A 23-year-old Las Vegas man who allegedly wanted to attack Jews and patrons of an LGBTQ bar was arrested on suspicion of possessing parts to make a bomb, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada said Friday.
Conor Climo, who was arrested Thursday, was connected to white supremacists though encrypted online conversations, federal prosecutors said.
“Threats of violence motivated by hate and intended to intimidate or coerce our faith-based and LGBTQ communities have no place in this country,” Nicholas A. Trutanich, U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada, said in a statement.
Climo had already caused concern among his neighbors in 2016 when, in a video posted to his now-deleted YouTube channel, he announced plans to patrol his Centennial Hills neighborhood with an AR-15-style rifle, four 30-round clips, and camouflaged packs.
FBI agents with the Las Vegas Joint Terrorism Task Force began looking at Climo in April when, according to the complaint, they learned he was communicating with the white extremist group Atomwaffen Division.
Members of that group have been linked to at least five deaths since 2017, including a Tampa man who killed his two roommates and told police they were members of the group planning a large-scale attack.
Climo, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted, was arraigned in federal court on Friday, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney for Nevada.
His arrest stemmed from an investigation conducted by an FBI task force specializing in monitoring the activities and online communications of extremists and domestic terror groups. The investigation was detailed in an 11-page criminal complaint and probable cause statement filed in court federal prosecutors and the FBI.
During encrypted online conversations with undercover FBI operatives, Climo discussed attacking a Las Vegas synagogue and making Molotov cocktails and improvised explosive devices, according to the criminal complaint.
The evangelical blogger made anti-LGBT comments as he destroyed the books, including young adult novel Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, illustrated LGBT+ history book This Day in June by Gayle Pitman, Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress by Christine Baldacchino and Families, Families, Families! by Suzanne Lang.
Dorr was found guilty of 5th degree criminal mischief in Sioux County District Court on Tuesday (August 6).
The state of Iowa had sought the maximum penalty, a fine of $625.
Dorr, who represented himself, had told the court: “My motive was to honour the Triune God in whom my faith resides and to protect the children of Orange City from being seduced into a life of sin and misery.”
LGBT+ campaigners condemn ‘reprehensible’ burning of library books
Courtney Reyes of One Iowa told Iowa Public Radio: “Libraries are safe havens where every person has free access to all ideas and expressions without restriction.
“Dorr intended to deprive the children of Orange City that access, to isolate LGBTQ youth from reflections of themselves in stories, to take from all youth the opportunity to empathise with people different than themselves. Such an act is terrible, and we are glad justice was served today.”
Bettis Austen of the ACLU of Iowa said: “Burning public library books is the destruction of ideas, and that’s reprehensible.
“The destruction of books from a public library is a clear attempt to shut down the open sharing and discussion of ideas.
“No one person or even group should decide that they are the gatekeepers of ideas for the rest of the public.”
Dorr has previously expressed the belief that people become gay because of “the harm that adults did to you as children” and urged LGBT+ people to “walk away from your degeneracy… repent and turn back to Christ.”
Explaining his actions, Dorr had said: “I cannot stand by and let the shameful adults at the Orange City Library Board bring the next group of little children into their foul, sexual reality without a firm resistance.”
One of the books burned, David Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing, was ranked as the fifth most-banned book during the American Library Association’s annual Banned Books Week in 2016.
Between August 2 and August 6, Pence was at a conference organised by conservative blogger Erick Erickson, a roundtable with Donald Trump’s religious freedom ambassador Sam Brownback and a “fireside chat” with Mike Farris, CEO of anti-abortion Christian lawyers the Alliance Defending Freedom.
The Human Rights Campaign said that Pence is on an “anti-LGBTQ crusade.”
On August 2, Pence appeared on stage at The Resurgent Gathering conference in Atlanta with Erick Erickson, a conservative evangelical American blogger and radio host who organised the conference.
Erickson, in a blog post on the same day, lashed out at Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg for not “repenting” his sexuality.
