The new ad from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), part of a six-figure buy, will air nationwide Monday morning across major national outlets, cable networks and digital streaming services, according to an announcement shared first with The Hill. The 30-second spot calls on voters to tell their representatives in Congress “to reject the politics of hate and get back to work” to prevent a shutdown.
“You sent your representative to Washington to work on behalf of everyday Americans, like you. But House Republicans spent the summer trying to divide us and failing to pass essential spending bills,” a narrator says. “Instead, they’re trying to limit the health care you and your family can access, ban books and flags and block enforcement of civil rights laws, all while risking the government grinding to a halt.”
A Texas church has chosen a radically different path from many denominations nationwide. Instead of demonizing LGBTQ+ people, the Galileo Church in Fort Worth has opted to support and welcome the community.
The congregation is particularly disturbed by the state legislature’s recently enacted law that bans healthcare providers from treating trans kids and has launched a program to help families get their children the healthcare they need.
“Health care is a human right, and withholding necessary care for trans kids is state-sponsored cruelty. As neighbors to one another, we seek ways to help each other’s families flourish,” the church says on the website for the new program, the North Texas TRANSportation Network.
The church will assist families who need to travel out of state to get treatment for their children with a $1000 grant. Individual donors and organizations fund the group; no public money is used.
The not-for-profit doesn’t require religious beliefs or church participation from applicants. The only qualification is that families must live in the 19-county northern Texas area and have a trans or gender-diverse child.
“I’m a mother, I have three kids so and I have always been able to get the healthcare for my kids that they desperately needed,” Executive Director Cynthia Daniels told CBS News. “So to me it’s just being a good neighbor to a group of people who have been selected to not be able to receive their healthcare and to me that’s devastating.”
Grants are distributed as the funds become available.
Several Catholic priests held a ceremony blessing same-sex couples outside Cologne Cathedral on Wednesday night in a protest against the city’s conservative archbishop, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.
Their protest was triggered by Cologne church officials’ criticism of a priest from Mettmann, a town near Duesseldorf, who in March had held a “blessing ceremony for lovers” — including same-sex couples.
Officials from the Cologne archdiocese, which Mettmann belongs to, had reprimanded the priest afterward and stressed that the Vatican doesn’t allow blessings of same-sex couples, German news agency dpa reported.
The blessing of same-sex couples on Wednesday was the latest sign of rebellion of progressive believers in Germany’s most populous diocese with about 1.8 million members.
Several hundred people showed up for the outdoor blessing service for same-sex and also heterosexual couples. Waving rainbow flags, they sang the Beatles hit “All You Need Is Love,” dpa reported. A total of about 30 couples were blessed.
The German government’s LGBTQ commissioner called the service an important symbol for the demand to recognize and accept same-sex couples in the Roman Catholic Church.
“It is mainly thanks to the church’s grassroots that the church is opening up more and more,” Sven Lehmann said, according to dpa. “Archbishop Woelki and the Vatican, on the other hand, are light years behind social reality.”
Catholic believers in the Cologne archdiocese have long protested their deeply divisive archbishop and have been leaving in droves over allegations that he may have covered up clergy sexual abuse reports.
The crisis of confidence began in 2020, when Woelki, citing legal concerns, kept under wraps a report he commissioned on how local church officials reacted when priests were accused of sexual abuse. That infuriated many Cologne Catholics. A second report, published in March 2021, found 75 cases in which high-ranking officials neglected their duties.
The report absolved Woelki of any neglect of his legal duty with respect to abuse victims. He subsequently said he made mistakes in past cases involving sexual abuse allegations, but insisted he had no intention of resigning.
Two papal envoys were dispatched to Cologne a few months later to investigate possible mistakes by senior officials in handling cases. Their report led Pope Francis to give Woelki a “spiritual timeout ” of several months for making major communication errors.
In March 2022, after his return from the timeout, the cardinal submitted an offer to resign, but so far Francis hasn’t acted on it.
