is transgender.
The Centers for Disease Control didn’t respond to multiple requests from the Blade on whether it has information on COVID-19’s impact on LGBTQ people, nor why its data collection survey doesn’t ask patients if they identify as LGBTQ.
Tobin said she’s optimistic about seeing more LGBTQ demographic data in health surveys in the future, but recognized the current reality.
“For now, we know that the virus doesn’t care about gender, but that having physical vulnerabilities, a high-risk job, no paid leave, smoking, lacking safe housing, or living in an institutional setting (such as a shelter, jail, or nursing home) all put you at greater risk,” Tobin said. “Trans people, on average, are more likely to experience each one of these risk factors.”
States and the CDC aren’t collecting data on whether COVID-19 patients identify as LGBTQ despite a recent joint letter declaring LGBTQ people would be vulnerable to the epidemic.
More than 150 advocates warned LGBTQ people would be disproportionately affected by the coronavirus because they smoke and suffer from cancer at higher rates; have high reported rates of discrimination in the health care system; and are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS.
(However, Dr. Susan Henn, chief medical officer for the D.C.-based Whitman-Walker Health, has told the Blade for people with well-managed HIV, the increased risk would only be “very slight.”)
The letter takes note ensuring “surveillance efforts capture sexual orientation and gender identity as part of routine demographics” would be a crucial goal to achieve in serving LGBTQ people during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Dr. Scott Nass, president of GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ Equality and a Palm Springs, Calif.-based family physician, said LGBTQ advocates will continue to beat the drum for LGBTQ inclusion in health surveys despite states declining to do that during the coronavirus crisis.
“GLMA has long advocated for data collection inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity as central to ensuring the health and well-being of LGBTQ people,” Nass said. “Given the potential risk factors for LGBTQ individuals, inclusive data collection at federal and state levels may reveal important and life-saving data about the coronavirus and LGBTQ people and that’s exactly why GLMA, the National LGBTQ Cancer Network and more than 150 organizations called for data inclusion in our open letter on COVID-19 and LGBTQ communities.”
The Department of Health & Human Services added a question on sexual orientation to the National Health Interview Survey, the principal source of information on the health of the U.S. population. Although the administration was sluggish to add questions on transgender status, the Obama administration eventually allowed states to ask both sexual orientation and gender identity questions on the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, or BRFSS, if they so choose.
Scout said allowing states to include the LGBTQ questions on health surveys “has actually proven unexpectedly strong as political winds shifted” and now around 35 states made the inquiry on BRFSS, but “that’s still not full U.S. data.”
“Collecting SOGI data on electronic health records is rare as hens teeth,” Scout said. “This leaves us with all of our health issues masked for anything that is reliant on real time or end stage disease reporting (save HIV which has a separate system). Thus, in a time like today, we will only be able to measure which LGBTQ people had COVID years after the fact through self-report of people who have survived and happen to live in a state that collects SOGI on their BRFSS, and then only if BRFSS coordinators decide to add a COVID question.”
An asylum seeker from Ghana who said he was attacked by a mob led by his father because of his sexuality has shown a valid fear of persecution, a U.S. appeals case said in a case argued by two law students.
The petitioner, a gay man in his late 20s from Accra, said he had a secret relationship with a friend from his Muslim school days when his father found out in 2016 and flew into a rage. He said he was beaten, doused with kerosene and threatened with being beheaded before escaping, naked and bleeding.
He later made his way to the U.S., where immigration judges rejected his case, in part because it involved only a single attack. The initial judge suggested he could avoid further prosecution back home if he kept his sexuality a secret, according to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.
Same-sex male relationships are misdemeanors in Ghana and can bring up to three years in prison, the ruling said. The Associated Press is not naming the petitioner at the request of his lawyer, Adrian Roe of Pittsburgh, who fears for his client’s safety if he is deported and hopes to have his name redacted from court records.
“(He) was threatened with death by fire or decapitation while being assaulted, doused with fuel and exposed to a cutlass. All that was left for the mob to do was to cut off his head or set him on fire,” U.S. Circuit Judge L. Felipe Restrepo wrote in directing the immigration court to reconsider the claim.
The case was argued last year by then-students Paige Beddow and Scott A. Cain of the Immigration Law Clinic at West Virginia University College of Law. Justice Department lawyers in Washington, who opposed the asylum bid, did not immediately return a message left Tuesday with the press office.
