Hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people are rising around the world as politicians target them through legislation and rhetoric.
Anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes have increased in the past five years across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe, according to a new report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, with transgender and gender nonconforming people particularly affected. The spike may in part be attributed to world governments passing anti-LGBTQ+ policies, which has “escalated internationally in tandem with political rhetoric.”
Some of the high profile incidents cited in the report include the mass shooting at the LGBTQ+ bar Club Q in Colorado that left five dead, the 2023 murder of a woman in California who was not LGBTQ+ because she flew a rainbow flag in her store, and the arrests of 20 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front in 2023 who intended to riot at a Pride event in Idaho.
“These threats come from across the spectrum of ideological extremism, but frequently from groups that also pose a threat to the state and are openly opposed to democratic norms,” the report notes.
In the U.S., hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people remained high despite an overall decrease in violent crime. Out of 11,323 single-bias incidents the FBI reported in 2024, 2,278 (17.2 percent) were based on sexual orientation and 527 (4.1 percent) were based on gender identity. Hate crimes based on sexual orientation were the third-largest category, with crimes based on race, ethnicity, or ancestry being first and religiously motivated crimes second. Gender identity bias was the fourth-largest category.
Threats and harassment against school board officials in the U.S. also increased by 170 percent from the previous year in November, 2024 to April, 2025, the ISD report notes. Many of these threats were explicitly motivated by an anti-LGBTQ+ bias, with the perpetrators objecting to age appropriate queer books or content in public schools.
“LGBTQ+ individuals, who gained unprecedented civil rights in previous decades, are now increasingly targeted by online and offline hate, political rhetoric, censorship and legislation,” the report states. “A series of actions have sought to exclude LGBTQ+ people and culture from public life, ranging from book bans to a spread of legislation restricting trans people. In tandem, terror attacks (or the threat of terror attacks), violent extremist activity, and hate crimes targeting LGBTQ+ individuals have increased or remained consistently high since 2020.”
As the federal government remains closed for business, LGBTQ+ community centers and nonprofits with food pantries are preparing to fill the hole that will be left when SNAP benefits end.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest anti-hunger program in the U.S. After it runs out of funds on November 1, over 42 million people will be left wondering where their next meal is coming from. As they turn to food banks, those nonprofits will be left wondering how to provide for the sudden influx of people needing aid.
The “Pride Pantries” at the LGBT Life Center in Virginia already provide assistance to about 650 households a month, or roughly 1,700 people, which amounted to around 285,000 lbs of food distributed in 2024. CEO Stacie Walls suspects that this year it will “definitely be over that based on the trend we’ve had for the last few months.”
“These are individuals and households that are already marginalized and already living close to the edge of not having access to food at all,” Walls tells The Advocate. “It’s not just young families with children. One of the things that may be assumed is that these are individuals who aren’t working, who aren’t trying to contribute. The reality is most of the people who use it are either elderly or are working and just don’t have enough to make it through the month.”
About 15 percent of LGBTQ+ adults — nearly 2.1 million people, including 250,000 transgender individuals and 1.3 million lesbian and bisexual women — received SNAP benefits in the past year, according to a recent report from the Williams Institute, compared to 11 percent of non-LGBTQ+ adults.
Almost 70 percent of LGBTQ+ adults who received SNAP benefits had household incomes under $35,000, 66 percent were living with a disability, and 49 percent had a child under 18 living in their household. Over 90 percent of LGBTQ+ adults who received SNAP were either currently working (42 percent), had worked in the past year (6 percent), were students (8 percent), homemakers (9 percent), retired (5 percent), or were unable to work (21 percent).
“We know individuals that we serve in the queer community already don’t have stable housing, don’t have stable employment, don’t have stable family support that they can depend on,” Walls says. “They need our services. And this federal shutdown is requiring the nonprofits and the community-based organizations in this country to carry this load on behalf of the government.”