Germany’s many progressive Catholics have also been at odds with the Vatican for a long time.
Several years ago, Germany’s Catholic Church launched a reform process with the country’s influential lay group to respond to the clergy sexual abuse scandals, after a report in 2018 found at least 3,677 people were abused by clergy between 1946 and 2014. The report found that the crimes were systematically covered up by church leaders and that there were structural problems in the way power was exercised that “favored sexual abuse of minors or made preventing it more difficult.”
The Vatican, however, has tried to put the brakes on the German church’s controversial reform process, fearing proposals concerning gay people, women and sexual morals will split the church.
On Wednesday night, just across from the hundreds of believers celebrating the blessings of same-sex couples, there were also about a dozen Catholics who demonstrated against the outdoor service, dpa reported. They held up a banner that said “Let’s stay Catholic.”
Findings from 40 years of the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, which was published by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) on Thursday (21 September), revealed insights into cultural and moral views in the UK.
Although the BSA was founded in 1983, questions regarding transgender people were first asked only seven years ago.
The BSA 2022 survey consisted of 6,638 interviews, conducted between 7 September and 30 October, and results showed a sharp rise in prejudice against trans people, with only 64 per cent saying they’re “not at all prejudice”, falling from 82 per cent since 2019.
Also according to the data, on average, almost four in every 10 people disagreed that trans people should have the right to change the sex recorded at birth on their birth certificate, if desired. Only three in every 10 people felt transgender men and women should be allowed to do so – a fall of 23 percentage points since 2019. Three in 10 also neither agree or disagree.
Elsewhere, the research brought better news: the British public has definitely become more liberal in its attitudes towards non-traditional family forms, sexual relationships and abortion.
Forty years ago, only 17 per cent of people felt same-sex relationships were “not wrong at all”, while 67 per cent feel that way now. Over the same period, those who believed that same-sex relations were “always wrong” has fallen from 50 per cent to just nine per cent.
Meanwhile, there is almost universal support for abortion being allowed when the woman’s health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy – backed by of 95 per cent of those surveyed – while 89 per cent said they were who are in favour when there was a strong chance of the baby having a serious health condition.
‘Shift that benefits no one’
Gillian Prior, NatCen’s deputy chief executive, said of the findings: “In the case of transgender people, the recent public debate about the law on gender recognition has appeared to have resulted in attitudes becoming less liberal than they were just a few years ago.”
Stonewall were more blunt, saying the decline in trans acceptance were a “shift that benefits no one”.
The LGBTQ+ charity blamed the results on the “inevitable human impact of a manufactured moral panic”, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“The only way society has moved on from previous moral panics is by political and societal leaders standing strong against hatred and misinformation. This is what we all need to do now to get the UK back on track.”
The data is the result of “the press-driven moral panic bearing fruit”, according to Nancy Kelley, Stonewall’s chief executive.
“Shame on every institution and individual that has driven this and is profiting from it,” she said.
Anti-trans rallies in cities across Canada were met with counterprotests on Wednesday, as demonstrators clashed over LGBTQ+ inclusive school policies and curriculum.
As the CBC reports, the demonstrations were sparked in part by anti-trans school policies similar to those that have been introduced in school districts across the U.S. recently. In June, New Brunswick’s provincial government instituted a policy requiring trans and nonbinary students under 16 to get their parents’ consent before teachers can use their names and pronouns. Saskatchewan adopted a similar policy in August. Both provinces face legal challenges over the policies.
According to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, Wednesday’s anti-trans rallies and marches were organized under the banner of “1 Million March 4 Children,” and sought to eliminate Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity curriculum and policies from Canadian schools. The nonprofit describes the groups behind the demonstrations as “far-right and conspiratorial groups, including Christian Nationalists, COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, sovereign citizens, and anti-public education activists,” as well as anti-LGBTQ+ conservative Muslim activists.