“The government was arguing that one (attack) does not create a significant incident, or does not constitute past persecution. And the court said that one incident can be enough,” Roe said.
The number of anti-LGBTQ hate groups soared 43 percent last year, rising from 49 groups in 2018 to 70 in 2019, according to a recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Groups that vilify the LGBTQ community, in fact, represented the fastest-growing sector among hate groups in 2019,” the report states. The SPLC found the surge in anti-LGBTQ groups occurred amid an overall decrease in hate groups last year, which dropped to 940 from an all-time high of 1,020 in 2018.
The report said the surge was “possibly fueled by continued anti-LGBTQ sentiment and policy emanating from government officials,” largely attributing it to the Trump administration.
“Anti-LGBTQ groups have become intertwined with the Trump administration, and — after years of civil rights progress and growing acceptance among the broader American public — anti-LGBTQ sentiment within the Republican Party is rising,” the report states. “Though Trump promised during his campaign to be a ‘real friend’ to the LGBTQ community, he has fully embraced anti-LGBTQ hate groups and their agenda of dismantling federal protections and resources for LGBTQ people.”
Then Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a rainbow flag given to him by a supporter during a campaign rally at the University of Northern Colorado on Oct. 30, 2016 in Greeley, Colo.Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file
In a statement sent to NBC News, White House spokesman Judd Deere called SPLC a “far-left smear organization” and said its “comments are disgusting.” He also pointed to the president’s track record on LGBTQ issues, saying Trump has “fought for inclusion and repeatedly condemned hate and violence.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as “an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”
Most of the growth in new anti-LGBTQ hate groups, SPLC’s report found, comes from grassroots churches.
One example is the expansion in the network of churches run by Steven Anderson. Anderson runs Faithful World Baptist Church, in Tempe, Arizona, which has been listed as a hate group by the SPLC for some time. The church, according to its website, believes “homosexuality is a sin and an abomination which God punishes with the death penalty.”
Faithful World Baptist Church did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
Many of the 70 “anti-LGBTQ hate groups” in SPLC’s report are well established.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins at the 2017 Value Voters Summit on Oct. 13, 2017 in Washington.Evan Vucci / AP file
One of the best known is the Family Research Council, which was founded in 1983 and hosts the annual Value Voters Summit for conservative politicians and thousands of participants each year. At last year’s summit, President Donald Trump repeated his opposition to the Equality Act, a bill passed by the House that would extend federal nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ people.
Lecia Brooks, an SPLC spokesperson, told NBC News that the council’s long-time president, Tony Perkins, has been granted “unfettered access” to the Trump administration. Notably, Perkins was appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Following Perkins’ appointment to the independent, bipartisan commission, the national LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD compiled a list of more than 30 examples of Perkins’ and FRC’s opposition to the rights of LGBTQ people in the U.S. and abroad. Among those examples are a comparison of same-sex marriage to a marriage between “a man and his horse”; calling the “It Gets Better” project, an initiative designed to help LGBTQ young people cope with bullying and marginalization, “disgusting” and a “concerted effort” to recruit kids into the gay “lifestyle”; and claiming that the “blood” of “young Marines” would be on the hands of lawmakers who voted to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
The Family Research Council did not respond to a request for comment.
Another “anti-LGBTQ hate group” named in the report is the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group with attorneys across the country and a long track record of litigating against LGBTQ rights.
In a lawsuit that made national headlines last year, ADF represented Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding, in a narrow victory at the Supreme Court. ADF is also involved in another Supreme Court case dealing with LGBTQ workers rights, representing a Detroit funeral home that fired an employee after she informed the home that she was undergoing a gender transition. Among its non-Supreme Court cases, ADF is currently representing three athletes in a suit against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, which adopted a policy allowing transgender girls to compete in interscholastic sports with cisgender high school girls.
Jeremy Tedesco, ADF’s senior counsel and vice president of U.S. advocacy, slammed the Southern Poverty Law Center and the timing of its new report, which was released March 18.
“It is appalling that the Southern Poverty Law Center would choose this time of national emergency to launch their divisive and false ‘hate report,’” Tedesco told NBC News. “We call on SPLC to retract the report, stop sowing division and join the rest of America against our common foe: COVID-19.”
Brooks dismissed criticisms of SPLC releasing its annual report during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Fighting hate is something we have to keep at the forefront of our minds,” she said. “They don’t take a break, and we don’t take a break either.”
