On August 30, middle school administrators allegedly pulled a 13-year-old transgender boy out of class so an investigator from the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) could ask him personal questions about his past medical history, gender dysphoria, and past suicide attempt.
The boy — given the pseudonym “Steve Koe” in court documents — was left “shaking and distressed” by the interrogation, The Washington Post reported. Worse yet, the interrogation allegedly occurred after a court told DFPS investigators to stop doing them.
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Now, Koe’s story is a part of supplemental evidence being filed by the LGBTQ-advocacy organizations Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in its lawsuit against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
In February, Abbott ordered DFPS to investigate for child abuse any parents who allow their trans children to access gender-affirming medical care. Abbott based his order on a non-binding opinion from the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton which called such care a form of “child abuse.”
Paxton’s opinions and Abbott’s order both went against the best practices of pediatrics outlined by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychological Association. These organizations consider gender-affirming medical care necessary in many cases, noting it reduces mental anguish and suicide risk among trans youth.
Soon after issuing his order, several DFPS employees quit and some state attorneys refusedto enforce it. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that neither Abbott nor Paxton had the authority to issue the order. Several families with trans children, represented by Lambda Legal and the ACLU also filed a lawsuit against Abbott.
The presiding district judge in the lawsuit issued a temporary restraining order, effectively stopping DFPS’ investigations while the court prepares to consider the order’s legality in December.
Koe’s story — part of supplemental evidence illustrating how state agencies are handling the alleged child abuse cases — suggested that DFPS continued its investigations of trans families, even after the court ordered it to stop. In a May briefing, state government officials noted that the judge’s ruling to temporarily stop the probes “prevents a state agency from carrying out its statutory duty to investigate reported child abuse,” the Postwrote.
Another woman, identified pseudonymously in court documents as Samantha Poe, said her 14-year-old child became the subject of a DFPS abuse investigation even though the child had received no gender-affirming medical care. The child was only “in midst of exploring what a social transition feels like,” Poe said. But DFPS opened an investigation against the child’s family in February. The stress has left the child with “suicidal ideations,” court documents state.
DFPS employees are speaking out about how Abbott’s order circumvented rule-making procedures at the state agency and made it much harder for its employees to help victims of actual abuse.
The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) has just adopted a rule change forbidding transgender people from changing the gender listed on their birth certificates.
The rule change is just the latest in an ongoing legal battle between the DPHHS, the state’s Republican-led legislature, and trans Montanans seeking government documents that display their correct gender identities.
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The DPHHS’ new rule says that a person’s sex listed on a birth certificate can now only be changed if it was incorrectly entered by a “data entry error” or if “the sex of the individual was misidentified on the original certificate and the department receives a correction affidavit and supporting documents, … including a copy of the results of chromosomal, molecular, karyotypic, DNA, or genetic testing that identify the sex of the individual.”
The DPHHS implemented this rule five months after a state judge issued a ruling blocking a state law requiring state residents to undergo a non-specified “surgical procedure” before they could change the gender listed on their birth certificates.
Montana’s Republican-led legislature passed this law, S.B. 280, in April 2021. Previous to the law, the DPHHS said that transgender residents could change the gender marker on their birth certificates if they were intersex, had undergone “a gender transition,” or had a certified court order indicating that their gender had been changed.
In July 2021, two transgender state residents sued the state’s Gov. Greg Gianforte (R), DPHHS, and its director, claiming that S.B. 280 had made it virtually impossible for them to change their birth certificates, thus violating their constitutional right to privacy and due process.
“Denying me an accurate birth certificate places me at risk of embarrassment or even violence every time I am required to present my birth certificate because it incorrectly identifies me as male,” said Amelia Marquez, one of the plaintiffs and a trans woman, in a statement.
S.B. 280 also made it impossible for many trans people to get a corrected birth certificate because such surgery is too expensive for many people, not all trans people want or need gender-affirming genital surgery, and many are not good candidates for it for medical reasons.
The state disagreed and said that S.B. 280 was necessary to maintain accurate birth records.
However, in April 2022, state Judge Michael Moses said that the law’s requirement of an unspecified surgical procedure made it impossible for anyone to follow. The judge then issued a temporary injunction against S.B. 280, essentially blocking it from going into effect.