Pro-LGBTQ+ demonstrators also mobilized on Wednesday to voice their opposition to policies like those in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, leading to dueling protests in across the country.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a statement on Wednesday in support of the LGBTQ+ community. “Let me make one thing very clear,” Trudeau wrote in a post on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter). “Transphobia, homophobia, and biphobia have no place in this country. We strongly condemn this hate and its manifestations, and we stand united in support of 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians across the country – you are valid and you are valued.”
Activist Celeste Trianon led a counterprotest in Montreal. “Trans people — they exist in society, and they deserve inclusion, just like everyone else,” she told reporters. “We need to talk to people, teach them the right vocabulary, the proper words, at an age-appropriate time, in order to explain that inclusion is a good thing. We need to make sure that their trans and queer peers at school feel welcome.”
“We know that there are a lot of folks that don’t feel safe because of the rise in hate and division that’s targeting vulnerable people,” said New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh, who led a counterprotest in Ottawa. “But then you see a lot of people coming together, and it shows the strength of solidarity, of us supporting each other, of having each other’s back.”
CTV News reports that while some involved in the 1 Million March 4 Children protests said they were not anti-LGBTQ+, signs in Ottawa targeted members of the community as “groomers” and “pedophiles.”
In Vancouver, counter-protester Tomi-Rose Clarke said that while the anti-trans rallies were “scary,” they were encouraged by the number of people who turned out in opposition. “It’s nice to see such a big turnout,” they told CTV News. “It brings a little bit of hope to an otherwise very scary moment in history.”
New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs, who supports the policy requiring students to get permission from their parents to use their preferred names and pronouns in school, attended the protest in his province on Wednesday.
“I think our parents should become knowledgeable about what their kids are being taught and what is important for them to learn in schools and what’s important for parents to make decisions on with kids that are under 16 years old,” he told reporters.
But as a trans student in New Brunswick told the CBC, the discourse around the policy has led to increased harassment of trans and nonbinary kids.
“I have had more slurs yelled at me in the hallway since I have gone back to school this September than I ever have previously, and I have been out at school as part of the LGBTQ community for probably five years now,” Harris said.
Anti-trans protesters were also met with counterprotests in Toronto, Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Yukon, Hamilton, and London, among other communities across Canada.
According to the CBC, Wednesday’s demonstrations led to arrests in Ottawa, Halifax, Vancouver, and Victoria.
A federal appeals court is considering cases out of North Carolina and West Virginia that could have significant implications on whether individual states are required to cover health care for transgender people with government-sponsored insurance.
The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in cases Thursday involving the coverage of gender-affirming care by North Carolina’s state employee health plan and the coverage of gender-affirming surgery by West Virginia Medicaid.
During the proceedings, at least two judges said it’s likely the case will eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Both states appealed separate lower court rulings that found the denial of gender-affirming care to be discriminatory and unconstitutional. Two panels of three Fourth Circuit judges heard arguments in both cases earlier this year before deciding to intertwine the two cases and see them presented before the full court of 15.
Tara Borelli, senior attorney at Lambda Legal — the organization representing transgender people denied services in both states — said excluding the coverage is a clear example of discrimination outlawed by the 14th Amendment.
“The exclusion here is actually quite targeted, it’s quite specific,” Borelli said in court, arguing that a faithful interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and the equal protection clause ensures transgender people coverage.
“One of the most important things that a court can do is to uphold those values to protect minority rights who are not able to protect themselves against majoritarian processes,” she said.
Attorneys for the state of North Carolina said the state-sponsored plan is not required to cover gender-affirming hormone therapy or surgery because being transgender is not an illness. Attorney John Knepper claimed only a subset of transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria, a diagnosis of distress over gender identity that doesn’t match a person’s assigned sex.
Knepper said North Carolina’s insurance plan does not discriminate because it does not allow people to use state health insurance to “detransition,” either.
In updated treatment guidelines issued last year, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health said evidence of later regret is scant, but that patients should be told about the possibility during psychological counseling.
West Virginia attorneys said the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has declined to issue a national coverage decision on covering gender-affirming surgery.