Westboro Baptist Church, known for its public protests that consistently feature signs with homophobic messages like “God Hates Fags,” also appears on the SPLC’s list. In 2019, the grouppicketed Morehouse College and Spelman College after the two historically black, single-sex institutions changed their admissions policy to include transgender students.
Jonathan Phelps, a spokesperson for the church, told NBC News that the SPLC is “not being honest” in their characterization of the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group.
“We don’t discriminate. Whatever your favorite sin is, if you ask us about it we are going to articulate in the plainest language possible what the Lord Jesus Christ has said about it,” he said. Regarding homosexuality, “it is an abomination,” Phelps added.
Brooks said SPLC stands by its “hate group” designations and dismissed criticisms that the organization disproportionately focuses on religious groups.
“We are not against Christian groups,” Brooks said. “For us, it’s more about the way they go out of their way to demonize LGBTQ folks.”
Brooks also lamented the lack of public pushback against many of these groups.
“Sadly, there is not enough public outcry against anti-LGBTQ groups because we have just let it go saying, ‘That’s just their religion,’” she said.
History of ‘anti-LGBTQ hate’
The SPLC has been tracking the number of hate groups in the United States since 1990, but the anti-LGBTQ movement emerged decades before.
“Along the same lines that you see today, they put forward stereotypes and vilify, especially gay men, as predators and predators of children, and use that to justify the tactics of taking rights way from LGBTQ people,” Fetner explained.
Fetner cited as an early example the activism of Anita Bryant in Florida. The singer-turned-anti-gay-activist was behind the “Save Our Children” campaign, which in 1977 helped overturn a newly passed local ordinance in Miami-Dade County that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing and public services.
“It caught on with socially conservative evangelical communities, and sort of blossomed and became the lead issue of the Religious Right,” Fetner said.
The late 1970s also saw the emergence of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, a political action group that wielded significant influence in the Republican Party. Fetner said Falwell realized early on that raising issues of sexuality was both “titillating and scandalous” enough to prompt followers to make sizable donations to his organization.
“The Religious Right really inserted itself into the Republican Party in the ‘80s and ‘90s and has had an influence in American politics ever since,” she added. However, Fetner said the movement began to decline in the 1990s.
“Young evangelicals weren’t as interested in anti-gay activism as the older folks,” she said. At the same time, acceptance of homosexuality was on the rise in the U.S., across all segments of the population. “People were actually changing their minds.”
By the early 2000s, the U.S. reached a tipping point for acceptance of homosexuality, according to a Pew study, and by 2016, LGBTQ advocates had solidified many civil rights gains, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage.
Why are we seeing a surge?
So, what changed?
“Trump’s embrace of these groups, their leaders and their policy agenda fuels this growth,” Brooks said of the rise in “anti-LGBTQ hate groups.”
The report points to significant staffing and policy choices by the Trump administration that reflect the position of organizations on the SPLC’s growing anti-LGBTQ list.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has rolled back several protections for LGBTQ people through executive orders, includingnondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ workers employed by federal contractors.
“The administration has consistently claimed that laws and regulations that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex do not apply to LGBTQ people and has worked to install religious exemptions to civil rights laws,” the report states.
In addition, nearly one third of the administration’s judicial nominees boast anti-LGBTQ track records, according to a report by Lambda Legal.
“Religious conservatives have taken this as an opportunity to push back on any civil rights gains LGBTQ folks have made,” Brooks said. “They couch it in ‘religious freedom,’” she added.
“I think that anti-gay activism is swept up as part of this new social embrace of intolerance and right-wing attitudes of all kinds,” Fetner said.
“People are disgruntled, going online, getting misinformation and getting radicalized,” she added. “Some portion of these people are joining new organizations or new churches.”
Fetner sees the Trump administration is both the outcome of this broader phenomenon, and a catalyst for increased anti-LGBTQ activism.
“Trump’s win was a signal to these larger social forces that this is their moment,” she said.
What’s the impact?
Anti-LGBTQ groups have a significant impact on policy outcomes, social violence and the priorities of LGBTQ advocacy organizations, according to civil rights advocates and scholars.
“Extremist ideas long believed outside of the realm of legitimate politics are penetrating deeply into the mainstream, spawning public policies that target immigrants, LGBTQ people and Muslims,” the report states.
Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said this “pattern of escalating attacks has put the LGBT movement on the defensive” and caused advocacy groups to invest a “tremendous amount of resources to deal with these attacks.”