But the state chapter of the ACLU says that Montana government officials have done nothing to comply with the judge’s order. For instance, a gender change form that DPHHS removed from its website after S.B. 280 was passed still hasn’t returned to the website.
“The fact that the state refuses to revert to the previous processes evidences its lack of respect for the judiciary and utter disregard for the transgender Montanans who seek to have a birth certificate that accurately indicates what they know their sex to be,” the ACLU said in their statement. “If the state continues to violate the preliminary injunction, we will have no choice but to seek relief from the court.”
Montana passed several other anti-LGBTQ laws in 2021, including a ban on transgender girls participating in school sports. The state also passed a law requiring schools to give 48-hours notice to parents if they are going to discuss LGBTQ people.
Texas has reported its first death of a person diagnosed with monkeypox.
The unnamed man lived in Harris County, the state’s largest county, containing Houston and several nearby suburbs. He was also “severely immunocompromised,” the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement issued on Tuesday. The statement provided no other identifying information about the man.
“The case is under investigation to determine what role monkeypox played in the death,” the department wrote.
In a Tuesday White House press briefing, Dr. Jennifer McQuiston with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expressed sympathy for the man’s passing, and said that the CDC will also conduct an inquiry into the conditions that contributed to the man’s death. She also warned against panicking about other possible monkeypox-related deaths.
“I think it’s important to emphasize that deaths due to monkeypox, while possible, remain very rare,” McQuiston said. “In most cases, people are experiencing infection that resolves over time. And there have been very few deaths even recorded globally. Out of over 40,000 cases around the world, only a handful of fatalities have been reported.”
In mid-August, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that there had been 12 deaths of people infected with monkeypox worldwide. Health authorities have urged men who have sex with men (MSM) to get vaccinated against the illness, to reduce sexual partners, and to get tested and quarantine if they experience any symptoms.
The briefing also confirmed that the White House is continuing its strategy of making vaccines and mobile testing facilities available to communities ahead of scheduled public events that are popular with MSM, such as Atlanta Black Pride and Southern Decadence in New Orleans, Louisiana.
“[It’s] a great opportunity to get folks ready for the event in terms of getting some vaccines on the ground early, but also, a great opportunity to reach people who won’t go to a clinic or a vaccine effort, but will feel comfortable in, frankly, less stigmatizing spaces that can occur in the events,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator, said.
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced $11 million in funding to domestically produce the Jynneos smallpox vaccine in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The vaccine is being used to limit monkeypox’s spread.
Previously, the global supply of the vaccine came entirely from a tiny company in Denmark called Bavarian Nordic whose distribution had been hampered by a company’s lab renovation and supply chain disruptions.
President Joe Biden declared a national state of emergency for monkeypox in early August. The WHO also declared monkeypox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in late July.
In late August, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine to be administered intradermally in order to stretch out the supply of available vaccines. The intradermal method could stretch the nation’s vaccine supply fivefold and has been found to be effective when vaccinating against rabies and polio.
Six out, Democratic LGBTQ candidates running for the Florida state legislature all won their primaries this Tuesday. All of them oppose the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
At least 20 states have introduced “Don’t Say Gay” laws this year. The candidates worry that, if left unopposed, Republicans will spread similar laws to harm queer youth and families nationwide with their newfound brand of queerphobia.
Adam Gentle and state Reps. Carlos Guillermo Smith and Michele Rayner are all running for the State House. Eunic Ortiz and Janelle Perez are running for the State Senate. State Sen. Shevrin Jones won his re-election campaign this week. Because he has no Republican competitor, he will retain his Senate seat.
Jones became the first openly LGBTQ Black person elected to the Florida legislature when he was elected in 2020.
On the campaign trail, he shared how publicly coming out as gay at age 30 caused members to leave the south Florida church where his father preaches. Friends stopped talking to Jones, families began making jokes about him behind his back, and even his own father expressed disappointment in his sexuality, he said.
So when he spoke out against the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law — which forbids discussing LGBTQ issues in kindergarten through third-grade classes — Jones noted that it takes courage for young people to be themselves. He also said that LGBTQ issues aren’t being taught in the aforementioned grades, and that state Republicans only passed the law to rally their voting base.