The Center’s food pantries are U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) food distribution centers, which are supplemented with frozen meals and donated by local churches or with the Center’s own food drives. It does not receive federal grants, and it does not get the food directly from the USDA — the pantries are maintained through the Center’s general operating funds.
Still, the Trump administration’s drastic cuts to federal aid have impacted all nonprofits, and significantly reduced SNAP before the federal government shut down. The Budget Reconciliation Bill, Donald Trump‘s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” forced an estimated seven million people to either lose their SNAP benefits or see their benefits greatly reduced.
For the Center, there’s “not enough food that comes from the food banks in the USDA program,” Walls says, as “those programs were being cut well before the shutdown started. They’re already operating with less resources than they were a year ago.”
There’s still a way for SNAP benefits to continue even as the government remains shut down. A coalition of 25 states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration demanding that it continue supporting SNAP through November using a contingency fund. Meanwhile, Virginia has announced it will use state money to fund SNAP benefits for its residents on a weekly basis (as opposed to monthly), which other states could also pursue.
Until governments step up, nonprofits will be filling in the holes. For those in need, most LGBTQ+ community centers have food banks, and “most food banks have no eligibility requirements, including ours,” Walls says. That means there’s “no income requirement for people to come to the food,” and for those run by queer organizations, there’s “no proving you’re part of the community.” If people can’t make it to a pantry, they can still try contacting them about possible deliveries.
For those wanting to get involved, Walls stresses that it “doesn’t always mean a cash donation” — these centers rely on volunteers who make the deliveries, which can require some physical labor, but also on those who can manage data collection and administrative work. Any ability could be beneficial, and will be needed even once the federal government reopens.
And when the shutdown ends, nonprofits want their communities to remember who was really there for them in a time of crisis.
“If you’re sitting up in Congress and you have food on your table, and you’re not worrying about where your next meal comes from, I think that you’re not representing your entire community if you’re not recognizing that there are people in every single community that struggle with food insecurity,” Walls says. “You cannot take care of your health, you cannot go to work every day, you can’t do any of that if you’re hungry.”
“It makes you angry because this is something that could have been prevented,” she adds.
For those impacted by food insecurity, visit Feeding America to find a pantry near you.
Hannah Caldas has been banned by World Aquatics for five years for refusing to take part in a gender-verification test, but she says if the suspension is the price she has to pay to “protect my most intimate medical information” then she is “happy to pay”.
Caldas, who also goes by Ana, took part in the World Aquatics Masters Championships in Doha in 2024, finishing first in her age category in the women’s 100m freestyle, and also competed in the Spring Nationals run by US Masters Swimming (USMS) in San Antonio, Texas in April, winning several events.
In response to the Masters Swimming competition, anti-trans Republican governor Ken Paxton launched an investigation into the organisation and claimed in a suit it violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act by allowing trans participation.
Paxton’s office sought $10,000 for each alleged trade practice act violation, according to coverage at the time by the Texas Tribune, and the governor labelled Masters Swimming’s policies “insane” and said it “cowered to radical activists pushing gender warfare”.
In August, USMS declared Caldas is eligible to compete in the female category, with a report into her eligibility stating the “documents the swimmer submitted all demonstrate that she was assigned the female sex at birth and that she identifies as female, although she swam in the male category at USMS events 2002-2004”.
However, World Aquatics have ruled the 48-year-old will be suspended for five years until October 2030 and her swimming results from the previous three years – between June 2022 and October 2024 – have been disqualified after she declined to take a gender verification test.
In a statement attributed to a New York Aquatics press release, Caldas declined because “chromosomal tests are invasive and expensive procedures”.
“My life and privacy have been invaded enough”
“My insurance refuses to cover such a test because it is not medically necessary,” she said. “No US state requires genetic tests for recreational sports events like these.
“Not even US Masters Swimming, the national governing body for recreational adult swimming in the US, demands this for any of its events.”
