While the ad is comical, online dating apps continue to provide an uneven experience for trans, nonbinary, and genderfluid users. Most dating websites and smartphone apps didn’t initially offer gender descriptions for these users to authentically present themselves to others. Even with expanded gender presentation options, non-cisgender users say that ignorance and transphobia continue to make online dating feel unsafe.
A brief (incomplete) history of LGBTQ+ online dating
The earliest days of LGBTQ+ online dating harken back to the late 80s and early 90s, when gay men used dial-up modems to connect through bulletin board systems (BBSs) like Backroom and Gay.net. Back then, some lesbians also used an e-mail listserv called Sappho and, later, the website lesbian.org, which contained personals, discussion forums, web links for lesbian-oriented non-profits, and even a lesbian literary journal called Sapphic Ink.
In the early to late 90s, web services like Compuserve and America Online (AOL) provided real-time M4M, W4W, and “transexual” chatrooms where queer love-seekers could connect, talk dirty, and spend hours uploading and downloading pixelated photographs of themselves via very-slow internet connections.
“I think LGBTQ+ people were always really early adopters to online dating,” Michael Kaye, the one-time director of brand marketing and communications for OkCupid told QSaltLake. “Speaking from experience, we are limited to the safe spaces that we have available.”
In the 2000s, some popular heterosexual dating sites like eHarmony didn’t allow gay and lesbian profiles, leaving queer users to look elsewhere like OkCupid, a personal ad site for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and cis-het people that appeared in 2004. OkCupid helped facilitate LGB dating by including a unique feature: It let users choose only to be visible to other queer folks, reducing the likelihood that gay men or lesbian women would receive messages from a bunch of eager and unwitting heterosexuals.
However, the biggest revolution in online dating occurred in 2009 with the advent of Grindr, one of the first third-party apps for Apple’s iPhone. While the app — and similar ones — facilitated countless quick hook-ups and longer-term relationships, the apps weren’t initially inclusive of trans, nonbinary, and gender-fluid users because they offered a limited range of self-identifying gender options and transphobic responses from other cisgender users.
Over time, trans-inclusive apps like Tser appeared. Tser specifically marketed itself as a place where trans people could find community and support, but trans users found that the app still contained transphobia: It categorized cis individuals as “men” and “women,” invalidating trans women and trans men as not “real” women and men. It also used the outdated term “transsexual.”
Expanding gender options is a good start, but not enough
In 2016, Tindr offered users the option of entering any term that best describes their gender identity for display on their profiles. Grindr and Hinge took similar paths by offering more gender description options — like “trans man,” “trans woman,” “non-binary,” “non-conforming” and “queer” — in 2017.
In 2023, eHarmony also began offering an expanded list of genders — including options like “agender,” “bigender,” “genderqueer,” “pangender,” “questioning,” “trans masculine/feminine nonbinary,” and “Two-Spirit.”
The app Bumble also expanded its options to be more inclusive of nonbinary users in 2022, but the app’s “women make the first move” feature — which was created to reduce creepy unwanted advances from men — didn’t allow nonbinary people to message others who identified as women.
“I applaud them for trying to be inclusive, but they’re just completely missing the point,” one user named Kay told NBC News. “I get that their whole shtick is women message first. But if that’s the case, don’t add the gender-inclusive options if you’re going to make nonbinary people feel like they are being squished into a woman or man category.”
Non-cisgender users of Tinder and Hinge also had another issue: after self-identifying as their preferred gender description, the sites would then reductively ask if they’d like to be paired with people who were looking for “men” or women,” the independent cultural site The Skinny reported.
Other users expressed frustration that dating sites often group people by gender rather than by sexuality, making it impossible for searchers to filter out heterosexual users. Others found that, even when apps and sites had inclusive gender options, they had very few non-cisgender users, making the dating “community” feel isolating.
Taking a stand against transphobia
In 2015, when the women’s dating app HER launched, founder Robyn Exton said, “All of the online platforms for women [before 2015] were just reskins of sites built for gay men but turned pink, asking you how much body hair you had, or straight sites that were filled with guys asking you [to have a three-way]. It felt crazy to me, at the time, that no one had truly made a dating product for women.”