“It’s discriminatory on the surface,” Jones said in an interview. “The problem is coming when young people are being treated in a manner that they now have to question who they are, knowing that they already come from households who do not support them… I think that’s the dangerous part, because LGBTQ+ youth are four times more likely to commit suicide.”
“I think that this is the time for the LGBTQ+ community to see we’re under attack,” he added. “I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if it’s Black people, I don’t care if it’s Indigenous people, I don’t care if it’s the LGBTQ+ community, because we live amongst each other and I feel that when you come for one, you come for all.”
When Michele Rayner first won her election to the state House in 2020, she became the first openly Black queer woman ever elected in Florida at any level.
“I didn’t run for office just to make history,” she said in a video. “I ran because I wanted to make a difference for people.”
“The way that I show up — I’m a Black, gay woman so I think that inspires a lot of folks,” she added in a May 2022 interview.
While she acknowledges that supporters of “Don’t Say Gay” claim it protects children from age-inappropriate discussions of sex, she said, “I don’t want my child not to be able to say that my moms and I went to Disney World or my moms and I went to the beach.”
Meanwhile, Eunic Ortiz, who is running for a state Senate seat, said the ramifications of “Don’t Say Gay” are detrimental to LGBTQ youth.
“We need to be creating solutions for the issues that everyday folks are actually facing,” she said. “Not playing political theater to try to appease a few wealthy donors in the Republican movement that, frankly, are homophobic and hate the LGBTQ community.”
Her district houses St. Petersburg, a city that has received a perfect score for eight years on Human Rights Campaign’s annual Municipal Equality Index for LGBTQ inclusive.
“We have people in the LGBTQ community living in every single county in the state. They are our neighbors and they are our community leaders…. LGBTQ people are the workers that are making our counties and communities run,” she said. “[Floridians] are tired of seeing them take on this cultural war, instead of addressing real issues,” like the environment or rising rents.
Adam Gentle spoke against the law at a political event in early March. At the event, he began his two-minute speech by announcing, “I’m gay.” He then said that schools are often the only safe spaces where LGBTQ youths feel they can safely discuss their queer identities with others.
“Their ability to talk with trusted teachers and administrators is being ripped away from them,” he said.
Rep. Carlos Smith has used his political office to oppose the law. When he debated against the bill in February, he wore a face mask with the word “gay” printed on it in large letters.
In his remarks, he said the bill was “deeply personal” to him as a queer Latino, especially since the law would prevent teachers from discussing important events, like the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting which mostly harmed other queer Latinos.
“A majority of Floridians oppose this proposal that seeks to censor conversations about LGBTQ people in our schools,” he said.
“This bill goes way beyond the text on the page,” he noted. “It sends a terrible message to our youth, that there is something so wrong, so inappropriate, so dangerous about this topic that we have to censor it from classroom discussion…. To all LGBTQ youth — we see you, you’re loved and your lives are worth fighting for!”
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) press secretary Christina Pushaw defended the law by calling its opponents pedophilic “groomers,” Smith responded, “Bigoted attacks like this against LGBTQ people are the worst of the worst…. Literally, it’s the oldest trick in the book against LGBTQ people.”
Smith said that DeSantis only signed the law to advance his political ambitions. He worries about DeSantis’ likelihood of running for president in 2024. “My concern is that he is much smarter and much more calculating than Donald Trump ever was,” he said.
Janelle Perez agrees with Smith. She’s a mother of two, married to a woman, and, if elected, she would be the first LGBTQ parent and the first queer Latina or queer woman ever elected to the Senate.
She worries that the law will subject her own daughter to bullying and prevent her from discussing her own family in school. But even worse, she worries what will happen to when DeSantis runs for president.
“When people in Hollywood, and New York, and in California are looking at the things that Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida, what they need to understand is that Florida is Ron DeSantis’s guinea pig,” she said.
“He is going to run for president in 2024,” she continued. “So if you don’t like what’s happening in Florida, and you don’t want this rhetoric to become the national conversation in 2024, then you need to help us stop it, now. Because it’s going to come after you, and the rest of the country.”
Although DeSantis and other supporters of the law say that it protects parents’ rights to control what their kids are exposed to in schools, Perez said it basically erases queer parents from schools and tells their children to feel ashamed of their families.
