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Transgender Teen Sues New York Over Birth Certificate Gender Marker

A 14-year-old transgender boy is suing New York state over its policy barring minors from changing the gender marker on their birth certificates. “Possessing accurate identification documents that are consistent with a person’s gender identity — a person’s core internal sense of their own gender — is essential to their basic social and economic well-being,” the lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the LGBTQ legal advocacy group Lambda Legal, states. “Access to employment, education, housing, health care, banking, travel and government services all hinge on having appropriate and accurate personal documentation that reflects a person’s true identity.” Since 2014, New York state has […]

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Police Search for Suspect in Murder of Trans Activist in Oklahoma

Authorities are searching for a suspect after a transgender activist was found shot and killed in McAlester, Oklahoma, while on his way to pickup a taxi fare. Dustin James Parker, 25, was found dead Wednesday with the windows of his car shot out after a 911 caller told police they heard gunshots in the early morning, according to NBC affiliate KJRH.McAlester Mayor John Browne assured the community that law enforcement was doing all it could to locate a suspect in Parker’s death. “McAlester lost a supremely nice person who had such a positive outlook in his life,” Browne said in a […]

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First-of-its-kind Combo HIV Cure Study to Begin at UCSF

A new cure strategy designed to harness the power of the immune system to achieve HIV remission in people living with HIV will begin at the University of California, San Francisco in 2020. The study was described and announced at the amfAR 2019 HIV Cure Summit held on November 21, 2019. “This is kind of an unprecedented human clinical trial, putting together a lot of things that we think will optimally stimulate the immune system,” said Rachel Rutishauser, MD, PhD, from UCSF and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. “The main clinical outcome will be to understand the proportion of people who […]

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Pakistan Extends Free Healthcare to Trans People

Pakistan has extended free healthcare to transgender citizens for the first time, in a move that will help lessen discrimination against trans people. All trans people in Pakistan will now be eligible for free medical treatment, including transition-related care. The government is giving trans people a special health card that will give them access to an existing government health insurance scheme, which was introduced in 2015 to provide health cards for those earning less than $2 a day, although trans people will not face that financial test. Prime minister Imran Khan said that his government was “taking responsibility” for trans people, […]

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Belize’s Appeal Courts just Unanimously Ruled that Gay Sex is Legal

A battle against an outdated colonial law has finally come to an end, after the court of appeals in Belize unanimously upheld a 2016 ruling that a ban on gay sex is unconditional. Section 53 of the country’s criminal code, which dubbed same-sex desire as “against the order of nature”, was found to go against five sections of the constitution. Belize, a small Anglophone Caribbean nation tucked into the eastern flank of Guatemala and Mexico, has been a battleground for LGBT rights for more than a decade. It’s been a battle that started in 2010 and ended in 2019, rounding off […]

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Chile Transgender Rights Law Takes Effect

Friday was historic moment for transgender rights in Chile because the country’s Gender Identity Law came into force.  Trans people who are at least 18 and single can now change their name and legal gender with a simple procedure in the country’s Civil Registry. Teenagers who are between 14-18 can do so in court, but the new law does not include trans children and adolescents who are under 14. “Today alone we have 136 people who will complete their procedure throughout Chile,” Justice and Human Rights Minister Hernán Larraín told local media. “There was an invisible reality here; people who […]

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Man Charged with Hate Crime in Death of Transgender Teen

A judge on Thursday set bail at $750,000 for a man charged with a hate crime in the death of a transgender teenager. Prosecutors had asked Clark County Judge David Gregerson to order no bail, or a minimum $6 million bail, for David Bogdanov, of Vancouver, but the judge said the lower amount was appropriate because Bogdanov has no prior criminal history. Bogdanov, 25, was arrested Dec. 17 and charged with second-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Nikki Kuhnhausen. Kuhnhausen disappeared June 6 and her remains were discovered in a remote area of Larch Mountain on Dec. 7 by someone […]

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From Grindr to PrEP: Innovative Sexual Health Program Flourishes in NYC

Giaura Fenris, a transgender woman, was on the dating app Grindr looking for people to chat with and meet when a user whose profile picture was of a cute nurse messaged her. After some pleasantries, however, Fenris realized the hunky health professional wasn’t there for a hookup. She said he asked her “a couple of questions, nothing too invasive” and then revealed he was an employee at a nearby health clinic in Brooklyn, where she lives. He then offered her a sexually transmitted infection testing appointment and help getting health insurance. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s great. Please sign me […]

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Methodist Church To Split Over Same-Sex Marriage

The New York Times reports: Leaders of the United Methodist Church, the second-largest Protestant domination in the nation, announced on Friday a plan that would formally split the church after years of division over same-sex marriage. Under the plan, which would sunder a denomination with 13 million members worldwide, a new “traditionalist Methodist” denomination would be created, and would continue to ban same-sex marriage as well as the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy. A separation in the Methodist church had been anticipated since a contentious general conference in St Louis last February, when 53 percent of church leaders and lay members […]

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UN Official: Past Decade has Seen Human Rights ‘Backlash’

 The past decade has seen a backlash against human rights on every front, especially the rights of women and the LGBT communities, according to a top U.N. human rights official. Andrew Gilmour, the outgoing assistant secretary-general for human rights, said the regression of the past 10 years hasn’t equaled the advances that began in the late 1970s — but it is serious, widespread and regrettable. He pointed to “populist authoritarian nationalists” in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, who he said are taking aim at the most vulnerable groups of society, including Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, Roma, and Mexican immigrants, […]

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