HER eventually branded itself as a community and dating app for the FLINTA [female, lesbian, intersex, trans, and agender] community. In 2023, it used Lesbian Visibility Day to send out an announcement to all users reiterating its “no TERFs” policy against transphobes, something it felt was particularly important considering the rise of right-wing anti-trans laws and rhetoric.
“[Trans-exclusionary radical feminists’] harmful and transphobic mentality negates the experiences and identities of our trans and gender non-conforming community, fosters their marginalization, and contributes to discrimination and [harm],” the announcement declared. “Besides being sad, hateful clowns who spew out a lot of misinformation, TERFs are also a genuine threat to the LGBTQIA+ community. And that’s just not going to fly here.”
Despite the announcement, HER still found that its trans, nonbinary, and genderfluid users still faced challenges when using the app, including people expressing trans-exclusionary preferences, misgendering, invasive questions, different forms of fetishization, ignorance about the trans experience, and even other users maliciously reporting their profiles as somehow violating the app’s user policies.
Apps like Grindr, Scruff, and OkCupid have since expanded by allowing users to express the range of genders they’re attracted to, making their profiles easier for non-cis users to find.
Two other platforms, Taimi and Lex, take different approaches by centering non-cis users and not focusing solely on gender as a way of matching users. Taimi lets users say whether they’re looking for trans, intersex, or nonbinary users. Lex is a text-based app that’s primarily for “womxn, trans, genderqueer, intersex, two-spirit and non-binary ppl” where users can describe what kind of people and social interactions they’re craving.
As HER and other dating website and apps figure out how to be more welcoming for non-cis users, HER’s non-cis users said the app would feel safer if it provided more education about trans experiences, better profile filtering, more ways to self-identify one’s gender, better account verification methods, and better safety protocols to prevent and penalize transphobia.
“Even in spaces built for all queer folks, there is much work to be done,” Exton wrote.
LGBTQ+ adults overwhelmingly favor President Joe Biden – and Democrats generally – over former President Donald Trump and Republicans, a new survey has found. But while queer respondents also said the Democratic Party should be doing more to fight anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, the survey also revealed that LGBTQ+ issues aren’t the most important thing on queer voters’ minds leading into the November general elections.
A survey of 873 LGBTQ+ adults conducted by Data for Progress found that 57% of respondents had a favorable view of the Democratic Party and 51% had a favorable view of Biden. Comparatively, only 20% of respondents had a favorable view of the Republican Party and only 22% had a favorable view of Trump.
Generally, Black respondents and women have higher rates of unfavorable views toward Trump and Republicans.
Trans respondents were more likely than cisgender ones to say that the Biden Administration is doing worse than they expected. While 46% of cis respondents said the Biden administration is doing worse than expected, that percentage was 52% for trans respondents.
Approximately 70% percent of LGBTQ+ people who identify as a Democrat, including 81% of Democratic transgender adults, also say the Democratic Party should be doing more to protect queer Americans from anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. The younger the respondent, the more likely they were to feel this way.
However, when asked about the top issues they consider when deciding who to vote for, queer adults ranked LGBTQ+ issues third behind “the economy, jobs, and inflation” and “other.” The response suggests that a majority of LGBTQ+ voters are not “single-issue voters” and may be especially focused on economic issues since LGBTQ+ workers continue to earn about 90 cents for every dollar that cisgender and heterosexual workers earn, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Trans respondents, however, ranked LGBTQ+ issues as the top issue they consider when voting. Approximately 50% ranked queer issues as their top consideration, compared to just 11% of cisgender respondents who did the same. Generally speaking, younger respondents said they consider LGBTQ+ issues more often when voting than older respondents.
Interesting, majorities of LGBTQ+ voters, regardless of age, said they believe that neither the Republican nor the Democratic parties care much about people like them. Despite this, majorities of LGBTQ+ voters also said they felt enthusiastic about voting in the 2024 election. Approximately 61% percent of all respondents expressed such enthusiasm, though that enthusiasm was generally lower among younger voters.