“LGBTQ families aren’t going anywhere,” Perez told The Washington Post. “We want to just receive the same rights as every other parent.”
“Republicans in Tallahassee have failed our state and I cannot sit idly by as they make us less safe, restrict our rights and hurt our children,” she added.
The spread of monkeypox is causing men who have sex with men (MSM) to reduce their numbers of sexual partners, according to survey results released this week by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC’s survey found that 48 percent of respondents had reduced their number of sexual partners, 50 had reduced their number of one-night stands, and 49 percent reduced the amount of sex they had with men that they’d met through hookup apps, The Hill reported.
The publication noted that local public health officials have been hesitant to suggest that people practice sexual abstinence as a key approach to avoiding possible exposure, noting that the strategy may be ineffective even though the federal government championed it during the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s.
There are just over 15,000 cases of monkeypox in the U.S. as of Monday, according to the CDC. However, infectious disease experts think this number is likely an undercount. President Joe Biden declared a national state of emergency for monkeypox in early August. The World Health Organization (WHO) also declared monkeypox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in late July.
However, one report suggested that the high case numbers among MSM may have to do with the fact that queer men seek medical treatment more often than heterosexual individuals.
The recent increase in cases nationwide has revealed the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have enough vaccine doses available to meet public demand. To help stretch the current reserve, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved the vaccine to be administered intradermally — that is, into the skin’s superficial layers — rather than through its usual subcutaneous method which injects the vaccine into the fat and connective tissues between the skin and muscular layers.
The intradermal method could stretch the nation’s vaccine supply fivefold and has been found to be effective when vaccinating against rabies and polio.
However, some LGBTQ individuals have criticized the government for what they say is an inadequate response to the outbreak.
“I’ve been really disappointed in our leaders, especially those who were in office during the onslaught of the AIDS crisis, like President [Joe] Biden and Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi,” nonbinary Queer Eye reality TV star Jonathan Van Ness told USA Today.
“Once again, we’re seeing too little action taken until the situation has ballooned out of control,” they added. “If nothing changes, we’ll continue to experience failures like this response, which has been plagued with too few tests, lack of access to treatments, inadequate vaccine supply, and ambiguous guidance.”
“In many ways, I believe it’s been fueled by homophobia and transphobia,” Ness said. “When an outbreak affects mainly men who have sex with men, some portion of our elected legislators will have no incentive to act… which is obviously messed up because people’s lives are at stake, and there are queer people in all 50 states.”
The right-leaning group Parents Defending Education (PDE) has sued the Linn-Mar Community School District of Iowa because its policies protect transgender students from transphobic parents and students. PDE supports banning LGBTQ books and curricula about institutional racism from schools. The organization has also previously partnered with the anti-LGBTQ group Moms for Liberty.
The Linn-Mar Community School District allows students (grades seven and up) to create a “gender support plan.” The plan requires school staff, students, and school documents (including ID cards and yearbooks) to address students by their self-assigned name and gender identity. The policy also allows these students to enter the locker room, bathroom facilities, and sports teams matching their gender identities.
PDE’s lawsuit takes particular issue with part of the policy that withholds details of a student’s gender support plan from a student’s parents, even if they specifically request it. The lawsuit also says that because parents are notified by the school about “lesser matters” like “schoolyard tussles, missing homework, and social events,” the school should notify parents about a kid’s gender identity, otherwise parents won’t be able to properly support their kid.
The lawsuit omits the fact that nearly 50 percent of trans people in the U.S. experienced familial rejection for coming out as trans, something which dramatically increases their likelihood of attempting suicide, becoming addicted to drugs, or experiencing homelessness, according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey.
“Parents are completely and purposefully left in the dark. The Policy plainly violates parents’ rights under the Fourteenth Amendment,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also claims that the district’s policies against transphobic speech – like deadnaming and misgendering – are a violation of students’ First Amendment free speech protections because the policies punish them for “expressing their sincerely held beliefs about biological sex.” The lawsuit omits the fact that misgendering is a form of anti-trans harassment banned by most social media platforms.
“Nearly a century of Supreme Court precedent makes two things clear: parents have a constitutional liberty interest in the care, custody, and control of their children, and students do not abandon their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit’s true biases become apparent, however, in a section describing the complaining parents being represented by PDE.
