The online three-day class, “Advancing Excellence in Transgender Health: A Core Course for the Whole Care Team,” had originally been scheduled from Oct. 31 through Nov. 2, but The Harvard Crimsonreported the Fenway Institute-developed course had been postponed.
That came after the National Review contacted the university and questioned how it could legally waive $650 fees for transgender and gender-diverse participants. The outlet said rather than providing an answer to the query, the school said the course had been postponed.
The Crimson said the school’s website afterward stopped listing any cost for the course and eliminated any mention of the fee waivers.
The website now states: “Upcoming dates to be announced soon.” Under pricing, the site mentions a $10 non-refundable processing fee on registrations, but lists no price for the course in question.
A course description remains viewable. That states the curriculum was developed “in response to the high volume of queries from clinicians and health care staff seeking to learn about providing high-quality care for adults, adolescents, and children who are transgender or gender diverse.”
Identifying the class as a conference, it says participants would discuss best clinical practices grounded in research evidence.
“Sessions are led by expert faculty specialized in transgender health-focused research and patient care. The conference is appropriate for all members of health care teams, including physicians, behavioral health care providers, physician assistants, nurses, and other staff,” the website states.
“In addition to didactic presentations, attendees will learn from lived experience panels and have the opportunity to engage in interactive discussions that highlight medical and behavioral health approaches to gender-affirming care, led by experienced clinicians specialized in transgender health.”
The medical has not signaled when the class may be rescheduled. A spokesperson for the institution told The Crimson the course “will be rescheduled for later this academic year.”
“HMS remains committed to ensuring that the courses we accredit comply with applicable laws,” the statement reads.
The Fenway Institute told the outlet it remains committed to the course and ensuring the “vital training reaches as many people as possible.”
This week Brazil is hosting the 4th National Conference on the Rights of LGBTQIA+ People, an ambitious effort to chart new directions for public policy on equality and inclusion. Beyond its national scope, the conference underscores Brazil’s reemergence as a key voice in global equality debates. And as many countries, including in the Global North, roll back support of LGBTQIA+ rights, the conference shows how the Global South can lead in renewing commitment to equality and human rights.
The conference seeks to convene government, civil society, and grassroots actors from across Brazil and shape a new National Plan for the Promotion of Human Rights and Citizenship of LGBTQIA+ People. Discussions are organized around themes of confronting violence, promoting decent work and income generation, advancing intersectionality and internationalization, and adopting a national policy on the rights of LGBTQIA+ people. Together, they reflect a comprehensive vision that links democracy, participation, and equality, and are expected to set the stage for renewed federal commitments and stronger policy implementation in the years ahead.
The first edition of the conference, held in 2008 under the theme “Human Rights and Public Policies: The Path to Ensure the Citizenship of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Travestis, and Transexuals,” was groundbreaking in embedding the rights of LGBTQIA+ people within Brazil’s broader social policy agenda. The second and third editions followed in 2011 and 2016. Former Brazilian President Michel Temer issued a decree to hold the conference, but it never happened. His successor President Jair Bolsonaro revoked the decree and adopted openly hostile rhetoric toward LGBTQIA+ populations.
The conference’s return comes at a pivotal moment. Violence against LGBTQIA+ people remains alarmingly high in Brazil, particularly against trans and gender-diverse people. Legal protections are robust, but enforcement remains a challenge. Meanwhile, lawmakers and gender-critical social movements continue to threaten hard-won rights, including around gender and sexuality educationand gender-affirming care.
The conference can also serve as a model and galvanize other Latin American countries to strengthen their own participation, partnerships, and normative frameworks on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics.
But advancing policy frameworks is only the beginning. Ensuring effective implementation, holding institutions accountable, and translating conference resolutions into equality demand sustained political will and resourcing. Brazil’s renewed engagement offers hope that transformative, inclusive policymaking in the Global South can shape not only national futures but also support the global struggle for human rights.
During a 1971 Cinco De Mayo event at the Los Angeles gay bar The Closet, Richard Adams (a Filipino-American citizen) met Tony Sullivan (an Australian immigrant). The two began dating and fell in love. But because Sullivan entered the U.S. under a tourist visa, he wasn’t legally allowed to stay long-term.
So, in 1975, in Boulder, Colorado, the two men married. At the time, Boulder County Clerk Clela Rorex issued six same-sex marriage licenses with the local state attorney’s understanding that, because the state’s marriage law only specified “any two persons,” it didn’t explicitly forbid same-sex unions.
State Attorney General J.D. MacFarlane soon ordered the practice to stop, saying the licenses were void because they lacked legal standing. However, no Colorado court at the time ruled that the marriages had violated state law. In fact, the couple’s attorney, Lavi Soloway, pointed out that Colorado state law held that the formal opinion of a state attorney general does not carry the same force of law as the state’s pre-existing statutes and would have no impact in a judicial proceeding.
Sullivan petitioned the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for permanent residency, a privilege afforded to the legally married spouses of U.S. citizens. However, INS refused to recognize his marriage license and denied his petition.
You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two fa**ots.U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services’ November 24, 1975 letter to married gay couple Richard Adams and Tony Sullivan
As part of its reasoning, the INS cited the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Boutilier v. INS in which the INS rejected the visa application of Canadian native Clive Michael Boutilier because his homosexual orientation was proof of a “psychopathic personality.”