Fetner said most LGBTQ advocacy groups are funded at “a fraction of the Religious Right groups that were proposing these initiatives.” She said that means they’re “sucked into these battles where their very right to exist is on the table again,” and they’re “putting out fires that have been started by better resourced organizations.”
The SPLC report and LGBTQ advocates also connect the surge in “anti-LGBTQ hate groups” to violence against LGBTQ people.
The FBI’s most recent Hate Crime Statistics report, released in November, found nearly 20 percent of all reported hate crimes in 2018 were motivated by anti-LGBTQ bias. While reported anti-LGBTQ hate crimes grew from 2017 to 2018, the most growth was seen in reports of anti-trans violence, which increased 34 percent year-over-year.
“I don’t think the anti-LGBTQ movement will win, but the damage they can do along the way is substantial,” Fetner said. Despite this, she remains optimistic, saying, “The LGBTQ movement will carry on and will come out of it stronger.”
Idaho Governor Brad Little Monday evening signed into law two bills that place new restrictions on transgender individuals in the state. The first of the two bills the Republican governor signed targets a transgender person’s ability to request a birth certificate change.
Under the new law, transgender individuals will no longer be able to change their listed sex on their official birth certificates and the certificate can only be amended within a single year of its initial filing. After that year has expired, the only grounds on which the certificate could be changed would be “fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact.”
The second transgender-related bill Little signed Monday bans transgender woman and girls from participating in women’s sports sponsored by public schools, colleges and universities.
Very few people have the breadth and depth of experience with infectious disease — scientific, activist, and personal — as Gregg Gonsalves.
Gonsalves was a leading member of ACT UP, a militant activist group that played a vital role in waking the American public up to the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ‘90s. An HIV-positive gay man, he spent the following decades doing research and activism surrounding AIDS and other infectious diseases. He has a PhD from Yale University in epidemiology, where he’s currently a professor studying microbial diseases, and received a MacArthur fellowship (more commonly known as a Genius Grant) in 2018.
So when we spoke on the phone this week and he sounded the alarm about the Trump administration’s push to relax coronavirus quarantine measures as soon as possible, I got a little panicked.
“The rest of the United States [will be like] New York two weeks from now,” he told me. “You can’t relax social distancing now without risking a conflagration.”
In his mind, Trump’s handling of the crisis feels like an eerie callback to the 1980s, when then-President Ronald Reagan chose to ignore early warnings about the threat from HIV/AIDS. About 450,000 Americans died of the disease between 1981 and 2000, a toll that Gonsalves believes can (at least in part) be blamed on Reagan’s “malign neglect” of the outbreak. For Gonsalves, the Trump response to coronavirus feels like the same thing all over again — just with the time frame sped way up.
We talked about his view of the science and policy surrounding coronavirus as well as the lessons the AIDS epidemic has for Americans today — not just when it comes to policy, but also what ordinary people can do to make things better despite being stuck at home.
A transcript of our conversation follows, edited for length and clarity.
Zack Beauchamp
What do you think happens in a world where certain parts of the country start ending restrictions on business activity?
Gregg Gonsalves
You don’t have to be an epidemiologist to figure that one out: viruses don’t respect state borders. If we’re going to sort of be able to contain this outbreak, it’s going to have to be a national commitment.
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, and the governor of Mississippi have said they’re not willing to do these sorts of stay-at-home orders; I think the governor of Mississippi overruled local officials on this. We already have a patchwork of responses to the epidemic. New York City may be the epicenter of the epidemic right now, but there’s only a matter of time until it spreads to Miami and Tupelo and New Orleans — which [currently] has some of the largest increases in cases.
Everybody said we were in Italy two weeks ago. The rest of the United States is New York two weeks from now.
Unless we figure out how to sort of move toward what the New York Times called for the other day — a national lockdown of sorts — we’re just going to see cases increase and emergency rooms and ICUs across the country be filled to capacity. People no longer being in the hospital, but in morgues around the country — and people unable to bury their dead for risk of infection to themselves. It’s pretty clear what the choices are for us.
Zack Beauchamp
This isn’t controversial among epidemiologists, right? I want to be clear.
Gregg Gonsalves
No.
We’re operating off of public health history and what’s happened with other epidemics. We did this SARS, we did this with H1N1, we’ve done this with Ebola. It’s not different now except that this is a more widespread pandemic than we’ve seen before.