The survey’s findings align with a March 2023 survey that found that LGBTQ+ voters overwhelmingly support Biden. That same survey found that a majority of LGBTQ+ voters said they plan to vote in the 2024 elections and that both LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ voters oppose Republicans’ relentless anti-trans campaign.
“Overall, the reason that LGBTQ people seem to vote in large numbers for Democrats is because, unfortunately, today’s Republican Party has made LGBTQ equality a partisan issue,” Zeke Stokes, a GLAAD consultant, told ABC. “There are LGBTQ people on all places of the ideological perspective when it comes to what we would traditionally consider conservative to liberal in this country. But we’ve got one party, unfortunately, who’s put a target on our backs, in order to appeal to a minority of their base.”
Two transgender women have filed a class-action lawsuit against Montana and several state agencies over the government’s policy forbidding people from changing sex markers on their birth certificates. The inability to change this document puts trans people at risk of discrimination and harassment, the lawsuit’s plaintiffs say.
The lawsuit takes issue with a 2022 rule by the Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) stating that the department would only change gender on birth certificates if an individual’s sex assigned at birth was misidentified or incorrectly recorded. DPHHS officials said they would not change birth certificate gender markers based on “gender transition, gender identity, or change of gender.”
In February 2024, the DPHHS said that any amendations on birth certificates would be subject to the provisions of Senate Bill 458. The bill declares, “In human beings there are exactly two sexes, male and female… The sexes are determined by the biological and genetic indication of male and female without regard to an individuals’ psychological, behavioral, social, or chosen or subjective experience of gender.”
“These two interwoven provisions have incorporated discriminatory definitional principles into Montana law,” the lawsuit states. “SB 458 is scientifically incorrect and improperly seeks to limit the meaning of sex without legal, medical, or scientific justification… sex consists of a complex set of biological, psychological, and social factors, including but not limited to the behavioral or subjective experience of sex.”
Previously, the state’s Senate Bill 280 required people wanting to change the sex designated on their birth certificates to provide proof that their sex had “been changed by surgical procedure.” On April 21, 2022, a state district court blocked SB 280 and ordered DPHHS to reinstate its former procedures, established in 2017, that allowed trans people to change their birth certificates more easily, but DPHHS ignored the court order.
Additionally, the plaintiffs accused the state’s Department of Justice and Attorney General Austin Knudsen of implementing a new rule at the state’s Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) that revoked a previous policy allowing trans people to change the gender marker on their state-issued identification cards and drivers licenses if they had a letter from a doctor stating that the person seeking the change was in, or had completed, the process of changing their sex.
Earlier this year, Knudsen and the state DOJ changed MVD’s policy to only allow people to change gender markers if they presented an amended birth certificate showing the changed gender. Of course, because the state no longer allows trans people to change their birth certificates, trans people must now carry ID cards showing the gender they were assigned at birth, something that often misaligns with their gender identity and expression.
Changing the gender on a birth certificate is the first step to changing gender markers on a person’s government-issued ID documents, including driver’s licenses and passports. If a person’s gender marker doesn’t match their gender identity, it effectively outs a person as trans. This outing can lead to difficulty accessing various services as well as harassment and violence.
The plaintiffs have asked the court for an injunction against the aforementioned policies. The two plaintiffs say that they represent “all transgender people born in Montana who currently want, or who in the future will want” the sex designation on the identity documents changed. They are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Montana, and the law firm Nixon Peabody LLP, The Hill reported.
“After finally being able to live my life openly as the woman I know myself to be, I am frustrated that my birth state, Montana, is forcing me to carry around a birth certificate that incorrectly lists my sex as male,” plaintiff Jessica Kalarchik, a U.S. Army veteran, said in a statement. “I am being forced to use a birth certificate that is inaccurate and that places me at risk of discrimination and harassment whenever I have to present it.”
“I live my life openly as a woman,” Kalarchik added. “I am treated as a woman in my daily life, and there is no reason I should be forced to carry a birth certificate that incorrectly identifies me as male.”
An estimated 3,400 trans individuals above the age of 13 live in Montana, the lawsuit claims.
C.J.*, a volunteer with the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Auxiliary Officer program, says fellow officers and supervisors subjected him to homophobic harassment, including an off-duty assault, vandalism of his departmental locker, and retaliation for complaining about how he was being treated.