Caleb David, attorney for the state defendants, said West Virginia’s is not a case of discrimination, either, but of a state trying to best utilize limited resources. West Virginia has a $128 million deficit in Medicaid for the next year, projected to expand to $256 million in 2025.
“West Virginia is entitled to deference where they’re going to take their limited resources,” he said. “They believe that they need to provide more resources towards heart disease, diabetes, drug addiction, cancer, which are all rampant in the West Virginia population.”
Unlike North Carolina, the state has covered hormone therapy and other pharmaceutical treatments for transgender people since 2017. “That came from a place of caring and compassion,” he said.
In June 2022, a North Carolina trial court demanded the state plan pay for “medically necessary services,” including hormone therapy and some surgeries, for transgender employees and their children. The judge had ruled in favor of the employees and their dependents, who said in a 2019 lawsuit that they were denied coverage for gender-affirming care under the plan.
The North Carolina state insurance plan provides medical coverage for more than 750,000 teachers, state employees, retirees, lawmakers and their dependents. While it provides counseling for gender dysphoria and other diagnosed mental health conditions, it does not cover treatment “in connection with sex changes or modifications and related care.”
In August 2022, a federal judge ruled that West Virginia’s Medicaid program must provide coverage for gender-affirming care for transgender residents.
U.S. District Judge Chuck Chambers in Huntington said the Medicaid exclusion discriminated on the basis of sex and transgender status and violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the Affordable Care Act and the Medicaid Act.
Chambers certified the lawsuit as a class action, covering all transgender West Virginians who participate in Medicaid.
An original lawsuit filed in 2020 also named state employee health plans. A settlement with The Health Plan of West Virginia Inc. in 2022 led to the removal of the exclusion on gender-affirming care in that company’s Public Employees Insurance Agency plans.
Same-sex marriage is prohibited in Navajo Nation — but a new measure under consideration this fall aims to change that.
In June, Navajo Nation Council Delegate Seth Damon introduced legislation to repeal parts of a 2005 tribal law, the Diné Marriage Act, which outlawed same sex-marriages.
Although same-sex marriages are legal in the U.S., the Navajo Nation has sovereignty to pass its own laws governing its citizens. Tribal members can still get a marriage license in one of the three states that the reservation spans — Arizona, New Mexico and Utah — but the tribe does not recognize those unions.
That means Navajo citizens in same-sex relationships may lack equal protections, including health benefits for their spouses, Damon said.
“If there’s a better life that we as policymakers can make for our people and if this is one of them — to create better harmony, better initiatives and better responsibility as a government — then why are we not pushing for this?” Damon said.
The legislation would allow Navajo Nation citizens to get a marriage license through the tribe and require the tribal government to recognize same-sex marriage licenses from states. It would not change traditional Navajo wedding ceremonies, which will remain only between a man and a woman.
The legislation faces a final committee vote on Sept. 28. If it passes, it will head to the full tribal council’s 24 delegates in the fall session, which begins in October.
The tribe’s 2005 ban followed a similar measure in 2004 in the Cherokee Nation. The two tribal nations are the largest in the country.
But since then, there has been a policy shift in tribal governments across the country, including several tribes that recognized same-sex marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized it in 2015. The Cherokee Nation’s attorney general overturned its law banning same-sex marriages in 2016, and dozens more tribal governmentsnow recognize such marriage.
Now, as political attacks on LGBTQ people and pushback against efforts for equality are mounting across the country, some Navajo Nation citizens say it is more important than ever for their tribe to pass protections for a vulnerable population.
“There’s some people in politics that are pushing toward anti-gay agendas, and so I feel pretty scared for my own well-being and my partner’s well-being,” said Misty Garcia-Sandoval, 21, a citizen of the tribe and a student at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. Garcia-Sandoval is in a same-sex relationship, and she wants to return to the reservation with her partner after they graduate, to work on health care access.
“Will that put a target on our back?” she said. “And if so, are we able to go back to our home reservations and be protected?”