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Caldas continued: “I understand and accept the consequences of not complying with a World Aquatics investigation.
“But if a five-year suspension is the price I must pay to protect my most intimate medical information, then it’s a price I am happy to pay—for myself, and for every other woman who does not want to submit to highly invasive medical testing just to swim in an older-adult competition.”
She added she had been “swimming in sanctioned events for over 30 years” and is “prepared to let it all go”.
“My life and privacy have been invaded enough,” she explained “It is time to prioritise my health and personal safety.”
Lia Thomas reacts after finishing tied for 5th in the 200 Freestyle finals at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships on 18 March 2022. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty)
Back in 2022 World Aquatics voted to implement rules which ban trans women from competing in elite races if they have undergone any male puberty.
It was under this policy that trans former University of Pennsylvania swimmer swimmer Lia Thomas, who made history in 2022 as the first trans woman to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association swimming championship, was banned by the swimming body.
Thomas filed a legal dispute against World Aquatics policy with the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland in September 2023.
However, the court rejected her claim that the policy was discriminatory.
As reported by the BBC the ruling outlined that Lia Thomas was “simply not entitled to engage with eligibility to compete in WA competitions” as someone who was no longer a member of USA Swimming – “let alone compete in a WA competition” – and hence was “not sufficiently affected” by the rules to be able to challenge them.
World Aquatics welcomed the court’s decision and said the ruling was a “major step forward in our efforts to protect women’s sports”.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to consider whether to hear a challenge that could reopen the question of who can get married. The challenge to marriage equality is being brought by Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who in 2015 defied a federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
As SCOTUSblogreports, the justices will privately discuss Davis’s petition on November 7. Davis, who was briefly jailed a decade ago after citing “God’s authority” in refusing to issue licenses to a gay couple, is now asking the high court not only to reverse her loss in the lower courts but to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision that established a constitutional right to marry for same-sex couples nationwide.
A Gallup poll from May 2024 found that 69 percent of U.S. adults support legal same-sex marriage—close to the record high of 71 percent. Sixty-four percent said same-sex relations are morally acceptable. Support remains strongest among Democrats at 83 percent and independents at 74 percent, while only 46 percent of Republicans back marriage equality, reflecting the enduring partisan divide.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit rejected Davis’s claim that her refusal was protected by religious freedom, ruling that she acted as a government official, not a private citizen. A jury had previously awarded $50,000 each to the couple, David Moore and David Ermold, who were denied a license.
Several members of the court have recently commented on the 2015 marriage equality ruling, offering clues to how they might view Davis’s petition. Justice Clarence Thomas has long urged the court to revisit major decisions, such as Obergefell v. Hodges, arguing in a concurrence in the court’s 2022 Dobbs ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade, that such rulings expand constitutional rights beyond what the framers intended. He and Justice Samuel Alito have both raised concerns that Obergefell diminished protections for people who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett recently noted in an interview with The New York Times that marriage equality now carries “very concrete reliance interest,” meaning millions of Americans have built their lives and legal relationships around it. In her September book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, Barrett described the “rights to marry” as “fundamental,” Newsweekreports.
According to SCOTUSblog, if the justices decline to take up the case, that decision could be announced as soon as November 10. But if they agree to hear it, the case would mark the court’s most direct confrontation with Obergefell in years and a potentially seismic moment for LGBTQ+ rights in the post-Roejudicial era. If the court agrees to hear it, oral arguments could be scheduled for the spring, with a decision possible by June. If the justices decline to take up the case, the lower-court rulings against Davis will stand.
Dallas Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb refused to wear a rainbow armband during a game, Olympian Mollie O’Callaghan pledged to no longer compete if trans swimmer Lia Thomas is allowed to, and singer Sam Smith took issue with conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel, as two individuals, using they/them pronouns.
You might have seen these divisive posts on Facebook, you might even have been outraged by them or shared them, but they’re not real – they are anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation falsely framed as legitimate news content.