At the time, the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act listed “sexual deviation” as a legal criterion for denying immigrants entry. In its ruling, the Supreme Court upheld INS’ decision, even though the 1952 law didn’t clearly define what a “psychopathic personality” is. The American Psychiatric Association would later declassify homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973.
A section of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that lists homosexuality as a criterion for refusing immigrants into the United States.
“You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two fa**ots,” the INS’s reply to the couple stated. “[A] marriage between two males is invalid for immigration purposes and cannot be considered a bona fide marital relationship since neither party to the marriage can perform the female functions in marriage.”
The couple then filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Their lawsuit said INS had violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, which guarantees equal treatment under the law to all Americans.
In a 1979 press conference, Soloway noted that many married women, for various reasons, cannot fulfill marital “female functions.” As such, INS’ reasoning would deny federal marriage recognition and legal residence status to all sorts of opposite-sex couples.
“We’re asking the court either to say that this was a lawful marriage under Colorado law and therefore has to be the proper basis for changing immigration status or, if they’re not willing to say that, then we have to get to the question of, is there a violation of the federal guarantee of equal protection of the laws involved in this situation?” Soloway said in the 1979 press conference. “Obviously, that issue has tremendous ramifications, way beyond just the field of immigration.”
A Los Angeles federal judge eventually upheld INS’s decision in a 1985 ruling against Sullivan. He filed an appeal to stop the impending deportation proceedings, stating it would cause “extreme hardship,” but a court denied that petition, too, Esquire reported.
“My belief was if the press knew what we were doing — if we got in the press and stayed in the press —that gave us a measure of safety from the government,” Sullivan told The Washington Post in 2015. “And I think one of the reasons the press decided to be nice to us was because we were so honest.”
In 1985, the couple traveled around Europe for a year and re-entered the U.S. via Mexico in 1986. Afterward, they began speaking publicly as marriage equality advocates. When Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004, Soloway asked if they wanted to wed there, but the couple refused, still convinced of the legitimacy of their Colorado union.
A flyer from the March Committee for Lesbian Gay Rights/Los Angeles, “Your Presence Counts: Demonstrate for the Revision of Immigration Laws Affecting Lesbians and Gays,” February 1980. | Sullivan (Anthony Corbett) v. Immigration and Naturalization Service legal records, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.*
Adams eventually became afflicted with cancer, and by 2012, the couple planned to wed in Washington state. However, before they could do so, Adams died on December 17, 2012, at the age of 65.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually legalized marriage equality nationwide. In an interview that year with Los Angeles’ LGBTQ+ publication The Pride, Sullivan said, “I desperately wish Richard was here with me for this.”
In 2016, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) – one of the agencies that replaced INS in 2003 – granted Sullivan permanent residency status. In 2020, USCIS issued him a work permit and a green card, finally recognizing the legitimacy of his marriage.
Then-USCIS Director Leon Rodriguez also responded to Sullivan’s letter requesting a formal apology for the INS’s insulting letter.
“This agency should never treat any individual with the disrespect shown toward you and Mr. Adams,” Rodriguez wrote. “You have my sincerest apology for the years of hurt caused by the deeply offensive and hateful language used in the November 24, 1975, decision and my deepest condolences on your loss.”
Sullivan died in November 2020, but the couple’s decades-long legal struggle was immortalized in the 2015 documentary Limited Partnership, which is currently available to stream online.
In December 2024, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced that the Boulder County Courthouse had been designated a National Historic Landmark for being the first U.S. site to issue a same-sex marriage license.
On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring there are two sexes determined solely by the kind of reproductive cells the body makes, and that the federal government would recognize nothing else. The order claims to protect the “freedom to express the binary nature of sex” and bans the use of federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” Legal experts have criticized the directive as unconstitutional and are challenging it in the courts.
Yet the order has provided fuel for conservatives, right-wing politicians and activists trying to remove so-called gender ideology from many places in American society, including classrooms. Right-wing activists are pushing for censorship of educational curricula in K-12 schools and in colleges and universities, and they have succeeded in Texas, Florida and other red states.
Why are conservative politicians so determined to control how Americans define sex and understand gender?
As sociologists who research and teach about gender, we know that gender across disciplines is understood to be a complex topic of study, not an ideology. The study of gender represents the kind of free inquiry that allows people to decide for themselves how to live, free of coercion or government control.
In 2004, pushing back on the global women’s and gay rights movements, the Vatican declared in a letter to bishops that men and women are different by nature “not only on the physical level, but also on the psychological and spiritual.” The letter stated that the idea of gender “inspired ideologies” that sanction alternatives to the traditional two-parent family headed by men and treated homosexuality on par with heterosexuality.
Over the following decades, evangelical groups and far-right parties across the globe – from Hungary and Russia to Peru, Brazil and Ghana – have used the language of combating “gender ideology” to counter a host of social policies, including sex education in schools, the legalization of gay marriage and same-sex adoption, reproductive rights and transgender rights.
In the U.S., where the majority of Americans support gay marriageand abortion rights, targeting trans rights has become one of the conservative movement’s galvanizing issues. A flood of state bills not only ban books and discussions of gender, sexuality and race in schools but also criminalize abortion, ban gender-affirming health care and legalize discrimination in housing and employment on religious grounds.
What we talk about when we talk about gender
How gender is researched and taught in universities has become a key target of anti-gender campaigns across the globe, in part because the study of gender raises questions about the universality of traditional social roles and the inequalities that can result from them.