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren supports the legislation, a spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News. It’s received a mixed response in committee hearings, with more delegates voting in favor than against.
“This is a public health issue. And we just have so many young people who don’t believe that they have a future on the reservation,” said Carl Slater, a council delegate who voted for the measure. “They feel that they’re not accepted by their government, that they can’t continue to live here and be who they are.”
Similar legislation was introduced last year but faced opposition from some tribal citizens and delegates who were concerned it would alter tradition or require medicine people to perform ceremonies that violated their traditions.
Damon acknowledged that some medicine people remain concerned about the repeal, but he said the legislation would not force anyone to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies.
In a 2016 report on women and gender violence, the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission highlighted this tension, which drove the debate over the Diné Marriage Act in 2005.
“The traditional perspectives that Navajo marriage can only be between a man and women is absolute,” the report states, noting that this “has been practiced since time immemorial.”
The report also highlighted people in traditional Navajo stories who identified as genders other than male and female — a fact that many advocates for same-sex marriage point out — as well as the testimony from several tribal citizens describing anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
After growing up on the reservation, Garcia-Sandoval said she understands the importance of culture and tradition. But she also recognizes that the world she lives in is in many ways different from that of her ancestors.
“I think people are scared to move from tradition because times are changing,” she said. “There’s some traditional lessons that can be adjusted or should be adjusted, so that there is equality for everyone in our communities.”
The Pentagon is stepping up its efforts to help gay and lesbian veterans who were discharged from the U.S. military under the now-defunct “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy update their records.
New initiatives announced Wednesday, the 12th anniversary of the policy’s 2011 repeal, include a proactive review process of the records of dismissed veterans and the launch of a new webpageaggregating resources for LGBTQ people who served in the armed forces.
The Defense Department will independently identify veterans who were discharged from active duty between 1994 and 2011 — when the policy was in effect — because of their sexual orientation and who received a discharge that was less than honorable, the department said at a media roundtable Wednesday. The department will retrieve any relevant military records pertaining to those veterans and submit them for a potential correction. The updated policy was first reported by CBS News.
“Over the past decade, we’ve tried to make it easier for Service members discharged based on their sexual orientation to obtain corrective relief,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statementWednesday. “While this process can be difficult to navigate, we are working to make it more accessible and efficient.”
Prior to Wednesday’s announcements, veterans dismissed under “don’t ask, don’t tell” could only update their records by submitting an application and documents relevant to their service in order to receive a discharge upgrade. Some veterans have also hired attorneys and scheduled in-person hearings to assist their cases.
In addition to the new “proactive review” process, the department will still accept individual applications. The Pentagon, however, will be “redoubling our outreach to LGBTQ+ veterans discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to encourage anyone who might be eligible to apply for corrections to their military records,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said at a news conference. “This outreach campaign will be online, by email, by mail, through nonprofits and veterans service organizations and more.”
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
There are different types of punitive and administrative military discharges, and those who receive anything other than an honorable discharge may be ineligible to receive some military benefits. In 2021, the Department of Veterans Affairs issued a clarificationconfirming that veterans dismissed for their sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV status were eligible to apply for benefits including health care and home loan guarantees.
The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and was repealed by President Barack Obama. The policy was intended to allow gay, lesbian and bisexual people to serve in the military as long as they hid their sexual orientation.
An estimated 13,000 service members were discharged under the policy, but the number of LGBTQ service members dismissed for their sexual orientations or gender identities since World War II is thought to be at least 100,000, according to historians.
In July 2017, several years after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” President Donald Trump announced that transgender people would be prohibited from enlisting in the military. The ban, which took effect in April 2019, reversed a policy announced in 2016 by the Obama administration. However, during President Joe Biden’s first week in office, he repealed the Trump administration’s ban, allowing transgender service members to once again enlist in the military and serve openly.
Today, the European Court of Human Rights handed down a ruling in the case of Maxim Lapunov, the only victim of Chechnya’s vile 2017 anti-gay purge who dared seek justice for the torture he suffered at the hands of local law enforcement. The court found Lapunov was “detained and subjected to ill-treatment by State agents,” which “amounted to torture” and was perpetrated “solely on account of his sexual orientation.”