Officers in the NYPD’s auxiliary program supplement the regular police force and perform limited duties like foot patrolling, traffic, and parade control. Auxiliary officers get a uniform and a modified badge and aren’t given a gun, pepper spray, or allowed to arrest anyone. Auxiliary officers can also join “special units” that patrol specific transport areas like the subways, highways, or ports.
C.J. moved from Dallas, Texas to New York City in 2012. He worked a full-time job and began volunteering for the NYPD’s auxiliary unit that same year. But because of his negative experiences in the military, he hadn’t planned on coming out in the NYPD.
However, in 2014 the coordinating officer of his auxiliary unit informed Jimenez that his fellow officers all knew he was gay. C.J. didn’t know how they found out or who began telling others, but the outing made him feel very uncomfortable. He decided he wouldn’t “broadcast” his homosexuality at the department, but he could sense that others were gossiping about it.
C.J. told LGBTQ Nation that he endured a lot of mistreatment in the military because of his perceived sexual orientation. He served in the U.S. Army from January 2000 to January 2005, joined the U.S. Army Reserves in 2007, and served in Iraq from 2008 to 2009.
At the time, he didn’t report his mistreatment to his superior officers for fear of being forcibly discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the U.S. military ban on homosexual service members. He retired from the reserves as a Sergeant First Class in June 2022.
However, his old fears about homophobic mistreatment materialized in October 2014 when fellow Auxiliary Officer David Jones* allegedly assaulted him while off-duty. C.J. already disliked Officer Jones, seeing him as a narcissist whom he never saw eye-to-eye with. While the two were being driven from a Halloween party, they got into a drunken verbal argument.
Jones began yelling and belittling C.J., to which C.J. responded, “You’re just pissed off because I’m gay and I have more balls than you, and you haven’t been in Iraq.”
When C.J. exited the vehicle to take a subway home, Jones allegedly shoved him out of the car onto the ground, began kicking and choking him, and called him a “wetb**k,” a “queer,” and a “dirty fa***t.” C.J. said he felt stunned and surprised to see Jones’ “true colors.”
The attack didn’t leave C.J. with any serious injuries, but he felt emotionally shaken. Despite this, he didn’t report the attack because it happened off-duty and because he thought things at the NYPD would be better if he didn’t.
C.J. C.J. wearing his military uniform
In 2015, Jones was transferred to a special auxiliary unit. In November of that same year, C.J. asked Sergeant John Smith*, the coordinator overseeing all auxiliary special units, for a transfer to another special unit patrolling the borough of Queens. C.J. spoke with that unit’s coordinator, Sergeant Tim Jackson*, and went on rides with two unit sergeants who seemed to like him.
But by February 2016, neither Smith nor Jackson had returned C.J.’s calls asking about his transfer. “At that point, I began to realize something wasn’t right,” C.J. told LGBTQ Nation.
By July 2016, C.J. spoke with Detective Robert Brown*, an officer overseeing the special unit Jones had transferred to. C.J. confided about the assault, and Brown reportedly told him that Smith and Jackson weren’t processing his transfer request because he didn’t get along with Jones.
Tired of the stonewalling and mistreatment, C.J. reported Jones’ assault to NYPD Internal Affairs in October 2016. Nine months later, in July 2017, C.J. tried filing another transfer request to the special unit where Jones no longer worked. Brown, the unit head, seemed reluctant to accept C.J.’s transfer request, C.J. said.
In November of that year, C.J. filed a complaint with the NYPD’s Equal Opportunity (EO) office about the lack of responses to his transfer requests. In response, Smith then allegedly ordered C.J. not to contact him or anyone in auxiliary special units anymore. C.J. felt that his order was a retaliation for filing a complaint.
In June 2018, C.J. filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights that he was being retaliated against for his EO complaint. However, C.J. didn’t pursue it because he couldn’t afford a lawyer.