You only need to make a cursory Google search to see the claims can be easily disproven.
Sports editor David Evans, writing for Sportscasting, concluded the story about Lamb was fabricated because there is absolutely no source for his alleged quote nor did any reputable sports outlet run coverage on it.
Swimming Australia swiftly issued a public statement declaring the comments attributed to O’Callaghan, and subsequently fellow swimmer Kyle Chalmers, were fake.
Sam Smith has been the subject of online misinformation, claiming they are semibisexual. (Didier Messens/Getty)
As important as it is for those impacted by fabricated content to clarify when a piece of information is absolutely not real, the simple fact is that the truth alone is not enough to rectify the power of fake news in this predominantly digital-first era we live in.
At a time when social media fact-checking and moderation is in decline, algorithmic rules govern our social media feeds – often reinforcing our own unconscious biases and echo chambers – and the lines between reality and fantasy are increasingly being blurred by AI, it is more and more difficult for many people to consistently tell fact from fiction.
A user who viewed such fake anti-LGBTQ+ posts as referenced earlier and instantly believes it to be true, perhaps because of their own prejudices and/or lack of skills at verifying the validity of media, would be unlikely to purposefully seek out any fact-checking. They would not think they need to – they saw it on Facebook, you see, so it must be true.
A more discerning user, however, might instantly be able to tell the post is nothing more than clickbait and/or engagement farming, or at the very least it is misleading and perhaps twisting someone’s original words.
Indeed, there are large swathes of the population who believe they are good at spotting fake news but studies frequently find they are often overconfident and still extremely susceptible to it.
They, as much as those who come to their social media feeds with already prejudiced opinions towards LGBTQ+ folks, are being targeted by bad actors seeking to weaponise anti-LGBTQ+ content to sow division in society.
These bad actors create content with the purpose of reaching average people in a society, honing in on their fears and anxieties about the state and future of their community, outraging them and, ultimately, shifting their opinions on queer rights, legislation enacted by their government, the trustworthiness of their elected leaders and undercutting democracy as a whole.
Misinformation and disinformation – two distinctly different but intertwined concepts – are certainly nothing new and have been a part of the media ecosystem as long as verifiable news has been.
While misinformation refers to the spread of falsehoods via genuine misunderstanding or mistake, disinformation is far more sinister and instead refers to the process by which entirely false information is created, propagated and disseminated on purpose, with the aim of pushing a particular narrative or agenda to achieve a set of political goals.
Anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation, on the other hand, includes the far-right “groomer”conspiracy theory which inherently links LGBTQ+ people to vile child abuse, claims pushed by Donald Trump that school teachers are performing gender-affirming surgeries on pupils in classrooms, and the recent posts above falsely attributed to notable athletes and other famous names.
In recent months, there has been an increasing number of posts appearing on social media – namely Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram – which are stylised to look like the image-based breaking news posts often used by media organisations, despite the fact they are being posted by the furthest thing from a news source.
The posts are usually overlaid with a quote or headline and captioned with some sort of breaking news kicker and the start of what looks like copy for a published news story.
In many cases, the same post – using the same image and caption – is shared across various different pages for maximum reach.
Many of the posts consistently appear to be about trans rights, namely the hot button issue of trans inclusion in sports or specific gender identities, with many referencing trans American swimmer Lia Thomas.
In 2022, Thomas made history as the first trans woman to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association swimming championship. She has since become a key figure in the right’s war against trans athletes.
PinkNews was unable to verify who was behind the Facebook pages which are sharing the current wave of anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation.
Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference
However, similar tactics have been used by bad actors in the past and in national security circles as Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), which the EU defines as a “pattern of behaviour that threatens or has the potential to negatively impact values, procedures and political processes” wherein such activity “often seeks to stoke polarisation and divisions inside and outside the EU while also aiming to undermine the EU’s global standing and ability to pursue its policy objectives and interests”.