Gender is a focus of inquiry not only in gender studies classes but in literature, sociology, law, government, history, anthropology and cultural geography, among many other fields.
Anti-gender campaigners argue there is nothing to understand about it because gender is given by nature or God. For them, gender is equivalent to sex, which is taken to be straightforward and without exception male or female.
Scientific evidence suggests, however, that sex is not always binary. In biology, sex refers to genes, reproductive organs, hormone systems and observable physical characteristics; different combinations of these lead to variations in sex. Far from straightforward, then, sex is complicated.
And a person’s assigned sex at birth does not always align with their deeply held sense of self – their gender identity.
Gender is both a feature of individual people and a mode of organizing social life. At the individual level, people have a subjective sense of and embody their gender by dressing and behaving in ways that encourage other people to see them as they want to be seen. A man might wear a tie at the office to convey masculinity. People will interact differently with a woman when she is wearing high heels and makeup than when she goes barefaced or dons a swimsuit. Someone who is gender fluid may appear more masculine or feminine at different times and experience prejudice and discrimination. Gender shapes societies through norms and rules on everything from what you wear to how families operate, whom you are allowed to partner with and what jobs you are likely to hold. Whether in the spheres of culture, family, economic or civic life, gender roles and norms intersect with class, race and other social differences and shift across cultures and historical eras. Indigenous societies across the globe have long recognized more than two gender categories, and historical and contemporary examples of gender diversity abound.
A ban on learning about gender would sweep aside all this variation in favor of a homogeneous worldview that deliberately ignores biology, history and lived experience. Denying the diversity of gender makes it easier to impose a conservative worldview and roll back rights.
Education as a political target
Anti-gender campaigners view education as a major battleground in the fight over societal values. In the U.S., conservative efforts to ban the study of gender and sexuality initially centered on K-12 education, exemplified in bills such as Florida’s 2022 “Don’t Say Gay” law. But the movement has also affected colleges and universities.
Texas A&M’s president fired a professor in September 2025 after a student recorded her confrontation with her for discussing gender diversity in a literature course. The student alleged the course was “not legal” because it contradicted “our president’s laws” and her own religious beliefs. The university president also later resigned under pressure.
The same month, the chancellor of the Texas Tech University system, citing Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology,” banned all faculty membersacross its five universities from recognizing “more than two sexes” in any course or classroom.
As the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors reminds its members, faculty have a constitutional right to teach and discuss “all matters related to the subject matter of a class” without interference from administrators, politicians or government officials. Despite this, states led by conservative lawmakers have used a range of tactics to eliminate gender studies programs or curriculum from colleges.
These attacks on universities are attempts to control thought, subdue social movements advocating for change and promote an orthodoxy that upholds those in power.
Restricting rights, eroding democracy
These attacks on education are not only academic matters. They disempower women and marginalized groups that have achieved some legal protection or rights in recent decades. And they contribute to the erosion of democracy.
Authoritarian approaches to governing rely on scapegoating people, policing thought and speech, and punishing dissent. This is true whether it’s Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Donald Trump’s United States. By prohibiting questions and challenges, autocrats gain the power to limit how people think and control their bodies.
It may come as a surprise to people living outside of the U.S. South that the majority of LGBTQ Americans reside in this region. Ask any LGBTQ person living in the coastal U.S. their thoughts about the experiences of queer people living in deep red states like Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, and their reaction is likely to be a combination of fear and sympathy. Sure, some queer people flee the South for more politically and socially progressive states. Then some remain and commit themselves to creating a future that is welcoming and affirming of all people, especially Black queer folks who still choose to call the South home.
Kamilah Kenyatta, Gender/LGBTQ+ Justice Organizer, ACLU Alabama, and TC Caldwell, Executive Director, The Knights Orchid Society (TKO Society), are two of those people. Both Kenyatta and Caldwell served as co-organizers of the inaugural Black Queer Visionaries Summit (BQVS), an offshoot of Black Trans Futures, a five-month, paid organizing and storytelling collaboration between the ACLU of Alabama and TKO Society that provided Black transgender Alabamians with community organizing and storytelling skills to combat anti-trans rhetoric and legislation. BQVS was held in Birmingham over three days in early October.
“The creation of BQVS was our declaration that we have always been here, and we are here to stay,” Kenyatta said. “When our communities are forced to defend our very existence, such as fighting legislative attacks on trans healthcare, book bans that erase our stories, and being confronted with the effects of systemic violence, we are not meant to have time to dream.”
For organizers, BQVS was a tangible, community-first manifestation of each organization’s direct investment in Black LGBTQ communities.
“This [BQVS] was not about reacting to struggle, but rather a proactive and intentional gathering that poured directly into the attendees and their lived realities,” Kenyatta said. “We held space for all of it: the hard conversations, building around and mapping out practices for community care and organizing, the collective processing of grief, the sacred act of archiving our own stories, and most importantly, for radical unapologetic joy.”
ACLU Alabama and TKO Society selected over 60 Black LGBTQ people from across the South for the all-expenses-paid inaugural BQVS cohort. Redefining home as Black queer and transgender Southerners was one of the first visionary assignments facilitators gave to attendees and speakers on day one.
TC Caldwell, Executive Director, The Knights Orchid Society (TKO Society), speaks during the opening session fireside chat of the inaugural Black Queer Visionaries Summit on October 3, 2025, at the Embassy Suites in Birmingham, AL. (Photo: Tosha Gaines Photography)
During the opening fireside chat, Caldwell, a Black transgender man and Montgomery resident, described home as a place “where my nervous system is calm, where I don’t have to pick what bathroom I go to. Where people witness me but don’t perceive me.”