Erickson, a former Fox News pundit who hosts a right-wing radio show, took aim at Buttigieg on his blog, The Resurgent.
“Pete Buttigieg is a practising homosexual who wilfully refuses to recognise Holy Scripture identifies that as a sin,” Erickson wrote.
Sam Brownback has repeatedly been homophobic and transphobic
On August 5, Pence met with Sam Brownback, Trump’s new ambassador for religious freedom – who has a history of attacking LGBT+ people, often justifying his actions through religious freedom.
Pence and Brownback were part of an International Religious Freedom roundtable, at which Pence “reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to stand with people of every faith in every country around the world.”
Brownback, who gained Pence’s tie-breaking vote to be confirmed in the Senate, repeatedly promoted homophobic and transphobic policies in his seven years as Governor of Kansas.
Alliance Defending Freedom is anti-LGBT, anti-abortion
On Tuesday (August 6), Pence then went to an event run by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an evangelical Christian group that lobbies against reproductive rights in the US.
The ADF is currently involved several anti-trans lawsuits, including in Connecticut where it has filed a federal discrimination complaint challenging the state’s policy of letting trans students compete on sports teams according to their gender identity.
Kansas’ child welfare agency has drafted guidelines urging foster parents to allow LGBTQ kids in their care to “express themselves as they see themselves,” riling conservatives a little more than a year after the state granted legal protections to faith-based adoption agencies that do not place children in LGBTQ homes.
The Department for Children and Families issued draft “guidance” for “prudent parenting” in mid-July, six months after Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly took office. It said foster homes should recognize LGBTQ children “by their preferred identity if it differs from their sex assigned at birth.”
Conservatives read the document as a policy directive for reshaping foster families’ lives and an attempt to skirt a 2018 law that Kelly doesn’t like for protecting faith-based adoption agencies. It’s a sharp break in tone with that law, which prevents the state from barring agencies from providing services if they refuse to place children in homes violating their religious beliefs.
The department’s move drives home the difference Kelly’s election last year made on hot-button social issues. Her administration followed eight years of conservative Republican control in a state that still has a GOP-dominated Legislature and a Republican Party with a platform declaring, “We believe God created two genders, male and female.”
“It’s going to continue pushing this envelope,” said Kansas House Majority Leader Dan Hawkins, a conservative Wichita Republican, who worried in a recent newsletter about the department pursuing a “social experiment.”
The department presented the first draft of its guidelines during a quarterly meeting with private agencies that place abused and neglected children in foster and adoptive homes.
State officials said a final version could be ready later this month and won’t be formal policy or regulations, just principles for placement agencies and foster families. As such, they wouldn’t be subject to outside review — though Hawkins and other conservatives are considering legislative hearings.
Department officials said their first draft was a response to questions that private agencies passed along from foster parents who want to support LGBTQ youth. They said they’re picking up on best practices from other states and national groups.
“The fact of wanting children we’re caring for to feel safe and welcome in their foster homes just shouldn’t be a controversial issue to anybody,” Laura Howard, the department’s top administrator, said in a recent interview.
But Kelly’s views on LGBTQ rights already had conservatives on edge. Kansas said in June that it would allow transgender people to change their birth certificates to reflect their gender identities. Under Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, the state had some of the nation’s toughest rules for making such changes.
Kelly also said before taking office that she would try to avoid enforcing last year’s adoption law if she could. Conservatives link that stance and the department’s new guidance, though its officials say there is none.
“It looks like an end-run around the adoption-protection act,” said Chuck Weber, director of the Kansas Catholic Conference.
The department’s guidance says foster children have the right to wear clothing and hairstyles “that suit their gender identity” and that refusing to use their preferred pronouns “can endanger their physical and emotional well-being.”
Within days, the conservative Family Policy Alliance of Kansas criticized the guidance publicly as imposing an “invasive sexual agenda.” The first draft of the guidance included a “Q&A” discussion about transgender foster youth sharing rooms with other children and having sleepovers.
State Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican, said the guidelines endanger safety. For example, she said, the first draft tells foster parents that if space in their home is limited, a “biological boy” teenager can share a bedroom with a teenage girl.
Pilcher-Cook said both the foster parents and a child’s birth parents — who still might have parental rights — might object to the guidelines.
“It’s a problem when government takes such a heavy hand to coerce people to live out beliefs that they don’t embrace,” Pilcher-Cook said.
A later draft of the department’s guidance on its official letterhead dropped the Q&A section because, Howard said, “it’s really difficult to sort of script any particular situation.” Both drafts said case workers should ensure all children in a foster home are comfortable with the living arrangements.
The guidelines’ defenders said the state and placement agencies don’t require foster parents to take particular children and that the agencies work through issues before a placement. If issues arise after a placement, the agencies would attempt to work through them with families individually, rather than apply the guidelines as rules, they said.
And, they said, the goal always is to find foster homes that best fit children already traumatized by abuse or neglect.
“What it really boils down to is, we’re not going to be putting these kids in a hostile environment,” said Tom Witt, executive director of the LGBTQ-rights group Equality Kansas.
The Asexual Education and Visibility Network (AVEN) defines asexuality as: “Someone who does not experience sexual attraction or an intrinsic desire to have sexual relationships.”
There is a lot of diversity in how people experience being asexual however, levels of sexual attraction can vary and asexual people are often still in romantic relationships.
The research found that those who identified as asexual “were as likely to report being in an intimate relationship as non-asexual LGB adults.”
They were also likely to as non-binary (72 percent) or as women (27 percent) and 86 percent were assigned female at birth.
People between the ages of 18 and 27 were also far more likely to identify as asexual.
Lead author of the study Esther D. Rothblum said: “Asexuality is an emerging identity.
Given that the majority of asexual respondents were young, we expect that the prevalence and understanding of asexuality will grow as more youth reach adolescence and become familiar with the identity.”
n March this year, the Williams institute published data which said that the total LGBT+ population in the US was 11,343,000, or 4.5 percent of the total population.
This new data would suggest that around 0.08 percent of the total US population, which is around 260,000 people, identify as asexual.
However the number is likely to be higher than this, as some people who identify as asexual may not also identify as part of the LGBT+ community.
Study author Ilan H. Meyer said: “We see in these results that asexuals are an integral part of the LGBT community.
“It is important to note, however, that this study only included asexuals who also identify as LGB, so the results are pertinent to a segment of the total asexual population. We have more to learn about asexual heterosexuals.”
The federal Office for Civil Rights has launched an investigation into Connecticut’s policy that allows transgender high school athletes to compete as the gender with which they identify.
The investigation was announced in a letter Wednesday from the arm of the U.S. Department of Education. It follows a complaint in June by the families of three girls, who say they were discriminated against by having to compete in track events against two athletes who were identified as male at birth and who they say have “male hormone levels and musculature.”
The complaint was submitted on the girls’ behalf by lawyers for the conservative non-profit organization Alliance Defending Freedom, which contends the transgender girls have an unfair physical advantage and that the state policy violates Title IX, the federal law designed to ensure equal opportunities for women and girls in education, including athletics.
They argue that allowing the transgender athletes to compete has resulted in denying their clients and others the opportunity to qualify for events such as the New England championships, where they would have been seen by college coaches.
“Girls should never be simply spectators in their own sport; they deserve to compete on a fair playing field,” said Selina Soule, a Glastonbury High School sprinter, who has consistently finished behind the two transgender athletes in state championships. “I hope that this important step will help return fairness to the sport I love.”
The Connecticut Association of Schools-Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference has said its policy follows a state anti-discrimination law that says students must be treated in school by the gender with which they identify.
The organization said in June it would cooperate fully with any investigation.
The transgender athletes in question, rising seniors Andraya Yearwood, of Cromwell High School, and Terry Miller, of Bloomfield High School, have both defended their participation in girls’ events.