C.J. unsuccessfully filed another transfer request in October 2018. He then filed a Human Rights complaint with the City of New York in September 2019 to address the ongoing stonewalling. The COVID-19 shutdowns of 2020 delayed any handling of his complaint, and it was administratively dismissed in September 2021. Yet again, C.J. chose not to pursue the matter because he couldn’t afford a lawyer.
C.J. C.J. marching at Stonewall 50: World Pride NYC 2019 with the NYC Veterans Alliance
Despite the stonewalling, C.J. continued volunteering with the auxiliary program. However, in December 2020, someone broke into his departmental locker, cutting the lock with bolt cutters. Whoever had broken in had removed his duty belt, baton, flashlight, uniform cap, road guard vest, tie, and other various uniform items that he kept in a blue IKEA bag. The vandal hadn’t touched any items belonging to his locker mate. He later found what he believes to be his broken lock on top of the lockers while deep cleaning the area in May 2023.
“I was hesitant to say anything because I was burned out,” he told LGBTQ Nation. He felt like hehad been targeted for filing complaints and that no one would really care or do anything about the locker break-in. He alerted the EO office about the vandalism, but nothing came of it, just as nothing came of his repeated transfer requests, the most recent of which he filed in late 2023. C.J. says his transfers seem to keep disappearing with no explanation.
C.J. says he has had no disciplinary actions filed against him for any misconduct on the force, meaning that his on-duty behavior doesn’t seem to be the reason for his mistreatment. He feels his experience at the NYPD shows that some in the department are acting like a “good ol’ boys” club at the taxpayers’ expense, basing their workplace decisions on who he gets along with rather than his actual qualifications.
LGBTQ Nation contacted the NYPD for comment but they did not respond by the time of publication.
“Following the locker incident, I have been reluctant to do any auxiliary police patrols because, at this point, I feel very uncomfortable because of everything that has happened,” C.J. told LGBTQ Nation. Despite this, he said he has stayed in the NYPD because he refuses to be scared away.
“NYC prides itself on being a safe haven for LGBTQ [people] and NYPD says it is here to protect the LGBTQ community,” he added. “However, look at what happened to me after I felt safe to open my mouth about a problem in a place that is supposed to be a safe haven — I am getting the runaround.”
C.J. said he missed out on his longevity ceremony and because of his reluctance to do hours due to the runaround. He is telling his story now in hopes that the NYPD might finally live up to its standards and address his ongoing issues, not only for himself but for future officers who might otherwise face similar mistreatment.
“I know from military experience that all it takes is one or two people with ulterior motives … to make things difficult for [someone], especially if they have power over them such as rank or authority,” he said. “My goal isn’t a lawsuit, or another investigation — all I want is the wrong righted.”
*The officer in this story asked LGBTQ Nation to use aliases for fear of violating department policies as his official complaints move through the system.
Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads — has failed to enforce its own policies against anti-transgender hate posts, including posts made by high-profile political influencers and media outlets, according to a newly released report from the LGBTQ+ media advocacy group GLAAD.
GLAAD cataloged numerous posts referring to trans individuals as the slur “tr***y” as well as “mentally ill,” “satanic,” “sexual predators,” pedophiles,” “terrorists,” and “perverts,” The Washington Post reported. One illustrated image showed a group of people stoning a trans-identified person to death; another showed a masked person holding a gun standing on top of a demon painted in the colors of the transgender flag.
Other cataloged posts said that trans people seek to “sexualize, sterilize, and butcher children.” Others misgendered trans celebrities, mocked trans suicide victims, suggested violence against medical professionals offering gender-affirming care, promoted conversion therapy, and called for the “eradication” of trans people.
The posts were made by accounts associated with the right-wing publication The Daily Wire, Gays Against Groomers, Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok, The Babylon Bee, and One Million Moms.
The posts violate Meta’s stated policies against anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech and “dehumanizing speech” that conveys a protected group’s “inferiority,” “subhumanity,” an intent to bully or harass such groups, and statements that a protected group shouldn’t exist.
In a June 2023 open letter facilitated by GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign, over 250 LGBTQ+ celebrities, public figures and allies asked Meta and other social media companies to do more to fight the massive wave of anti-transgender hate on their platforms. The letter was signed by such queer and allied celebrities as Elliot Page, Laverne Cox, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janelle Monáe, Gabrielle Union, Judd Apatow, Ariana Grande, and Jonathan Van Ness.