The use of bathrooms that align with one’s gender identity remains a baseless but relentless priority for conservative Alabama politicians at the expense of the dignity and humanity of transgender Alabamians. It was also an issue organizers had to navigate on-site in real time after being forced to designate an additional hotel room for transgender attendees to use the bathroom without fear of questions or confrontation from other hotel guests who might object to their entry into a bathroom they feel safest in.
“Why are we still navigating bathroom use? It was a sharp reminder that we still have a long way to go in the South,” Caldwell said. “Being called to the front desk like children to discuss “the bathroom problem” really showed me that bodily autonomy is a right many of us may never have if we continue to let things like this happen.”
“The worst part is that we anticipated this,” Kenyatta said. “Given the current climate, we thought about safety extensively beforehand and had already secured private suites to ensure a comfortable, judgment-free option was available. We fundamentally believe in letting people use the bathroom that aligns best with their identity and needs, and we never wanted to police that. We are so grateful that folks still resonated with the space, but it certainly undermined the sense of belonging we were working so hard to ensure for our attendees.”
In the last five years, the Alabama Legislature has passed several laws targeting LGBTQ people, including the original “Don’t Say Gay” law passed in 2021 and a ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth the following year, according to reporting from AL.com.
“We get to create what home looks like,” said Jenice Fountain, executive director of The Yellowhammer Fund. “We get to create what healing looks like, and it’s always gonna look different from any mainstream ideal,” she said.
“Home consists of showing up whole,” said Daroneshia Duncan-Boyd, founder and executive director of the Birmingham-based TAKE Resource Center (Transgender Advocates Knowledgeable Empowering).
“People don’t understand our courageous identity. We show up with so much courage,” Duncan-Boyd told GLAAD in a previous interview. “We’re gonna do it, no matter how somebody views us or what anyone says about us. We are who we are and will stand true to what we believe in.”
“Nobody has ever loved me or cared for me the way Black queer and trans people have, but nobody has ever hurt me the way Black queer and trans people have, and that tells me that we understand principle struggle and conflict,” Caldwell said. “We haven’t healed our shit yet because we’re still healing what our parents couldn’t do. We’re still healing what their parents couldn’t do. And now that we have language and access to these things, it’s gonna take us a little more time, but my God, we’re getting there,” they said.
Facilitators centered strategy discussions on how to dismantle various forms of oppression throughout the Summit, but with a lineup of fierce Black drag performers, including Alabama drag legend Bronzie De’Marco, who recently celebrated her 56th year as a drag performer, organizers also made sure to center Black queer joy, and above all else, rest.
“Burnout is a real thing,” Caldwell said. “And these movements can’t move when dead bodies are pushing them.”
For Duncan-Boyd, one of Birmingham’s most respected and effective Black transgender leaders, creating work/life balance, while necessary, isn’t necessarily at the top of the list when the work is personal and Black LGBTQ organizations consistently lack vital resources.
“If you don’t get emotional by doing this work, baby, you’re in the wrong field,” Duncan-Boyd told the BQVS cohort. “You’re not gonna tell me to detach myself from the people that I’m serving that look like me, identify like me, and have been where I’ve been. You’re gonna tell me to detach from them because it’s personal? Hell yeah, it’s personal because I see myself in them.”
With its inaugural success, Kenyatta says BQVS is “proof and a model for what is possible when we stop waiting for permission and start building the futures we deserve, right here in the South.”
And like every Black and queer person who is an ancestor or walking among us, the co-hort, Black LGBTQ people everywhere, including Caldwell, remain resilient in the face of increasing attacks on the community.
Dr. Joshua Baker (center), Youth Program Coordinator for TKO Society and an organizer of the Black Queer Visionaries Summit, revels in Black queer joy with attendees during day two of the inaugural event at the Embassy Suites in Birmingham, AL. (Photo: Tosha Gaines Photography)
“We keep saying the world is on fire, but Lord have mercy, they will not stop us from dancing,” Caldwell said. “They will not stop us from celebrating or from loving one another. Joy is a part of our lineage and we deserve to be fu**ing happy.”
An asylum-seeker who fled anti-LGBTQ+ persecution in Ecuador is now in ICE custody after being arrested as part of a controversial undercover operation targeting men who were allegedly cruising at New York City’s Penn Station.
The man, identified only as Isrrael, told Gothamist this week that he believes federal Amtrak police targeted him because of his appearance and mannerisms.
According to the outlet, which, along with nonprofit news website The City, first reported on the Amtrak Police Department’s sting operation last month, Isrrael was on his way to meet a real estate broker in July when he entered a Penn Station men’s room. In a criminal complaint, police allege that Isrrael exposed himself in “plain view.” But Isrreal told Gothamist that he was merely using a urinal when an undercover cop pinned him against the wall, handcuffed, and arrested him.
Isrrael said he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts at the time, had bleach-blonde hair, and described himself as “very feminine in the way that I walk, that I talk, that I sit.”
“I thought that the U.S. would give me a different opportunity,” he said. “And so I felt very free when I got here. I felt like I could wear my hair the way I wanted to and that no one was judging me and that people were kind to me, and that they treated me well without knowing me.”