One of the parents has a middle-school-aged child on the autism spectrum and worries that their kid’s “difficulty distinguishing between male and female characteristics” will get them placed on a gender support plan, pressuring them to identify as trans or nonbinary even though the child may not have a firm grasp of what these identities entail.
Another parent mentioned in the lawsuit worries that their “extremely impressionable” daughter will follow the lead of LGBTQ-affirming teachers and queer classmates and start identifying as trans or nonbinary.
“Some of Parent B’s daughter’s special-needs classes are held in a classroom that also functions as the meeting location for the LGBT student club,” the lawsuit says. “The teacher in that classroom is the faculty advisor for the club. Thus, the classroom walls contain several posters with information about various gender identities, gender ‘social transitions,’ and ‘referred pronouns.’ Parent B’s daughter is extremely impressionable and often follows the lead of other students.”
The lawsuit mentions “research” showing that more teens are identifying as trans due to peer pressure, but it doesn’t actually mention which research it’s referring to. A recent study suggested that worries like this are completely unfounded.
Two other parents represented by PDE say they basically want their kids to be able to misgender and openly disagree with the gender identities of trans kids without facing any consequences. Yet another parent said they didn’t want their kid to be exposed to the acknowledgment of trans people because it will cause the parent “emotional and psychological suffering.”
The lawsuit seeks to block the district’s Gender Support Plan from going into effect, essentially eliminating the district’s support of trans youth, something that will worsen mental health outcomes for trans students in the name of “free speech” and constitutional freedoms.
Joseph Ladapo — Florida’s surgeon general appointed by the state’s anti-LGBTQ Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — is trying to make people distrust the monkeypox vaccine, stating that there is “little data” on it, which is misleading.
Ladapo’s position is hardly surprising considering that he spent years spreading COVID-19 disinformation and echoing DeSantis’ distrust in vaccines.
On Tuesday, DeSantis criticized the Democratic governors of California, Illinois, and New York for declaring states of emergency over monkeypox. The declarations give their governments greater ability to mobilize resources against the virus. (U.S. President Joe Biden declared a national state of emergency for monkeypox on Thursday.)
DeSantis said the governors were using the emergency declarations to stoke fear, control people, and “restrict your freedom.”
Ladapo backed up DeSantis’ words, stating, “It’s just kind of remarkable to see some of the headlines — the headlines that very clearly are trying to make you afraid of monkeypox or fill-in-the-blank. You know, because if you’re not afraid of this there will be something else after that and something else after that.”
“These people are determined to make you afraid and do whatever it is they want you to do. And, um, you know, I hope that more and more people choose not to do that,” he added.
Then after revealing that Florida had distributed 8,500 monkeypox vaccines, Lapado said, “You should know that there’s actually very little data on this vaccine.”
To understand why Lapado’s claim is misleading, a little background is necessary.
As of Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 6,326 monkeypox cases within the United States. The Florida Department of Health shows 525 monkeypox cases statewide, The Florida Phoenix reported.
The Jynneos vaccine is made from a virus that is closely related to, but less harmful than, monkeypox viruses. It does not cause disease in humans and cannot reproduce in human cells.
A study of 400 individuals found that the Jynneos vaccine was as effective against monkeypox as the ACAM2000 smallpox vaccine, which the FDA approved in 2007. The safety of Jynneos was assessed in more than 7,800 individuals who received at least one dose of the vaccine, the FDA said. Previous studies have shown that smallpox vaccines are 85% likely to provide a high level of immunity against monkeypox for up to two years, according to the MIT Technology Review.
Ladapo’s authority on vaccines is highly questionable at best.
In July 2020, near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, he appeared in a 43-minute viral video as part of a group called America’s Frontline Doctors. The group, which had no epidemiologists or immunologists qualified to speak on infectious diseases, promoted the anti-malaria medication hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for COVID-19, even though no studies substantiated that claim. The video also said that face masks do not slow the virus’s spread and that COVID-19 is less deadly than the flu. Both claims are untrue.
The video also featured Dr. Stella Immanuel, a pediatrician and religious minister who gained notoriety in 2020 for her bizarre theories, including that “demonic seed” causes endometriosis and ovarian cysts. Immanuel explained on her church’s website that demons insert sperm into sleeping individuals when they have sex in their dreams.