The models differ a little bit, but their implication is the same: Without extreme social distancing, we’re going to unleash the virus and potentially collapse our health systems. You can’t relax social distancing now without risking a conflagration.
Park Avenue in New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in the US, has been closed off to make it easier for pedestrians to maintain social distancing.
Zack Beauchamp
Is there a world in which the United States could adopt an approach more like what you see in South Korea — where you have much more widespread testing and you have contact tracing of people who are infected? Or are we past the point of no return on that kind of approach?
Gregg Gonsalves
Could’ve, should’ve, would’ve.
Three months ago, we could have used the WHO tests instead of developing a CDC test that was so defective that they had to start from scratch. If we were going to do scale-up of testing and contact tracing to contain the epidemic, it would have started happening in late December, early January. We’re now in a case where the virus is everywhere.
We do need to scale-up testing. We need to know how far and how deep this epidemic goes across the US, but we’re in the mitigation phase. There’s hundreds of thousands — if not millions — infected with the virus already. So we’re trying to sort of keep it from spreading further.
Testing is going to be an important part of that. Not just virus testing, but antibody testing to see who has been exposed and is no longer carrying the disease. Testing and contact tracing are going to be really important, but we’re at the end of March and we don’t have the testing capacity in the United States even to test everyone who comes into our hospitals to find out if they have Covid-19.
[The South Korea approach] is going to be our eventual way out. But we’re not there. We’re not even close.
Zack Beauchamp
You mentioned historical pandemics and epidemics earlier. I want to talk about the early HIV/AIDS outbreak, the most deadly recent outbreak in the US prior to Covid-19 — and a topic on which you’re a leading expert.
What lessons should we be taking from our own experience with a deadly epidemic in our country?
Gregg Gonsalves
We have two cases of sort of botched responses to epidemics out of neglect and incompetence.
In the 1980s, we had a president who ignored the AIDS epidemic for most of his presidency — didn’t mention AIDS until the seventh year of his two-year term. That malign neglect, which for President Reagan was probably based on homophobia and racism and fear of people who use drugs, is a very specific kind of malevolence and incompetence.
I don’t know how old you are, but I remember when the Legionnaires were in Philadelphia in that hotel [in 1976] and this new disease struck the hotel. The CDC was mobilized, there was a national mobilization over a few cases of a new unknown disease. A few years later, we had people screaming from the rooftops that [AIDS] is going to be a disaster — but nobody really was listening.
Zack Beauchamp
Does it feel like déjà vu when it comes to coronavirus — but sped up?
Gregg Gonsalves
The déjà vu is in a bumbling idiot of a president who is totally unprepared to do what’s necessary to deal with the health and wellbeing of the people he serves.
The mobilization outside of DC among ordinary people is completely different than what we saw in the early days of the [AIDS] epidemic. Just think of our heroic doctors and nurses in our hospitals, the academic community, the community of faith leaders. If we had this kind of mobilization back then, we would’ve been in much better shape, but we didn’t. We did among ourselves in the gay community, but we were a small group of people.
Today, it’s been a national mobilization — except at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Once again, we have a president who failed to take an epidemic seriously and ended up getting many of the people who he’s supposed to represent killed. “PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO HELP THEIR NEIGHBORS IN A WAY THAT WE DON’T THINK ABOUT VERY MUCH IN OUR DAILY LIVES”
Zack Beauchamp
I don’t know if this is even the right way to think about this. But is there any way, based on your experiences with ACT UP, to describe what coronavirus activism might look like?
Is it the social solidarity that you’re describing earlier, in terms of community mobilization, or is there some kind of more directly political way to put pressure on the White House or governors or other authorities to do more?
Gregg Gonsalves
Weeks ago, old ACT UP alums and younger AIDS activists were all over this. Our antennae go up when we see infectious diseases get ignored and I think we were all talking about this in December and January. There’s a Covid-19 activist group in New York City that’s doing everything from diagnostics to social media.
My friend Amy Kapczynski at Yale Law School and I, who both have AIDS activist backgrounds, have written for the Boston Review talking about the political challenges of this pandemic. A lot of old AIDS activists have been central to this and it’s no coincidence that Debbie Birx and Tony Fauci are two old AIDS hands as well.
I don’t know how old you are, but I remember when the Legionnaires were in Philadelphia in that hotel [in 1976] and this new disease struck the hotel. The CDC was mobilized, there was a national mobilization over a few cases of a new unknown disease. A few years later, we had people screaming from the rooftops that [AIDS] is going to be a disaster — but nobody really was listening.