According to Gothamist, records show that Isrrael entered the U.S. at a border checkpoint in Hidalgo, Texas, where he applied for asylum. His application reportedly states that in Ecuador, he was harassed and assaulted for being gay and fears getting killed in his home country. He had been in New York City less than a month before he was arrested. Despite being allowed to remain in the U.S. until November 2026 as his asylum claim is processed, Isrrael now faces deportation.
As Gothamist reported last month, among the 200 people arrested in the Amtrak Police Department (APD) cruising crackdown, 20 have been turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That’s because while state and city laws ban New York police from handing detainees over to ICE, as a federal police department, the APD is obligated to check whether detainees have been flagged for deportation proceedings and, if so, alert ICE.
Isrrael’s attorney told Gothamist that charges against him were dropped on October 1, but he remains in custody at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania.
“We’re seeing the intersection of both ICE raids and anti-LGBTQ policing in which they can do both at the same time,” Kevin Nadal, a professor at John Jay College who studies the intersection of LGBTQ+ issues and the criminal justice system, told the outlet.
Nadal also noted that he hasn’t seen this type of enforcement of anti-cruising laws in recent years. As Gothamist reported last month, NYPD data indicates only 12 people were arrested for public lewdness in and around Penn Station during the first five months of 2025. Since June, those arrests have skyrocketed thanks to the APD operation.
Amtrak Deputy Police Chief Martin Conway insisted that ADP officers are “not targeting anybody on the way they look.”
“We’re taking action on behaviors, committing criminal acts,” he told Gothamist. “What they look like has no bearing on that.”
New York Democrats, including Rep. Jerry Nadler, state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Segal, and New York City Council member Erik Bottcher, have reacted to reporting on the ADP arrests with outrage, demanding explanations from Amtrak President Roger Harris and an end to its alleged targeting of gay men.
Gothamist reports that others who were arrested during ADP’s Penn Station bathroom sting, including one NYPD sergeant, have also had their charges dropped in recent weeks. As Jennvine Wong, a supervising attorney at the Cop Accountability Project for the Legal Aid Society One, told the outlet, the sudden rise in arrests and lack of prosecutions suggest that “the enforcement and cause for arrests may be flawed.”
As for Isrrael, he said that “being detained because of my sexuality” has revived past trauma. “I just feel like a crushed insect that cannot defend itself,” he told Gothamist.
Donald Trump‘s Department of Education has unveiled a new policy that will make workers of LGBTQ+ nonprofits ineligible for student loan forgiveness.
The department will publish a rule tomorrow in the Federal Register that would allow the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, to disqualify government and nonprofit employers that do not align the Trump administration’s agenda from participating in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.
While no specific organizations have yet been named publicly as ineligible for PSLF under the rule, LGBTQ+ organizations operating as 501(c)(3) nonprofits are likely to be targeted. Even large legal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union or Lambda Legal working to legally protect gender-affirming care could be misconstrued as the “subsidization of illegal activities.”
“This is a direct and unlawful attack on nurses, teachers, first responders, and public service workers across the country,” Democracy Forward and Protect Borrowers said in a joint statement. “Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program because it is important for our democracy that we support the people who do the hard work to serve our communities.”
“This new rule is a craven attempt to usurp the legislature’s authority in an unconstitutional power grab aimed at punishing people with political views different than the administration’s,” it continued. “In our democracy, the president does not have the authority to overrule Congress. That’s why we will soon see the Trump-Vance administration in court.”
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program forgives the student loans of those who work for federal, state, tribal, or local government, or for non-profit organizations, after they’ve made payments for ten years (120 payments). The program was created as part of the 2007 College Cost Reduction and Access Act and signed into law by President George W. Bush as a way to encourage students to pursue careers in public service.
Trump signed an executive order in March that drastically limits who qualifies for PSLF, preventing forgiveness for people who work at organizations that engage in the supposed “subsidization of illegal activities, including illegal immigration, human smuggling, child trafficking, pervasive damage to public property, and disruption of the public order.”
The order directly singled out organizations that assist trans people, including with gender-affirming care, which it falsely refers to as “child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children.”
More than one-third (35 percent) of LGBTQ+ adults ages 18 to 40 — an estimated 2.9 million — held more than $93.2 billion in federal student loans at the beginning of the Biden Administration, according to a March report from the Williams Institute and the Point Foundation, including over half (51 percent) of trans adults, 36 percent of cisgender LBQ women, and 28 percent of cisgender GBQ men.
Luis Vasquez, Senior Legal Writer for the Human Rights Campaign, told The Advocate that “this rule is simply about bullying LGBTQ+ people and nonprofits and other progressive groups and making life more difficult for those who Donald Trump dislikes.”
“The result is that it would keep talented people from pursuing careers in public service, fearing that they may suddenly lose eligibility for this program on a whim,” Vasquez said. “The administration is once again going beyond what Congress has authorized, pursuing a discriminatory policy without legal basis. This hurts innocent people and should be rescinded immediately.”
Standing at the corner of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn Blvd in Dallas for over 150 years, Oak Lawn United Methodist Church has served Texans of faith, including members of the LGBTQ community. Through its inclusive efforts, the church is a leader in providing resources for all Texans. And through a sign of symbolic strength, the church continues to commit to standing up for equality.
On Oct. 9, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered all decorated crosswalks across the state to be removed within 30 days or risk losing essential funding from the state’s transportation department. The rainbow crosswalks are a major pillar of the community across Houston, Dallas, Austin and more, and have been in place as early as 2017 as a visible and popular show of support for LGBTQ Texans in their hometowns.