The doctors’ recorded speech was organized by the Tea Party Patriots, a right-wing group backed by wealthy Republican donors. Lapado has written numerous op-eds repeating the video’s false claims.
The video received millions of views when then-President Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and other right-wing media figures shared it on social media. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter all removed the video for violating their policies on sharing COVID-19 misinformation.
In October 2020, Ladapo signed the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement that called for developing societal herd immunity to COVID-19 through natural infection. In response, 80 medical researchers signed an open letter published in The Lancet, a leading medical journal, calling the declaration’s theory “a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence.”
Florida ranks third among U.S. states with the highest numbers of COVID-19 infections and related deaths. DeSantis has signed orders expanding exemptions for people who don’t want to get vaccinated against COVID-19 vaccines and to prevent schools and local governments from instating face mask mandates in Florida.
Nearly 50 percent of transgender people travel outside of their state of residence to get gender-affirming genital surgeries, according to a new study from Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). The percentage could increase as more states put bans against gender-affirming healthcare for trans people in place, the study’s authors say.
The study, published Wednesday in JAMA Surgery, looked at 771 transgender patients who had a vaginoplasty or phalloplasty between 2007 and 2019. It found that 49 percent left their state of residence to get the procedure. People who lived in southern states were more likely to have to leave their home states in order to receive the surgery.
That’s because there’s a lack of surgeons who provide such care in the South. A 2020 studyfound that just 11 doctors in the South could provide such surgeries, and four of the doctors resided in Florida.
The number of such doctors could decrease as more Southern states ban gender-affirming care for trans youth. Genital surgeries aren’t typically performed on young trans people, but some doctors could choose to locate their practices outside of states with such bans in place because the bans increase doctors’ legal and financial liabilities if they treat young patients.
Of additional concern, the OHSU study found trans people who left their states to get surgery ended up paying up to 50 percent more in out-of-pocket medical expenses than those who were able to obtain surgeries in their home states. This included costs for post-surgical visits and foll0w-up care.
Only one of the 771 patients included in the study had their surgery paid for by their commercial health insurance provider, The Hill noted. This suggests that the life-saving surgical procedures may not be affordable for many trans people. Trans people living in transphobic states will face even greater financial and time costs just to receive gender-affirming care.
“We already knew that traveling for health care requires patients to take time off work and pay for travel and lodging on their own, and that it can make receiving follow-up care from qualified providers who are familiar with each patient’s unique needs challenging,” Jae Downing, the study’s lead author, said in a press release.
“This study helps quantify how severely we need more gender-affirming surgeons,” Geolani Dy, an assistant professor of urology and plastic and reconstructive surgery at OHSU School of Medicine, added.
Sixteen Democrats and one Republican senator have introduced “The Respect for Marriage Act,” a bill that would enshrine same-sex marriage rights into law. The bill could get a House vote as early as this week, but it’s unclear if it will attract the ten Republican votes needed to pass through the Senate.
The bill was created in response to conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ stated wish to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 court decision that legalized marriage equality nationwide.
The Respect for Marriage Act would officially repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the 1996 law that forbade the federal government from legally recognizing same-sex marriages. In its place, the act would require the federal and state governments to recognize same-sex marriages as long as they occurred in states that offer them. If any state refuses to recognize such marriages, the act says, the spouses can sue.
The bill was announced on Monday by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI), Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME). Both Cicilline and Baldwin are members of the LGBTQ community. The bill has the backing of 12 other congressional Democrats including the chairs of the Congressional Democratic, Black, Hispanic, Asian Pacific American, and LGBTQ Equality Caucuses.
Collins was the only Republican to co-sponsor the bill. This fact highlights the difficulty the bill’s sponsors may have in attracting Republican votes in the evenly divided Senate. In order to become law, 10 Republican senators would need to vote in favor of advancing the bill to overcome a guaranteed filibuster. However, mainstream Republicans have begun equating public recognition of LGBTQ people with “grooming” children for pedophilia, making such a bill unsavory to Republicans with the November 2022 midterm elections looming.