Yearwood told The Associated Press in February that there are many differences among athletes that may give one a physical advantage over another, and she does not think she has an unfair advantage.
“One high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better,” she said. “One sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster.”
Her mother said Yearwood would have no comment on Thursday.
Miller, who has won numerous state championships in both indoor and outdoor track, did not respond to a request for comment. But she told the Hartford Courant at the time the complaint was filed that it is “painful that my victories have to be attacked and my hard work ignored.”
Connecticut is one of 17 states that allow transgender high school athletes to compete without restrictions, according to Transathlete.com, which tracks state policies in high school sports across the country.
Seven states have restrictions that make it difficult for transgender athletes to compete while in school, like requiring athletes to compete under the gender on their birth certificate or allowing them to participate only after going through sex-reassignment procedures or hormone therapies.
An FDA advisory panel on Wednesday voted in favor of Gilead Sciences Inc’s combination drug to reduce the risk of sexually acquired HIV infection in men and transgender women who have sex with men.
The treatment, Descovy, is a combination of emtricitabine and tenofovir alafenamide, and is already approved to treat chronic HIV.
When asked to assess the efficacy of Descovy for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) of HIV in men and transgender women who have sex with men, a patient population that forms the largest component of the PrEP market, the panel voted 16-2 in favor.
The recommendation is a shot in the arm for Gilead as its third best-selling HIV drug, Truvada, faces exclusivity loss in the United States, beginning 2020.
Truvada is largely boosted by its PrEP use, SVB Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges said in a note ahead of the committee’s discussion. “Truvada grew at 15% last year, entirely due to PrEP.”
Descovy’s entry into the still underpenetrated PrEP market is vital to Gilead’s attempts to retain its Truvada patient base after the drug goes off-patent, he said.
Truvada accounted for 20.5% of the drugmaker’s total HIV franchise sales in 2018.
The panel’s backing also comes as a possible launch of Descovy for PrEP faces opposition from patient advocacy groups.
They cite the scheduled U.S. launch next September of a generic version of the only currently approved prevention pill, Truvada, that could lower costs.
The panel, however, said there was not enough data to support the expansion of Descovy’s label for use as a preventive HIV drug for cisgender women. The panel voted 10-8 against its approval in this patient population.
Cisgender women form less than 7% of PrEP use and the prospect of Descovy’s label not including the population is not likely to impact the drug’s sales, Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said in a note ahead of the panel’s decision.
The FDA is yet to make a final decision on Descovy’s approval for PrEP. While the agency is not bound to follow the advice of its advisory panels, it usually does so.
Stephen Ross, the billionaire investor behind SoulCycle and Equinox gym, is under fire for plans to host a fundraiser for President Trump in the Hamptons.
The fundraiser is scheduled for August 9 in Southampton, New York, with top priced tickets selling for $250,000, which includes a meeting with the president.
Ross is chairman of The Related Companies, a real estate company that owns Equinox, SoulCycle, and Pure Yoga. Related Companies is also behind the Hudson Yards development on the west side of Manhattan.
Ross is also the owner of NFL team the Miami Dolphins.
Equinox and SoulCycle are popular with the LGBTQ community and soon after the news broke, activists were calling for a boycott of the brands. Equinox itself touts its “clubs” as LGBTQ friendly and has a significant presence in LGBTQ pride parades around the country.
“This Pride, we’re celebrating life with one of the most powerful forms of movement—voguing,” says Equinox’s “Powered by Pride” website, which said the company raised $20,000 for a New York City Ballroom charity, and even posted a #PoweredByPride Equinox playlist on Spotify.
In a post on Instagram, Equinox acknowledged that “many members raised their concerns about a political fundraiser taking place later this week.”
“We want to let you know that Equinox and SoulCycle have nothing to do with the event and do not support it,” Equinox wrote, claiming that “no company profits are used to fund politicians.”
“Mr. Ross is a passive investor and is not involved with the management of the business,” the statement continued.