In Dallas, the rainbow crosswalk was privately funded by the North Texas LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce through private donations and fundraising efforts in 2020. The crosswalks, which underwent a recent redesign that was also privately funded, are maintained by small business owners across Dallas’ LGBTQ neighborhood in Cedar Springs.
Though City of Dallas officials and local advocates continue to explore options to keep the crosswalks in place, members of the community have already begun to mobilize in response to Abbott’s efforts. Last Saturday, local community leaders, including Cece Cox from Dallas’ Resource Center and out State Representative Venton Jones, organized a rally at the city’s historic intersection of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn to speak out against the removal. On Tuesday morning, Oak Lawn United Methodist Church coordinated its own response.
Robert Garcia Sr. and Robert Garcia Jr., father and son and heads of security at Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, are leading the project to paint the stairs leading up to the church in LGBTQ pride colors. This project, Garcia Jr. said, is an opportunity for the church to show its solidarity and commitment to all Texans of faith, including members of the LGBTQ community.
“We’re trying to show them you can take away the colors here, but you can’t take it away from our church,” Garcia Jr. said.
Garcia Sr., who has family members who attend Sunday services, said the church community welcomes him and his family with open arms. Literally.
“You come in here and you’re family. Gay, straight, trans, Black, white,” Garcia Sr. said. “There are hugs everywhere. We’re not shaking hands here. Just hugs here and open doors.”
Earlier this week, Houston staged a sit-in protest as officials removed the rainbow crosswalk in Houston’s Montrose District. Less than a day later, the crosswalk colors returned, chalked in by residents. In Austin, drag artist and activist Brigitte Bandit and other organizers held a photoshoot on their crosswalk, and with help from Austin’s Fire Department, removed red paint thrown onto the crosswalk by protesters.
Though the crossroads on Cedar Springs may face an uncertain future, for Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, pride will not be erased. No matter what.
“If you like it, great! If you don’t, turn around. Look away,” Garcia Sr. said. “It’s as simple as that.”
Dr. Richard Isay is a modern hero who opened up the world of psychoanalysis to the LGBTQ+ community. He suffered through what we would call conversion therapy today, but after realizing it didn’t help, Isay fought for psychoanalysis to better serve the queer community.
Not only did he open the profession to gay people, but he also convinced psychoanalysts to stop treating queerness as a problem rather than an innate part of being human. And above all, he convinced the most homophobic psychological professional society to not just change its ways but become the first mental health organization to support gay marriage.
Isay was born in 1938 and attended college in the late 1950s. In his book Becoming Gay, Isay describes an infatuation with a fellow student, “Bob,” but felt it was just “a passing phase that would soon be replaced by an equally passionate interest in girls.” He dated women “infrequently” due to a lack of attraction and threw himself into his studies, partially as a cover for not dating.
“Although Bob and I engaged in casual sexual play, I did not label myself ‘homosexual.’ I did view my attraction to him as a serious neurotic problem since I was uncertain that I fell into the category of those ‘normal’ adolescents who simply had occasional thoughts about other boys,” he wrote.
Isay was very interested in the mind. He knew he wanted to be an analyst since his sophomore year of college, according to the 1994 book Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature by Mark Thompson. The interest wasn’t despite his concerns about his “neurosis,” but rather because of it, fearing he had “something terribly wrong.”
It’s important to note that psychoanalysis is different than other forms of psychotherapy. The kind of therapy most people today are familiar with is based on helping the client get out of harmful thought patterns—it’s the realm of CBT and worksheets. Psychoanalysis is the realm of Freud and focuses more on reconciling conflicting desires to change. Psychology Todayuses a helpful swimming metaphor to explain the difference:
“If you have fallen into a pool or were hit hard by an ocean wave, then you will have to overcome your fear of drowning and learn how to swim. Psychotherapists can help with both. Once you see this fear for what it is (a fear, not a fact) and learn to swim, then you will be more capable of managing your life when you find yourself in water again… [but] some people need an approach that helps them face and work with the fact that, at least in part, they don’t want to learn to swim. They may be frightened of moving forward or do not want to do the hard work it would take. Some might even fight to stay where they are because it suits them in some unconscious way to be drowning.”
As part of his training, Isay started seeing an analyst himself. For the next 10 years, he was subjected to a psychoanalytic version of conversion therapy. He said his analyst had figured out the root cause of his homosexuality, and how to “cure” it: “By becoming aware of the childhood fear of my father’s rage over my closeness to my mother, I would become less frightened of the mortal consequences of my heterosexual desire.”
He even married a woman, Jane, who was a book editor with an interest in psychology; the couple had two children. In 1979, he met his future husband, artist Gordon Harrell, and a year later, he came out to Jane.
“He sat down on the bed and said, ‘I have something I need to tell you.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m homosexual.’ At that moment, I saw my future collapse before my eyes. I got the chills and ran to take a hot bath. It gave me time to think and warmed me, but not for long. We spent the night talking and lamenting. On the plane home, we held each other and sobbed and planned. By the time we landed, we had decided to keep his sexual orientation a secret and stay married for the sake of the children,” Jane Isay wrote in a 2011 essay for The New York Times.
While as far as his children and close family knew, he was straight, Isay became a gay activist in his professional life. Isay was involved with the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), and in 1983, he courted controversy with a presentation to the organization titled “New Perspectives on Homosexuality,” where he argued against conversion therapy. He later became APsaA’s first openly gay member, leading some of his colleagues to stop referring patients to him.