The report found that anti-LGBTQ+ FIMI is politically motivated and seeks to harden public opinion in opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, along with sowing divisions in communities and undermining democracy.
“The reach of FIMI cases targeting LGBTIQ+ goes beyond this community,” the report reads. “According to the evidence collected during the investigation, FIMI actors aimed to provoke public outrage not only against named LGBTIQ+ individuals, communities, or organisations – but also against government policies, the concept of democracy as such, and local or geopolitical events.
“While undermining LGBTIQ+ people was a common theme in many of the FIMI cases identified, the overarching narrative in many of them was that the West is in decline.
“By leveraging the narrative of decline, FIMI threat actors attempt to drive a wedge between traditional values and democracies.
“They claim that children need to be protected from LGBTIQ+ people, that LGBTIQ+ people get preferential treatment in sports and other fields – to the detriment of others – and that Western liberal organisations or political groups are demonstrably weak because they surrender to “LGBTIQ+ propaganda”.”
Fake content “keeps debates falsely alive”
Speaking to PinkNews, Dr Dani Madrid-Morales – lecturer in journalism and global communication at the University of Sheffield and co-Lead of the university’s Disinformation Research Cluster, said the style of anti-LGBTQ+ posts currently being shared on Facebook are “a very common approach that different actors use”.
Madrid-Morales noted that whilst political actors certainly use these coordinated strategies for a particular end goal, they are also used by isolated individuals who “benefit economically from creating this content that is highly polarizing [and] that’s likely to get a lot of engagement”.
He went on to explain that the content, of course, has a negative impact on the community it is focused on directly but “more broadly, it sort of keeps these debates sometimes falsely alive in the sense that in the political arena”.
“By keeping these debates really highly active on social media, certain groups benefit from being able to say, ‘oh, look, people are really interested in us talking about this’, because a lot of people on social media are discussing these topics and sometimes it’s very artificially inflated.
“We’ve seen that before with other topics, for example health disinformation and anti-vax campaigners, where they create false information.
“They use amplification techniques on social media to get that widely spread, and then they create the false illusion that’s a topic that people are really concerned about when in reality it’s not.”
On Highway 90, between the shrimp boats and the neon of the casinos, there’s a quiet kind of resistance. The type that pulses under dance floors, tucked behind unmarked doors. Gay bars on theMississippi Gulf Coast don’t wear their pride like big-city clubs. They don’t have rainbow flags stretching across intersections or drag brunches advertised on billboards. They live low to the ground, out of sight but very much alive.
They’ve had to. In places like Biloxi, Gulfport, and D’Iberville, being queer has never been entirely safe. But the bars? They were the closest thing to it.
I remember my firstgay bar like I remember my first kiss: dark, sweaty, full of fear yet still, somehow, holy. It was a place called Sipp’s in Gulfport, wedged between a pawn shop and a seafood restaurant that closed after Katrina. I was nineteen and shaking. My friend Rachel had dragged me there with promises of karaoke and cheap beer. I didn’t know who I was yet, but I knew I wanted to be in a room wheremen danced with men without apology, where drag queens called you “baby” with the weight of both insult and blessing.
Inside, the music was too loud, the drinks too weak, and the air full of something electric. Something like freedom. There were older lesbians at the bar playing pool, a few kids from the local community college doing shots in a circle, and a queen named Miss Mahogany twirling on stage like she was auditioning for the very last chance to be seen.
For those of us growing upqueer in Mississippi, these places weren’t just nightlife. They were sanctuaries. They were family reunions for people whose families no longer spoke to them.
But even inside, the fear never entirely left. Everyone I knew had a code. We scanned parking lots before leaving. We never used real names with strangers. We whispered pronouns like secrets. Because we knew Mississippi didn’t love us. Not really.
And sometimes, it killed us.