Actor Wilson Cruz created a Change.org petition calling on Ross to cancel the fundraiser or face additional cancellations.
“We believed that we were supporting a company that was inclusive, accepting and celebrating our diversity and supporting our physical and mental health as a community,” Cruz wrote. “We joined this gym because we believed it shared our values. We believed it was a safe space for people like us.”
“[I]f this fundraiser indeed does take place we will be looking for another gym to give our money to and we will be calling on our networks of LGBTQ and POC friends to do the same,” Cruz wrote.
Kenny Stills, wide receiver for Ross’ Miami Dolphins, criticized the move by saying it was at odds with the mission of the charitable organization founded by Ross. The Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality is a nonprofit which says its mission is to educate and empower the sports community “to eliminate racial discrimination, champion social justice and improve race relations.”
“You can’t have a non profit with this mission statement then open your doors to Trump,” Stills tweeted with a “skeptical” emoji.
Phillipe Reines, a former advisor to Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State, said on Twitter “No way to spin this. Boycott @soulcycle & @Equinox.”
Many others took to social media to say that they are canceling their Equinox membership, though others noted that it is very difficult to extract oneself from onerous contracts which allow few reasons for cancellation.
Gay actor and comedian Billy Eichner also tweeted that he canceled his membership. “There are a handful of billionaires who own everything and many support Trump,” Eichner wrote. “Practically speaking, it’s probably impossible to completely avoid them. But considering @Equinox’s clientele and how they’ve pandered to us, this one feels particularly hypocritical and shameful.”
New York Sports Clubs, a competitor, offered free admissions to its gyms on Friday: “This Friday, August 9th we’re not doing anything in Southampton,” NYSC tweeted. “Come work out with us.”
Ross issued a statement on Wednesday defending his political activism and gave no indication he would cancel the fundraiser.
“While some prefer to sit outside of the process and criticize, I prefer to engage directly and support the things I deeply care about,” Ross said in the statement given to NBC News.
“I have known Donald Trump for 40 years, and while we agree on some issues, we strongly disagree on many others and I have never been bashful about expressing my opinions,” Ross said. “I have been, and will continue to be, an outspoken champion of racial equality, inclusion, diversity, public education and environmental sustainability, and I have and will continue to support leaders on both sides of the aisle to address these challenges.”
According to the Washington Post, the event will be attended by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, as well as Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.
Barnegat Mayor Alfonso Cirulli launched a campaign Tuesday to fight a New Jersey law that brings an LGBT curriculum into schools and urged residents to join his fight. During the Tuesday morning meeting of the Township Committee, Cirulli, a 60-year-old former assistant principal, said it was his duty to protect residents and called the LGBT political movement “an affront to almighty God.”
During his opening remarks, he urged residents to pressure Gov. Phil Murphy and the state Legislature to reverse a measure signed into law on Jan. 31. The law requires middle and high school curriculums include instruction on the political, economic and social contributions of people with disabilities or who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. The law would apply to the 2020-2021 school year.
Cirulli’s Facebook page is full of the usual anti-Obama, anti-Hillary, anti-LGBT propaganda. He is also part of a New Jersey campaign against recreational pot.
In 1985, I was working in an STD clinic in Nashville, Tennessee, and was one of two HIV counselors doing pre-test and post-test counseling for people most likely getting the very first HIV test of their lives. There were NO anti-HIV medications available at that time, and the only ounce of hope you could impart to these newly infected people was that there appeared to be more HIV-positive (POZ) people not yet ill than there were POZ persons who were having symptoms. In 1985, untreated POZ people most likely had VERY high HIV viral loads (high amounts of active HIV virus in the body), were therefore very infectious and highly likely to pass HIV on to other sex or needle sharing partners.
In 2019, by contrast, we have a total of 51 medications at our disposal to fight HIV (33 individual anti-HIV meds and 18 combination anti-HIV meds). We are also finding that the majority of HIV patients consistently taking these anti-HIV meds have achieved undetectable levels of HIV in their bodies (defined as less than 200 copies/ml or a less than 200 HIV viral load). We know that current treatments are prolonging life for HIV POZ people. And in a true game-changer for the future of the epidemic , multiple studies have shown that HIV-positive people who are undetectable DO NOT transmit the virus to others!