In 1986, he wrote an influential book about how psychoanalysts should handle queer patients: Being Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development. Isay was one of the first to argue that, to paraphrase Lady Gaga, baby, we were born this way. Though the American Psychiatric Association (APA) had stopped considering homosexuality a disease in 1973, the APsaA hadn’t caught up yet, and its analysts commonly still treated being gay as a symptom of arrested development and something to be “cured.”
In addition, the APsaA had homophobic policies. When Isay started his career, gay people couldn’t become analysts at all. Even as that changed, queer analysts were still blocked from training others or advancing in the profession, according to the BMJ. In 1991, Isay ended up threatening to sue the APsaA with the help of the ACLU. APsaA backed down, though for years there seemed to be hard feelings between the organization and Isay. In a 1996 New York Timesarticle, Isay called APsaA “one of the most prejudiced and biased institutions in the country — like the CIA, the FBI, and the military.”
In the same article, APsaA member Dr. Roger McKinnon tried not to give Isay credit for making APsaA change its policy.
“Yes and no. Yes, in that he has been an advocate of it. No, in that he has made pejorative depictions that exaggerate the state of affairs,” McKinnon told the Times.
In his personal life, he came out to his children and divorced Jane in 1989. He was one of the first people in New York state to have a legal same-sex marriage when he wed Harrell in 2011, according to Gay Star News. Always ahead of the curve, he was fighting for gay marriage as early as 1989, far before the issue hit the mainstream. And by 1997, the APsaA had come around, supporting same-sex marriage following Isay’s policy proposal, becoming the first mental health organization to do so. In 2019, the APsaA also became the first mental health organization to apologize for its past homophobia.
Isay died of cancer in 2012. His passing received national coverage due to the impact he had on how the medical establishment saw gay life. Isay was proud to be gay, as he told Thompson in Gay Soul: “Being gay is an adventure because there are no guidelines for living our lives. We make them up as we go along. Sometimes I wonder what will happen when society is more accepting. Will we then become bound by convention? Life wouldn’t be as challenging. I like being a renegade.”
Throughout Ali’s childhood in Iraq, he was repeatedly bullied by students and teachers for what he described as his feminine behavior. During his pre-teen and teenage years, men sexually assaulted him, but he couldn’t report it to the police for fear that he’d be thrown into jail for years since Iraq has criminalized homosexuality.
Ali was afraid to come out or talk about these assaults to his family. Although he wasn’t sure if his father knew he was gay, his dad knew other LGBTQ+ people from his travels abroad for work. His father used to tell him, “One day, we’re gonna go to travel to Europe or America and have a good life,” adding, “You’re gonna be safe and you’re gonna be happy.” But then his father died of a heart attack in 2014, and Ali’s abusive older brother (10 years his senior) assumed control of the family, making Ali terrified for his future.
In November 2023, Ali went out with another man for ice cream. While they were out in the rain, five Iraqi police officers suddenly surrounded and arrested them, believing they were romantically involved. Though Ali lied and told the officers they were just cousins, the officers accused them of being prostitutes and slapped, kicked, and hit them in the streets, eventually taking them to the police station.
At the police station, they took Ali’s phone and found images of male models and some men kissing. Police said that the images confirmed Ali’s intent to conduct sex work. They forced him to sign a confession that he had had sex with another man; one officer tried to coerce Ali into performing oral sex; and the police eventually threw him in jail, leaving his family with no clue as to his whereabouts.
In the remote jail, far from the city where Ali lived, he shared a cold, small, crowded cell with about 15 other people, ranging in age from 15 to 60. The police took Ali’s clothes and gave him dirty ones to wear, along with a small blanket.
“Everyone’s sleeping next to each other [on the floor] so close, and it was just so scary,” he told LGBTQ Nation. “Like, I was thinking an animal can’t even live there.” One guard suggested that he tell other inmates that he was arrested for using counterfeit money, because if he admitted he was gay, they might mistreat him.
“I was ultimately released, but I was terrified for my safety because the police had my home address and personal information and had accused me of being gay. I believed I could be imprisoned at any time,” Ali said in a court documentexplaining his situation. “After my arrest, I knew I had to leave the country to survive. I did not feel that I could trust anyone.”
Ali’s experiences mirror that of other LGBTQ+ Middle Easterners who are entrapped, harassed, detained, and tortured under suspicion of being queer. Ali considered taking his own life to escape the persecution, but he couldn’t go through with it.
A second chance, but with the U.S. government working against him
Ali eventually applied for aid under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), a 1980 federal program that has helped millions of refugees fleeing persecution in their home countries to relocate safely in the United States and build lives, families, and businesses.
Refugee processing and resettlement are lengthy processes requiring participation from numerous governmental and nongovernmental entities. Ali, like thousands of refugees, first underwent extensive security checks and referrals before being approved under USRAP and resettling into a single apartment in the United States.
“When I learned I would be resettled in Dallas, I was so excited that I began screaming with happiness and jumping and dancing,” Ali said.
It’s hard to know exactly how many LGBTQ+ people seek asylum in the U.S., but a 2021 study by the Williams Institute estimated that 11,400 LGBTQ+ individuals did so between 2012 and 2017. Approximately 4,385 of them made asylum claims specifically related to their LGBTQ+ status.