An hour from those coast bars, Mercedes Williamson was seventeen in 2015 when she was murdered in Lucedale. Her name wasn’t in the headlines for long. Most papers called her a “teenager from Alabama,” or simply “a murder victim.” Some didn’t mention she wastransgender at all. Others deadnamed her, erasing her even in death.
Her killer was Joshua Brandon Vallum, who belonged to the Latin Kings gang. He knew she was trans; they had been romantically involved. Vallum panicked when other gang members found out. He lured her into the woods, beat her with a hammer, then stabbed her to death. He later admitted he was afraid of what the gang would do to him.
So instead, he did it to her.
Mercedes was the first known victim whose murder was prosecuted under the federalHate Crimes Prevention Act for a crime against a transgender person. That fact—the “first”—should shame us all. She lived just a county away from where I danced under strobe lights, thinking I was safe.
There’s a kind of grief that sits in your throat when you read stories like hers. Not because they’re new, but because they aren’t. Because every queer person in Mississippi carries a list. Whether we say it out loud or not, it’s essential to be aware of their experiences. A mental roll call of names like Mercedes’s. These are names that never made it to the memorials or the national news. Names said in whispers, or not at all.
Thebars tried to drown that grief in beats per minute and dollar shots. But it never left us.
There was a drag show in her Mercedes’s memory at a small club in Biloxi. Someone stapled her photo to the wall near the DJ booth. Miss Mahogany wore black that night and ended her set in tears, raising her arms toward the ceiling and saying: “This one’s for the girls who don’t get to finish becoming.”
The bars have shifted over the years. Just Us Lounge in Biloxi is still open. Joey’s is gone. New bars open under new names with different rules, but the soul remains. Some are quieter now. But they still exist. Which, in Mississippi, is radical.
Because the danger is still here, too.
It’s in the legislation that erases trans healthcare. It’s in thepreacher’s sermon about “God’s design.” It’s in the Facebook comment sections. It’s in the boy at the bar who buys you a drink and asks, after you’ve smiled, if you’re “one of the real ones.”
It’s in the memory of Mercedes, and in the knowledge that justice, when it comes, is too late.
Gay bars in Mississippi don’t promise safety. They never did. What they offer is something more fragile and more powerful: presence. A room where people refuse to disappear. A place where being seen fully, glitteringly, and defiantly is the only requirement for entry.
Sometimes I think of Mercedes walking into a bar like that. Ordering a cranberry vodka. Laughing. RequestingBeyoncé on the jukebox. Telling someone her name. And I wonder how different the world might’ve been if someone had just listened. Believed her.
Loved her loudly.
I don’t go out much these days. The bars are smaller. The music is louder than I remember. But sometimes, on a Friday night, I’ll drive down Highway 90 and pass a bar with the rainbow light barely flickering above the door. And I think of all the people who made that possible. All the ones who didn’t make it. And I’ll whisper their names like a liturgy.
Because we are still here. Because we still dance. Because sometimes, survival looks like a song you only sing in the dark, but you sing it anyway.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
Mark Burr is a queer Korean American poet from Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that USA Powerlifting discriminated against a transgender woman by banning her from women’s competitions.
The court determined in an opinion issued Wednesday that preventing JayCee Cooper from competing in women’s categories constitutes unlawful discrimination under the Minnesota Human Rights Act. Chief Justice Natalie Hudson wrote that USAPL is “not permitted to deny Cooper the full and equal enjoyment of its place of public accommodation because of her transgenderstatus nor engage in business discrimination as to Cooper because of her transgender status.”
“USA Powerlifting’s policy expressly prohibiting transgender women from competing in the women’s division of a powerlifting competition is facially discriminatory and constitutes direct evidence of discrimination based on sexual orientation under the MHRA’s prohibition against discrimination in business and places of public accommodation,” the opinion states.
Cooper filed charges with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in 2019 after she was denied entry into USAPL women’s competitions, asking for it to uphold a “fair standard” that would allow trans athletes the opportunity to compete in the category of their gender identity.