However, the recent report states that Meta hasn’t done nearly enough to fight the tide. In September 2023, Facebook’s own Oversight Board wrote, “The fundamental issue in this case is not with the policies, but their enforcement. Meta’s repeated failure to take the correct enforcement action, despite multiple signals about … harmful content, leads the Board to conclude the company is not living up to the ideals it has articulated on LGBTQIA+ safety.”
In its statement about its recent report, GLAAD wrote, “Meta itself acknowledges in its public statements and in its own policies that hate speech ‘creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion, and in some cases may promote offline violence.’ Such acknowledgements of its own culpability make Meta’s negligence and refusal to protect people from such hate… all the more shocking.”
Additionally, some LGBTQ+ content creators on Meta have accused the company of limiting their post’s reach because of Meta’s new restrictions on political content, including content involving politicians and queer social issues.
“As the trillion-dollar company’s revenues soar, Meta continues to lay off critical trust and safety teams and increasingly relies on ineffectiveAI systems for content moderation,” GLAAD wrote in its report. “Meta’s enforcement failures have prompted repeatedrebukes and concern from the Oversight Board (the independent body that makes non-binding but precedent-setting content moderation rulings on Meta’s platforms). As Axios and The Verge have documented, some users find that their reports on harmful content are not reviewed at all.”
A group called Love Lives in Seekonk (LLIS) sought to educate their small Massachusetts town about LGBTQ+ issues while building support for queer youth in schools. But soon after the group formed, another resident established a similarly named group to mock them. That resident has since accused LLIS and its supporters of being pedophiles and suggested that violence awaits them if they continue their advocacy.
Some residents of Seekonk, Massachusetts (population 15,700), were angered in late March 2023 when Mildred H. Aitken Elementary School advertised its annual Boy’s Choice mother-son dance with an ad welcoming all boys, students who identify as boys, and non-binary students.
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After right-wingers shared the ad’s wording on social media accounts, the school district received phone calls and online messages threatening protests and violence. One post featured a picture of a bullet and the caption “PEDOCILLIN,” a combination of the word pedophilia and the medication penicillin. The district canceled the $1,500 event hours before it was about to begin and canceled its scheduled Girl’s Choice dance that following April since its flier used similar wording about trans and non-binary students.
Upset by the cancellation, local parent Joe Novinson spoke passionately at a school board meeting, calling out the violence directed against children and the right of queer families to exist without being shot. After hearing his speech, a group of LGBTQ+ supportive parents, called Love Lives in Seekonk (LLIS), recruited Novinson to join their board. He did.
The group, started by local parent Kris Lyons and Pam Godsoe, decided to help raise the $1,500 that the school’s parent-teacher organization (PTO) lost by canceling the dance. So they began selling yard signs and bumper stickers colored like the progress Pride flag with the group’s name printed on them. The group raised nearly the full amount by April 11, 2023 and presented the amount to the PTO in an oversized check.
As the group’s membership grew, it pledged to hold community and educational events for LGBTQ+ youth and their families. LLIS held a September event to paint rocks for the local library’s Kindness Rock Garden, a November Lovesgiving fundraiser, and a February 2024 trivia night. The group, which became a non-profit in August 2023, donated $300 to Seekonk High School’s gay-straight alliance. LLIS also uses its Facebook page to educate residents about LGBTQ+ issues like pronouns, banned books, trans athletes, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, coming out, queer crisis hotlines, and other topics.
“[The events were] really just about bringing the community together,” Novinson told LGBTQ Nation. “There was a lot of pushback initially to our group and people accused us of being online only, that we didn’t have much more than a digital footprint. So we wanted to counter that by holding events in real life. And we’re making our presence here felt, and we’re telling [those who disapproved of us that] we’re not going anywhere.”
image provided by Joe Novinson Joe Novinson (at left) and other members of Love Lives in Seekonk
Around fall 2023, the group also began publishing letters to the editor in the monthly local news magazine, The Seekonk Reporter. Since the magazine often reprints long letters to the editor and gets delivered to each local resident’s mailbox, LLIS thought it’d be a good way to reach older populations who didn’t engage with the group’s Facebook or Instagram pages.