I am very concerned that if people back in Iraq learned about my sexual orientation and my interactions with the police, my family would be in danger.Ali, a gay Iraqi refugee currently living in Dallas, Texas
He came to the U.S. with only $120 to his name. Upon arrival, Catholic Charities provided him with a case manager and financial assistance for his first three months, as well as help in finding other programs to assist him in getting a job and obtaining basic necessities. Ali soon applied for a matching grant program that would cover one year of rent and utilities and provide him a monthly allowance, as well as a Refugee Cash Assistance program to provide a monthly stipend for six months and potentially longer.
However, by early February, he was notified that both programs had shut down due to an executive order signed by Donald Trump on January 20, entitled “Realigning the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.” The order claimed that federally funded programs for admitting refugees aren’t in the country’s best interests because they “compromise the availability” of “taxpayer resources” for American citizens.
Trump’s order effectively halted refugee admissions indefinitely, ending USRAP and freezing millions in congressionally appropriated USRAP funding. Trump’s order threw Ali’s life into disarray, stranded thousands of other refugees and separated families who had already been approved under USRAP, and ended the funding of various groups and charities that used federal funding to provide vital survival benefits to refugees.
Ali learned that the case manager helping him secure benefits had been laid off after Trump’s order, and his apartment managers told him he might be evicted if he couldn’t pay the rent. Running out of food, he subsisted on peanut butter.
In response to the chaos, the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) filed Pacito v. Trump on February 10 in the Western District of Washington. The case is a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of the individuals and major resettlement agencies harmed by Trump’s order. It asserts that, by indefinitely ending USRAP, Trump and federal agencies exceeded their lawful authority and violated both federal law – and rulemaking procedures required under the Administrative Procedure Act – as well as the Constitution. The lawsuit seeks to block the order, restore funding, and enforce long-established protections for refugees.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK USA – March 15, 2025: Pro-Immigration sign at a Stop the Cuts rally against DOGE cuts to federal funding in Lower Manhattan. | Shutterstock
In March, a district court agreed with IRAP’s lawsuit and granted a preliminary injunction against Trump’s order, writing, “The results have been harrowing.” The court noted that refugees have few (if any) rights – they have no right to work; limited access to healthcare, housing, or education; and often face discrimination.
Luckily, a charity helped Ali find a job at a local coffee shop, and he also secured a second job at a local mall. He had learned English, he said, by watching old episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, a reality TV show about an ethnically Armenian celebrity family living in the United States. Now, he has made several good friends and has started building a community by attending a local church.
But other individual refugees who had been approved to come to the U.S. under USRAP after years of processing have either been stranded in the U.S. without homes or work or else trapped in their home or host countries as their scheduled flights to the U.S. were abruptly canceled, the district court wrote in its May decision. This has left the refugees vulnerable to physical danger and financial hardship without stable housing, income, basic necessities, alternative paths to refuge, or access to integration services that would help them become self-sufficient.
Furthermore, Trump’s order effectively defunded congressionally mandated resettlement-support services, making them unable to pay their employees and keep their offices open and undermining decades of work building up infrastructures, relationships, and the associated goodwill to facilitate refugee integration in local communities. The order required these services to furlough or lay off hundreds of staff all over the United States, threatening their continued existence.
The courts are trying to restrain Trump, but he has other plans
In April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the federal government a partial emergency stay of the district court’s injunction. While the appeals court has required the government to reinstate resettlement and placement services to refugees for 90 days after their admission into the United States, the court also appointed a magistrate judge to help review individual cases of refugees harmed by Trump’s order, while IRAP’s class action suit continues to be heard by the courts.
“Iraq is a very unsafe place for LGBTQ+ people,” Ali said in his court filing. “When I speak to people back in Iraq, I hide the fact that I’m gay and that the police arrested and abused me for being gay… I am very concerned that if people back in Iraq learned about my sexual orientation and my interactions with the police, my family would be in danger.”
I want to help everyone in my situation because it is difficult for me now, and I know there are other refugees who recently arrived and are struggling even more than me. Ali, a gay Iraqi refugee currently living in Dallas, Texas
Ali also worries that, if he criticizes the Trump Administration for ending USRAP, conservative organizations could somehow locate his name and personal information for harassment or violent retaliation. If his name is made public, it could make it even more difficult for him to find employment or could lead to other kinds of anti-immigrant and anti-gay discrimination.
Ali understands that, in this case, he’s not only representing himself, but thousands of other refugees nationwide and across the world. “I want to help everyone in my situation because it is difficult for me now, and I know there are other refugees who recently arrived and are struggling even more than me.”
The Trump Administration is considering a radical overhaul of USRAP that would continue to largely defund the program and reduce the number of refugees allowed annually into the U.S. from 125,000 (the number established by former President Joe Biden) to 7,500. Trump’s plan would give preferred relocation assistance to English speakers, white South Africans, and Europeans who have left their countries after making anti-immigrant statements or supporting anti-immigrant political parties, The New York Times reported on October 15.
“[Trump’s plan reflects] a preexisting notion… as to who are the true Americans,” said Barbara L. Strack, a former chief of the refugee affairs division at Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. “And they think it’s white people and they think it’s Christians.”
In a statement, IRAP wrote, “These actions reflect a broader pattern of President Trump attempting to strong-arm other branches of government into rubber-stamping his political agenda, sidestepping the checks and balances Congress established to ensure refugee policy serves humanitarian – not partisan- ends. Such departures from established process and principle undermine the United States’ legal obligations and moral leadership, sending a dangerous message that access to refuge may depend on identity rather than need.”