Cooper then filed a lawsuit against USAPL in 2021, accusing the organization of discrimination. The Ramsey County District Court ruled in 2023 that she had indeed been discriminated against, leading to a 2024 ruling from the Minnesota Court of Appeals which affirmed that discrimination against athletes based on gender identity violates the MHRA.
The appeals court sent the case back down to the district court to determine whether or not USAPL rejected Cooper because of her trans identity, or if the organization had a “legitimate business purpose.” While USAPL claimed that the ban was instated to keep competitions fair, research does not indicate trans athletes have a significant competitive advantage.
A comprehensive review of several studies on trans participation in sports under their gender identity also found that trans athletes, post transition, are “more similar to their gender identity.” It noted that both transgender and cisgender athletes show great variations in ability.
“Because there is a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether USA Powerlifting has a legitimate business purpose for excluding transgender women from the women’s division, we affirm … Cooper on her claims of sexual orientation and sex discrimination in business,” Hudson continued in the opinion.
Jess Braverman, Legal Director at Gender Justice, which represented Cooper, said in a statement that “this ruling sends a clear and powerful message: transgender people have a right to enjoy public spaces in Minnesota like sporting events, restaurants, and movie theaters, free from targeted discrimination.”
“This decision is a historic victory for fairness, equity, and the fundamental rights of all Minnesotans. While we celebrate this victory, we remain vigilant,” Braverman continued. “Across the country, anti-trans legislation and legal battles continue to threaten the rights and freedom of trans people. We will continue to fight for a world where everyone can compete, belong, and thrive without fear of discrimination.”
A grassroots organization supporting transgender people from South Asia (often known as Hijrah or Kinnar) has opened a physical location in San Francisco after operating for 6 years without one.
Parivar Bay Area opened its brick-and-mortar doors on October 20, during Diwali. The group’s founder, Indian immigrant Anjali Rimi, was brimming with emotion when she cut the ribbon.
“I’m feeling very grateful,” she told KQED. “We have tried many times to see if we can actually have a place where we can belong, we can be ourselves. And being in this physical space, it gives us that rooting.”
“It also looks at our existence as one that is formidable when we are being erased as human beings,” she added.
The center’s director of strategy, Phanny Lun, said it is a critical time to provide legal advice, leadership training, and other support to transgender immigrants, who are being attacked intersectionally by the current administration.
“It’s knowing that there’s community and support,” Lun said. “That’s a really big thing – and making sure that our community knows that there are services out there for us. Not just doom and gloom.”
Lun said the narratives in the media make it easy for trans people to believe there is no support for them. “That’s not true,” Lun emphasized, adding that immigrants and trans people “have a place and a group that will be of assistance to them.”
While the center focuses on trans immigrants from Southeast Asia, Rimi made it clear Parivar is open to immigrants from any country.
The website says the center is the country’s “first & only Kinnar Hijrah led and empowering organization centering Indian South Asian and Global South transgender, gender-diverse, and intersex (TGNCI) immigrants and asylees” with a goal to “advance social, economic, and legal equity through advocacy, arts, direct support, and leadership development.”
“We reclaim spaces beyond cisnormativity,” the site continues, “confront systemic barriers, and build bold, affirming pathways where our communities thrive locally and globally grounded in dignity, belonging, and pride.”
New research has revealed that transphobia in the UK has left 84 per cent of trans people feeling unsafe.
The YouGov poll, commissioned by the Good Law Project and published last week, revealed that almost two-thirds of transgender and non-binary people in the country had been verbally abused in public, and almost 25 per cent had suffered physical violence.
Fifty-nine per cent of trans people also reported facing barriers in accessing general NHS care.
Trans people’s right to access public spaces has become a major issue in the UK. (Getty)
Conducted in the wake of the UK Supreme Court’s judgement which determined that the 2010 Equality Act’s definition of a woman related to biological sex only, the poll also asked about key issues facing trans people in the UK such as access to public facilities. More than half of those who responded said they had difficulty going into changing rooms, while 49 per cent said the same about using public toilets.