In October 2023, the Reporter published Lyons’ letter introducing LLIS to the community. In November 2023, the news magazine published a letter written by Joe Novinson’s husband and fellow LLIS member Michael about how visible attempts at LGBTQ+ inclusivity aren’t a form of discrimination against Christians or Republicans.
“Just because something makes you as a parent uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s discriminatory in nature,” Michael Novinson’s letter said. “Schools should be opening children’s minds to the world outside of our own family, not building protective bubbles around children to keep new ideas and people you consider undesirable out.”
That’s when the trouble started. A local resident named Kanessa Lynn sent a letter to the Reporter claiming to represent a similarly named group called Luv Lives in Seekonk.
In one letter, Lynn wrote, “Luv Lives in Seekonk had its first ever LuvsGiving fundraiser on November 8th…. All proceeds are going to myself.” She claimed her group sold yard signs and bumper stickers and held a rock painting event, claims that others in the town doubted, considering her letter made it sound like she was just writing a satirical article mocking Love Lives in Seekonk. “I seen how gullible people are,” her letter continued, “and I’m excited to come up with more merchandise to scam, I mean sell to the community!”
Lynn reposted the article in Seekonk Residents, a right-wing Facebook group that reposts screenshots from anti-LGBTQ+ activist Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok X account, the transphobic right-wing group Gays Against Groomers, and videos of far-right activist Charlie Kirk. The group also features various posts opposing transgender athletes, immigrants, DEI efforts, “the war on whites,” and the “COVID vaccine hoax.”
After complaints about Lynn’s letters, The Seekonk Reporter removed LLIS’ and Lynn’s letters from their website.
On October 26, 2023, Michael Novinson said he had a phone conversation with Barbara Georgia, co-owner of The Reporter. According to him, Georgia said the publication reprinted Lynn’s letters so that it wouldn’t be seen as “taking sides.” Georgia also reportedly said that the Reporter didn’t fact-check Lynn’s claims because “Those are her words, not ours” and that the publication had the right to refuse any submissions.
“We have given space to both groups in the past and due to the fact that it has escalated so much in nature we have decided to remain neutral and no longer print either side,” Georgia wrote to Michael Novinson in a January 4, 2024 text message exchange.
Novinson explained to Georgia that, unlike Lynn, his group was created to improve the lives of local queer kids, not “to get in a tit-for-tat with” Lynn or her sham group. “Silencing our voice will only serve to hurt LGBTQ+ youth,” Novinson wrote. Georgia and her husband have previously made donations to Republican candidates and the 2020 re-election campaign of President Donald Trump, according to data from the Federal Election Campaign.
Lynn cheered Georgia’s decision in a January 18 Facebook post in the Seekonk Residents Facebook group, writing, “To them it was a setback, but for all of us in Seekonk it was a victory!!! Now we don’t have to read their useless articles filled with lies.”
In other posts in the same group, she arranged four progressive Pride rainbow flags in the shape of a swastika, misgendered reposted screenshots of the full names of all the members of the LLIS Facebook group, and posted images of her car with two signs on it: one reading, “Love Lives in Seekonk are GROOMERS,” and another reading, “LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE!”
Facebook screenshot A post from Kanessa Lynn in the “Seekonk Residents” Facebook group
At the January 8 meeting of the Seekonk School Committee, Lynn said the LLIS’s members and supporters are “groomers.” She referenced the community upset at the aforementioned “PEDOCILLIN” social media post, saying that it meant that “pedophiles should get a bullet.”
“If you’re not a pedophile or a group that grooms children,” she continued, “then the meme shouldn’t even have affected you.” She then asked if the library or school board if either would be able to handle a neo-Nazi protest if either organization ever held a community drag event at LLIS’s request.
“You might wanna take that to Rehoboth or Attleboro because it’s not going to happen in Seekonk,” she said. “We’re not going to have grown, mentally ill men dressed as women coming to read to little kids in Seekonk — it’s not going to happen, I promise you that…. Leave the kids alone, leave the schools alone… You have a sick obsession with children.”