Zack Beauchamp
Does it feel like déjà vu when it comes to coronavirus — but sped up?
Gregg Gonsalves
The déjà vu is in a bumbling idiot of a president who is totally unprepared to do what’s necessary to deal with the health and wellbeing of the people he serves.
The mobilization outside of DC among ordinary people is completely different than what we saw in the early days of the [AIDS] epidemic. Just think of our heroic doctors and nurses in our hospitals, the academic community, the community of faith leaders. If we had this kind of mobilization back then, we would’ve been in much better shape, but we didn’t. We did among ourselves in the gay community, but we were a small group of people.
Today, it’s been a national mobilization — except at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Once again, we have a president who failed to take an epidemic seriously and ended up getting many of the people who he’s supposed to represent killed. “PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO HELP THEIR NEIGHBORS IN A WAY THAT WE DON’T THINK ABOUT VERY MUCH IN OUR DAILY LIVES”
Zack Beauchamp
I don’t know if this is even the right way to think about this. But is there any way, based on your experiences with ACT UP, to describe what coronavirus activism might look like?
Is it the social solidarity that you’re describing earlier, in terms of community mobilization, or is there some kind of more directly political way to put pressure on the White House or governors or other authorities to do more?
Gregg Gonsalves
Weeks ago, old ACT UP alums and younger AIDS activists were all over this. Our antennae go up when we see infectious diseases get ignored and I think we were all talking about this in December and January. There’s a Covid-19 activist group in New York City that’s doing everything from diagnostics to social media.
My friend Amy Kapczynski at Yale Law School and I, who both have AIDS activist backgrounds, have written for the Boston Review talking about the political challenges of this pandemic. A lot of old AIDS activists have been central to this and it’s no coincidence that Debbie Birx and Tony Fauci are two old AIDS hands as well.
There’s been a very big mobilization around AIDS activists around the coronavirus epidemic, but the big challenge is that you can’t do what we used to do, which is to storm the NIH and seize control of the FDA — because you can’t leave your house.
Zack Beauchamp
That’s why I’m asking. A lot of people are sitting at home feeling impotent and scared; what would you tell them if somebody reading our interview thinks, “I would like to do something about this the way these AIDS activists are organizing”? What kinds of avenues for activism are there?
Gregg Gonsalves
Well first of all, they’re doing something really, really important right now. As I said, social distancing is an act of solidarity and generosity, it’s just tremendous. Think of the millions of people who are going out — maybe to go grocery shopping once a week.
The other thing is that we got to get more people to join the cause, and it means reaching young people who seem to feel a little bit immune to this. I was on the phone with a group of Harvard students earlier this week where they’re developing sort of a campaign called #WhyIStayHome. The idea is trying to reach out to people through social media; we have a lot more resources in terms of getting the word out about what needs to be done that is sort of proliferating across the country.
I just retweeted an editorial from a West Virginia newspaper, which was simply brilliant saying, “We need to take this seriously” — really challenging what’s coming out of the White House in Charleston, West Virginia. We’re able to amplify that, an editorial in which you would mostly consider a red state.
Lots of stuff is happening. I think organizers from the Women’s March — I was on a call with them yesterday — are trying to figure out ways to keep the pressure on Congress, on governors, and local officials. Remember that the president can make whatever pronouncements he wants on social distancing, but it’s going to be the governors and mayors who decide what happens.
So a lot of activism can happen very locally, where you may know your mayor. You may know the member of your city council. You may be able to get on the phone with them and make change: It doesn’t matter if you reach Mike Pence or Donald Trump, if you’re reaching the governor of Rhode Island or the mayor of Hartford and saying, as a citizen of your state, as a citizen of your city, I expect you to hold the line and keep us together by keeping us apart.
Zack Beauchamp
You’ve tweeted, on #WhyIStayAtHome, that you’re someone who has HIV yourself. What does it feel like to move around in the world under these circumstances, especially as someone who’s — I’ve seen your picture — doesn’t look like the kind of older person we associate with being especially threatened by the coronavirus.
Gregg Gonsalves
Well, one is I’m not immunocompromised. I’ve been on antiretroviral therapy since 1996. I’m more than about 15 years with a stable HIV infection.
Zack Beauchamp
That’s great, that’s just great.