Younger trans people were more found to be more likely to fear accessing certain spaces, with 81 per cent saying they found entering changing rooms difficult.
Respondents were also asked to rate the trustworthiness of UK institutions and political parties. The police were the least trusted, with 76 per cent saying they don’t trust them very much or at all.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has been accused of “deeply disturbing” actions, was found to be distrusted by 66 per cent of transgender men and women. The UK’s human rights regulator has submitted guidance on public facilities provision based on proposed updates which call for the exclusion of trans people from facilities consistent with their gender identity.
Reform UK was the least-trusted political party among trans people, with 98 per cent expressing some or total distrust. Conservatives (96 per cent) and Labour(91 per cent) were not far behind.
Trans people facing ‘abject terror’ in UK, activists claim
Good Law Project’s trans rights lead, Jess O’Thomson, said the poll revealed the stark reality in the UK, with people living in “abject terror”.
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Elaborating, O’Thomson, said: “They are afraid of being harassed, outed and discriminated against. It is appalling that nearly half of trans people report they are now finding basic toilet access difficult, despite the EHRC’s claims that they are protecting people.
“The fact that only 14 per cent of trans people feel safe in this country represents a devastating humanitarian crisis.”
Earlier this month, the European commissioner for human rights, Michael O’Flaherty, expressed concern regarding potential anti-trans laws in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. Any “blanket practices or policies” excluding trans people from gendered spaces would pose significant breaches to international human rights laws, he said.
O’Flaherty recommended drafting “clear guidance on how inclusion of trans people can be achieved across all areas” and how “exclusion can be minimised to situations in which this would be strictly necessary and proportionate, in line with well-established human rights principles.”
An executive from CVS has demanded Gilead lower the prices of a new HIVprevention drug in an email .
Dr. Michelle Guardine, chief medical officer for CVS Caremark, sent an email to PrEP4All, an organization working on PrEP access, that has demanded the pharmacy chain cover the new drug Yeztugo, also known as lenacapavir. In the message, which was posted to social media, the executive said the reason CVS controversially refused to cover the highly effective pharmaceutical was a concern over costs.
“We believe that easy access to PrEP medications is critical for Americans who may be exposed to HIV,” Gourdine wrote. “Our formularies cover several PrEP options, both injectable and oral. For drugs excluded from our standard formularies, exceptions are available when medically justified.”
But she said Gilead has priced Yeztugo at $28,000 within the U.S., even though generic versions of lenacapavir will be sold in other countries for $40.
“It is clear, Gilead can lower its price in the U.S. for Yeztugo, and we continue to call upon them to do so,” the email reads. “It is inappropriate for branded pharmaceutical manufacturers to try to manipulate pre-existing guidelines with clinically similar products that are priced far higher than what’s already on the market.”
That is why CVS Health has not added Yeztugo to its list of recommended PrEP therapies, but the company will cover alternatives, according to Gourdine.
“In increasingly crowded therapy classes of highly effective options, a generics-first policy remains the best approach for affordability and, by extension, health outcomes,” Guardine wrote. “We will continue to urge Gilead to lower the U.S. price for Yeztugo.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in September issued guidelines allowing twice-a-year injections for Yeztugo, and found near 100 percent effectiveness in trials for patients remaining HIV negative. Gilead has touted the drug as a major medical advance.
“Yeztugo represents a transformative scientific advancement in HIV prevention—delivering high efficacy across broad, representative populations in clinical trials and approved as the first and only twice-yearly injectable option in the U.S.,” said Dr. Dietmar Berger, chief medical officer at Gilead Sciences.
“As we strive to reimagine the future of HIV prevention, the CDC’s endorsement of Yeztugo offers healthcare providers, public health leaders and communities clear guidance on an innovation that could help shift the trajectory of the HIV epidemic.”