Lapunov took his case to the European Court in May 2019 because the Russian authorities had failed to investigate his assault. Despite great personal risk, Lapunov had been eager to cooperate with Russia’s investigative authorities through the assistance of his persistent lawyers from the Committee Against Torture, a leading Russian human rights group.
I first met Lapunov nearly six years ago, when I moderated a news conference in Moscow at which he publicly told his story for the first time. Lapunov, then 30, described to a roomful of journalists how he had been rounded up and tortured along with dozens of others. His hands shook as he detailed the horrific experience. He stopped several times to regain composure but kept going.
A Russian from Siberia who had traveled to Chechnya for work, Lapunov did not have to face what every Chechen man caught in the purge feared: being targeted by his own relatives or exposing his entire family to overwhelming stigma because of his homosexuality. His captors threatened to kill him if he spoke out, but he refused to be silent. “We all have rights …,” he said at the news conference. “If we just let it be [in Chechnya],… we’ll never know whose son or daughter will be taken next.”
At the time, Russian authorities claimed they could not investigate the purge because no victims stepped up to testify. When Lapunov provided his staggering testimony, they still failed to investigate. In early 2019, Chechen police rounded up and tortured more men because of their presumed sexual orientation. Realizing they would never get the Russian authorities to do their job and investigate, Lapunov and his legal team filed their complaint with the European Court of Human Rights. Today, they won.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia lost its Council of Europe membership and there is no hope that the Russian authorities will implement this ruling anytime soon. Yet it sets the record straight. This, I hope, will serve to support all survivors of the purge.
New Pew Research Center polling revealed a range of opinions about open marriages among Americans across various demographic groups, with the LGBTQ+ community accepting this relationship arrangement at significantly higher levels than other groups.
According to the study, published Thursday, exactly half of respondents were either somewhat or entirely against open marriages, where both partners agree to pursue relationships or intimacy outside of the marriage. Thirty-seven percent of respondents considered these unions totally unacceptable, while 13 percent deemed them somewhat acceptable.
Researchers also found that adults hold contrasting opinions about open marriages. Half of the respondents expressed disapproval, while 33 percent said they accepted such unions. Divergent perspectives on this issue were evident based on gender, race, ethnicity, age, marital status, sexual orientation, and political affiliation.
The survey revealed a stark contrast between acceptance rates based on sexual orientation. Bisexual, lesbian, and gay adults expressed significantly greater acceptance, at 75 percent, than heterosexual adults, at 29 percent. Even when accounting for age differences, this discrepancy persists.
A substantial portion of opinions were shaped by political affiliation. Sixty-four percent of Republicans deemed open marriages unacceptable, while only 20 percent approved. Democraticviews were more varied, with 47 percent supporting and 36 percent opposing such unions.
Conservative Republicans were the most likely to disapprove, with a 74 percent majority, while liberal Democrats were the most accepting, with 63 percent.
Compared with women, men tended to be more accepting of open marriages, with 36 percent finding them somewhat acceptable versus 30 percent for women.
The background of someone’s race and ethnicity also shaped their viewpoints. Asian adults endorsed open marriage the most, with 44 percent approving. About a third of white (33 percent), Hispanic (32 percent), and Black (31 percent) adults expressed similar support.
In general, younger adults favored open marriages more than older adults. Most respondents under 30 (51 percent) found them acceptable, but their acceptance waned with age.
Only 41 percent of those 30 to 49 approved, 26 percent of those 50 to 64, and only 15 percent of those 65 and older did. Open marriages were unacceptable to 70 percent of respondents in the most senior age bracket.
The marital status of adults also influenced opinion, with 57 percent of married adults and 61 percent of divorced, separated, or widowed adults opposing open marriage — conversely, respondents living with a partner viewed such unions most favorably, with 56 percent in favor.