“The Respect for Marriage Act will protect same-sex and interracial marriages from any radical or bigoted decision that may come from the current extreme Supreme Court majority,” Cicilline, Chair of the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, said. “I want the LGBTQ+ community to know that this caucus is fighting for them and their right to live freely. This legislation will protect their marriages and ensure they continue to be recognized, even if a future Supreme Court overturns landmark marriage equality decisions.”
“Marriage equality is a constitutional right that has been well established by the Supreme Court as precedent and this freedom should be protected,” Baldwin added. “The bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act will enshrine and protect marriage equality and make sure legal, same-sex and interracial marriages are recognized. I take great pride in being a part of this bipartisan effort to protect the progress we have made on marriage equality, because we cannot allow this freedom and right to be denied.”
“Maine voters legalized same-sex marriages in our state nearly a decade ago, and since Obergefell, all Americans have had the right to marry the person whom they love,” Collins said. “During my time in the Senate, I have been proud to support legislation prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, from strengthening hate crime prevention laws, to repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ to ensuring workplace equality. This bill is another step to promote equality, prevent discrimination, and protect the rights of all Americans.”
In the footnote to the recent Supreme Court decision overturning abortion access nationwide, Justice Thomas wrote that the court should “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [the case that granted the right to contraception] Lawrence [the case that struck down anti-sodomy laws], and Obergefell [the case that legalized marriage equality].”
“We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents,” Thomas wrote. If the court overturns Obergefell, it would essentially leave individual states to decide their own same-sex marriage laws. Nearly 30 states have same-sex marriage bans currently on their books.
The Respect for Marriage Act has the support of LGBTQ and allied national organizations including the ACLU, the Center for American Progress, the Equality Federation, Family Equality, Freedom for All Americans, GLAD, Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Lambda Legal, the National Black Justice Coalition, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Women’s Law Center, and PFLAG.
In a statement, HRC Interim President Joni Madison said, “The Defense of Marriage Act — which excluded legally married same-sex couples from accessing the federal rights, benefits, and obligations of marriage — is a stain upon our nation and deserves to be relegated to the trash bin of History. With the Respect for Marriage Act, Congress has the opportunity to right this wrong by creating an inclusive law that also standardizes the mechanism for evaluating when a marriage should be given federal recognition and affirms that public acts, records, and judicial proceedings should be honored across this country.”
The owners of an Applebee’s franchise restaurant in Plant City, Florida must pay $100,000 to settle claims that it allowed racist and homophobic discrimination against a gay Black employee.
Shortly after Jebriel Teague, a gay Black man, began working as a line cook for the Applebee’s franchise in March 2019, two of his co-workers — Cody Curby and Bobby Hogge — made inappropriate jokes about his sexual orientation, directing comments to him about dildos and anal beads on a near daily basis, and frequently using the n-word as well as slurs like “f**,” “f****t,” and “bi**h,” the complaint states.
Hogge also wore a Confederate flag hat all the time at work, a flag which has since been banned from all U.S. military installations as an emblem of white supremacy.
When Teague told his supervisors about his co-workers’ behavior, his supervisors told him that the men were just joking and that he should ignore it. The harassment continued. Even though Teague’s manager said he would investigate the harassment, no notes on the investigation exist.
When Teague continued to complain about his mistreatment, nearly half of his hours were cut. The lack of hours and continued mistreatment effectively forced him to quit in June 2019, barely three months after he was first employed.
Teague filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC determined that the business’ practices violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.
The EEOC then contacted Neighborhood Restaurant Partners Florida, LLC (NRP), the company that owns the franchise, to correct the discriminatory practices and provide relief to Teague. Eventually, the EEOC sued NRP on Teague’s behalf, filing a suit in Federal District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
In addition to paying $100,000, NRP must also provide the EEOC with reports of what it has done to resolve any reports of harassment.
Evangeline Hawthorne, the EEOC’s Tampa field office director, said that while the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia was a huge step forward — ruling that employees can’t be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation of gender identity because of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — LGBTQ employees still face discrimination in the workplace.
“No employee should have to endure homophobic and racist harassment by co-workers,” said EEOC Regional Attorney Robert E. Weisberg. “Failing to take corrective action to correct a work environment permeated with racial and homophobic slurs, and, even worse, punishing an employee for reporting harassment, will not be tolerated.”