Gregg Gonsalves
But there are other people who have HIV who may be more compromised than I am. As I said in that tweet, my mother is 86 years old and I have a sister-in-law who has cancer. I worry about them more than I worry about myself. I’m no spring chicken; I’m 57 years old, so my chances, in general, are higher than yours of developing symptomatic disease.
But moving around in the world, I feel less physical risk than I do the weight of the history of the AIDS epidemic. Another epidemic being mishandled; it’s PTSD of a certain sort where you’re like, we’re really doing this again? I shouldn’t go to Las Vegas because I’m pretty unlucky, and I think a lot of us are feeling that way.
We have resilience and an ability to respond and to organize and know what to do. But we also know what it’s like to watch your loved ones die, these waves of dying friends, over the course of a month and years.
I don’t know anybody personally who’s died of coronavirus yet. But I’m waiting for the shoe to drop and it’s terrifying. Is it going to be my partner? Is it going to be any of my close work colleagues? Going to be somebody in my family? And that feeling is very reminiscent of the days of the AIDS epidemic because you were going to funeral after funeral.
I know the hospital here [in New Haven] is close to capacity in terms of its ICU beds. New York hospitals are the same way. And so the chances that you’re going to be able to get access to care with each passing day is going to become more remote because there’s not going to be enough beds to put you in. I’m petrified that I’m going to get a call from somebody who says I have it or somebody saying, he has it or she has it and they’re in the ICU or something like that.
Zack Beauchamp
Advice is almost the wrong word here, but do you have any guidance for helping people think through these emotions, that kind of fear, given your experience with an epidemic where people you knew were getting infected and dying?
Gregg Gonsalves
A member of ACT UP, an art critic named Douglas Crimp, wrote a big essay called “Mourning and Militancy.” He talked about how, in ACT UP, we were all sort of militant: fighting, and so didn’t really want to talk about how we felt about what was going on. He said that it was important to acknowledge the anger and the grief and the sadness you’re feeling, while sort of maintaining an outward focus, a commitment to making things better. As Vito Russo, another member of ACT UP said, “We have to be alive when this is all over to make sure it never happens again.”
So I think the advice for people is to understand what’s going on emotionally for you, the grief you’re feeling, the sadness you’re feeling — even if it’s not for somebody who’s gotten sick and died, but for the sort of life that we once all had in January or February. That life is over for the foreseeable future.
And it’s hard to believe they we’re all going to be the same after these next few months. Take it in, understand it. I’m not a touchy-feely person, but I think it means talking to people you care about either face to face if you’re in the same house with them, or online or whatever.
But don’t stew in it; say “there’s something I can do.” I can protect my community by social distancing. Whatever skills I have, I can contribute — I can write for a newspaper or I have power as a citizen in my city or my state. I can influence my elected officials on the phone or by email or other means of communication. … Face your emotions and your grief and then make sure that we can get through this together, with the fewest deaths and the least damage.
The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund has prepared a free online guide, available in both English and Spanish, for transgender and non-binary individuals attempting to navigate life during the coronavirus pandemic.
“A Know Your Rights Guide for Transgender People Navigating COVID-19,” which contains information that was accurate as of March 22, explores both trans-specific concerns and equity concerns that disproportionately impact trans and non-binary individuals, such as issues involving employment, housing and health care. It also features a national appendix of health and advocacy resources.
The guide stresses the existence of a pandemic does not void the fact that trans and non-binary individuals are entitled to receive care and access to services. As TLDEF interprets federal law within this guide, medical providers must address individuals by the names and pronouns that they use and provide individuals access to facilities consistent with their identities.
The guide encourages trans and non-binary individuals to self-advocate by knowing their rights and, if feeling ill, contacting a medical provider or a state health department hotline.
According to the guide, the “extraordinary public health crisis” may lead trans and non-binary individuals to experience delays in receiving transition-related services, including operations that hospitals have classified as “non-emergency surgeries” and business that courts and government agencies has deemed “non-essential,” which may or may not entail changing one’s legal name and gender marker.
If a trans or non-binary individual feels that they are being subject to discrimination; the guide advises that the individual report each incident to the appropriate staff, take notes, obtain names, save copies of any documents and file a complaint.
TLDEF describes itself on its website as “a nonprofit whose mission is to end discrimination and achieve equality for transgender people, particularly those in our most vulnerable communities.”
As of Saturday, there were more than 120,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S., with more than 2,000 deaths. Globally, there were more than 650,000 confirmed cases and more than 30,000 deaths.
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