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This is Why Some Lesbians Don’t Want Pete Buttigieg to be President

Lesbian political activists in the US are divided over whether they want Pete Buttigieg for president or whether they want a woman, according to Politico. Buttigieg, 37, the openly gay mayor of South Bend in Indiana, has attracted widespread LGBT+ support in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. But interviews with prominent LGBT+ Democrats have shown that there is a “collision of goals and ideals in the community of lesbian political activists this year”, Politico reports. “Mayor Pete, he’s a trailblazer,” said Campbell Spencer, a lesbian and political consultant who worked in the Obama White House and sits on the board of the LGBTQ […]

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Trans Fertility in Conversation

In January of 2019, Japan’s Supreme Court upheld a law requiring trans people to be sterilized in order to legally change their gender. After the ruling, I remember seeing a tweet by the Economist sharing the article,“Should transgender people be sterilised before they are recognised?”. Posing this as a question legitimizes the idea that individual reproductive rights are up for debate. They are not.  I was infuriated, and deeply hurt. The right to reproduce is fundamental. To be told by the state that you must trade your right to have biological children to have your gender legally recognized is a chilling […]

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Trans Prisoner Must be Provided with Gender-confirmation Surgery, Court Rules

A woman in Idaho could be the first transgender inmate to receive gender-confirmation surgery through a court order. A panel of judges ruled on August 23 that Adree Edmo’s gender-confirmation surgery should be provided by Idaho and Corizon, the state’s prison healthcare provider. The surgery is estimated to cost between $20,000 and $30,000. Edmo is serving 10 years for sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy when she was 22 and is scheduled for release in 2021. She is not eligible for parole. The 9th circuit court of appeals ruling agreed with a December 2018 ruling from US District Judge B Lynn […]

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Brazil’s Culture Secretary Resigns over Bolsonaro’s ‘Censorship of LGBT TV Shows’

Brazil’s special secretary of culture, Henrique Medeiros Pires, has stepped down in protest against president Jair Bolsonaro’s censorship of LGBT+ content on TV. Pires announced his resignation to minister of citizenship, Osmar Terra, on Tuesday, August 27. Last week, Bolsonaro halted funding for films with LGBT+ themes, describing such screenplays as “throwing money away”. One of the targets was Transversais, a five-part documentary series about the lives of five transgender people in Brazil. According to Pires, however, the suspended funding was just a “drop of water” in all of the Brazilian government’s efforts to censor culture and artistic freedom. Artforum reported that Pires said: […]

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There’s No Scientific Evidence a ‘Gay Gene’ Exists

Publication of the largest-ever study of the roles of genes in homosexual behavior is fanning the debate over whether being gay is due to genes or environment.  First reported at a genetics conference in 2018, the study found five genetic variants associated with having a same-sex sexual partner (SN: 10/20/18). But those variants, called SNPs, don’t predict people’s sexual behavior, researchers report in the Aug. 30 Science.  “There is no ‘gay gene’ that determines whether someone has same-sex partners,” says Andrea Ganna, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the University of Helsinki.  Family studies have suggested that genetics account […]

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Boyfriend Charged Over Murder of 16th Trans Woman to be Killed in US this Year

Police investigating the murder of Tracy Single, the 16th trans woman of colour killed in the US this year, have arrested a man she had been dating. Joshua Dominic Bourgeois was arrested Friday, August 23, on suspicion of Single’s murder, according to ABC News. The 25-year-old became a suspect after investigators learned he had been in a “dating relationship” with Single, also known as Tracy Williams. Police said she was found dead with a puncture wound and several lacerations in a gas station parking lot in west Houston on July 30. She was 22 years old. It took officials two weeks […]

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Man Charged with Attempted Murder after Stabbing Man in ‘Homophobic Hate Crime’

Emmanuel Dash, 32, has been held on $40,000 bail and could face a maximum of 25 years in prison if convicted, Brooklyn district attorney Eric Gonzalez announced on Wednesday, August 29. Gonzalez said: “This defendant allegedly violated the sanctity and safety of this couple’s home when he showed up at their door spewing hate, then escalated it to a violent assault.” According to the investigation, in the early morning of June 22, a man and his gender non-conforming partner were allegedly harassed by Dash outside their apartment, where he said: “I’m glad I know where you live, because I don’t like […]

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Philadelphia Suicide Throws ‘Transamory’ into the Spotlight

When Maurice “Reese” Willoughby died by suicide last week, it came at the tail end of months of cyberbullying after a video emerged of him defending his girlfriend — a transgender woman named Faith — to a crowd of people who were hurling transphobic and homophobic comments. “You f— what?” shouts the person holding the camera, in a video that racked up millions of views. Willoughby was an aspiring rapper from the Philadelphia area, and initial reports stated that he took his own life because of the bullying seen in the viral video. However his girlfriend, Faith Palmer, said on social […]

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NFL Free Agent Announces He’s Bisexual – and Says ‘Truth is Survival’

“I’m a talented football player, a damn good writer, a loving son, an overbearing brother, a caring friend, a loyal lover, and a bisexual man.” A three-year NFL veteran, now a free agent, says in a revealing and personal 2300 word ESPN interview he is bisexual. Ryan Russell, who played for the Dallas Cowboys for one season and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for two seasons says he just interviewed with an NFL team but he knows that “truth is survival,” and he can no longer live his life in separate worlds – a word he uses 16 times. “My truth is that […]

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The Cayman Islands is Trying to Re-criminalize Same-sex Marriage

The Cayman Islands legalised same-sex marriage exactly five months ago, but a new government appeal could reverse the ruling. Chantelle Day and her partner Vickie Bodden Bush applied for the right to be married in the Cayman Islands, a British territory, but had their application rejected because they are a same-sex couple. They then crowdfunded to fight the decision and, on March 29, the chief justice accepted their arguments, modifying the marriage law with immediate effect to allow same-sex marriage. The appeal from the government opened on Wednesday, August 28. At the start of the three-day hearing, one of the couple’s lawyers, Jonathan Cooper, told Reuters: “Marriage […]

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