A person is most infectious with the HIV virus during the first 3 months after they have been infected – if they are not taking meds. These newly HIV POZ persons often have a viral load between half a million to over TEN million in their blood, semen or vaginal fluids. The clinical implications of having a viral load of millions compared to having a viral load of under 200 are huge! That is why aggressive programs today seek to test people as early in HIV infection as possible, connect them to medical care and start them on anti-HIV meds as quickly as possible.
Across three different studies, including thousands of couples and many thousand acts of sex without a condom or pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), no HIV transmissions to an HIV-negative partner were observed when the HIV-positive person was virally suppressed. This means that people who take anti-HIV meds daily, as prescribed, and who achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load have effectively NO risk of sexually transmitting the virus to an HIV-negative partner.” (U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC),September, 2017)
Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in an address he gave at a 2018 International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam, concluded “that the body of scientific evidence to date has established that there is effectively no risk of sexual transmission of HIV when the partner living with HIV has a durably undetectable viral load, validating the U=U [Undetectable = Untransmittable] message of HIV treatment as prevention.”
Results from the from recent PARTNER2 study, which only recruited gay couples, were presented in 2018. In total they documented 75,000 barrier-free instances of anal sexual intercourse between serodiscordant gay couples (one positive and one negative partner). The PARTNER study recruited HIV serodiscordant couples at 75 clinical sites in 14 European countries. They tested the HIV-negative partners every six to twelve months for HIV, and tested viral load in the HIV-positive partners. Both partners also completed behavioral study surveys. In cases of HIV infection in the negative partners, their HIV was analyzed to see if it came from their regular partner or if they had been with someone else.
The study found no transmissions between gay couples where the HIV-positive partner had a viral load under 200 copies/ml – even though there were nearly 75,000 acts of condomless sex between them. The results suggest, “A precise rate of within-couple transmission of ZERO” for gay men (a previous study had shown zero transmission in heterosexual couples). Dr. Alison Rodger (lead author of PARTNER2 study at the International AIDS Conference presentation- July, 2018) put it best when she said ”I just want to pay tribute to the U=U campaign. It has been astonishing. I think the time for excuses are over. I think it is very, very clear that the risk (of transmission) is zero. I very much think we have to promote this… if you are on suppressive on anti-HIV meds you are sexually non-infectious and the time for excuses is over.”
The latest HIV San Francisco epidemiology report shows that the number of new HIV diagnoses continues to decline, falling to 221 cases in 2017 — the lowest number since the start of the epidemic. This represents a five percent decline from 2016, following two years of steeper drops of around 15 percent. Much of this is attributed to more and more HIV POZ persons being on anti-HIV meds and being unable to transmit HIV. The increasing use PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, in which an HIV-negative person takes a daily anti-HIV med to block infection, is another reason.
In 2018, the statistics show that 92 percent of all HIV POZ Marin County residents (who are on HIV meds) have achieved undetectable viral loads. All of this important news isn’t just good for HIV prevention, but also for HIV POZ individuals. Every HIIV POZ person I know wants to avoid passing the virus on to others. It is important news for those who have not tested for HIV yet, or who have not started treatment yet, that becoming U=U can lift a huge burden of worry off of their shoulders. And finally, having HIV-NEGATIVE people know about U=U helps them to realize that they do not have to stigmatize and avoid HIV-POZ people!
I encourage you – please do everything you can to pass on this information regarding the U=U campaign, as it will help (a) encourage people to know their HIV status; encourage HIV POZ people to be taking meds and be adherent with their med schedules, reduce the stigma and fear directed toward HIV POZ persons; and help sero-discordant couples better navigate their relationships without fear.
Dave Brown formerly worked with the Centers for Disease Control, US Public Health Service