As proof of LLIS’s obsession, she noted an LLIS Facebook post in which Michael Novinson opposed a proposal to make the school district’s sex education classes opt-in and to let parents opt their child out of any curriculum that contradicts their religious beliefs. In his post, Novinson worried that the policy would reduce the number of students learning about human sexuality and “lead to more STIs and unwanted pregnancies for teenagers in town.”
Beyond the censorship, accusations, and threats, Seekonk is gearing up for the upcoming April 1 townwide elections. Lynn and other town residents are supporting conservative school board candidates who could push school policies banning LGBTQ+ books, curriculum, and trans-inclusive policies. Meanwhile, LLIS’s members continue to speak out at board meetings and inform its Facebook followers members about why LGBTQ+ kids need community support.
“Folks running from the right are making things like gender ideology and critical race theory central components of their campaign,” Michael Novinson said. “In that way, Seekonk mirrors national patterns and a push on the right to make this a culture war.”
Lyons, one of the straight co-founders of LLIS, said she wants to encourage more residents in her town and in neighboring towns to “feel more emboldened to step up and be loud” in support of LGBTQ+ people.
“Two straight moms from Seekonk got together with a bunch of people to take a stand, and you can too.”
Chaya Raichik, who goes by Libs of TikTok online, believes Planet Fitness is currently facing the “most successful boycott since Bud Light” because the gym chain allows trans women to use women’s locker rooms.
But while Raichik and right-wing media outlets have claimed that the boycott caused the gym to lose “$400 million in value” — something Raichik called “a bloodbath” — there’s no proof, either of the boycott or its alleged financial harm to the gym. In fact, Planet Fitness has stood by its trans-inclusive policies and LGBTQ+ support for years despite right-wing backlash.
Raichik alleges that the boycott started because a Planet Fitness in Alaska banned Patricia Silva, an anti-LGBTQ+ woman who photographed and confronted a transgender woman who was using the women’s locker room without harassing anyone. The gym revoked Silva’s membership and filed a police report against her for photographing people in the locker room, something that is specifically forbidden by the gym’s policies.
Raichik noted that the hashtag #BoycottPlanetFitness has been trending on X. However, there’s no proof that any people using the hashtag are current or former Planet Fitness members. Raichik then claimed that Planet Fitness has “a history of making women unsafe in the women’s locker rooms” because in September 2023, an adult assigned male at birth exposed themself to a 15-year-old girl at a Planet Fitness gym in Georgia.
It’s unclear whether the adult claimed to be transgender. Police arrested the adult and Planet Fitness found they had violated the gym’s anti-harassment and locker room modesty policies. The gym’s policies state that if a member “is acting in bad faith and improperly asserts a gender identity, they may be asked to leave and their membership may be terminated.”
Raichik also pointed to a 2015 incident in which the gym revoked a cis woman’s membership after she repeatedly complained to other gym members and staff about a trans woman in the locker room. The trans woman wasn’t harassing anyone, and she was a guest of another gym member.
“In expressing her concerns about the policy, the member in question exhibited behavior that club management deemed inappropriate and disruptive to other members, which is a violation of the membership agreement and as a result her membership was canceled,” Planet Fitness said in a statement about the 2015 incident.
The Planet Fitness chain is widely known for being a self-professed “judgement free zone,” a welcoming environment where people of all types can exercise without fear of intimidation and ridicule from other members. Its gender identity nondiscrimination policy states that members and guests may use all gym facilities based on their sincere self-reported gender identity. The gym has consistently stood up to transphobic members who harass and threaten trans patrons, even as red state legislators ban trans people from sports teams and school facilities.
Additionally, the chain has observed Pride Month, writing, “We strive to create a community where everyone is included and feels like they belong. Not just this month, but every day.” It has also partnered with the It Gets Better Project to help support LGBTQ+ youth.
However, Raichik claimed that the gym chain is now being punished for its progressive policies. She pointed out that, after news spread about the gym banning Silva, the gym’s stock price dropped from $5.3 billion on March 14 to $4.9 billion on March 19, constituting a $400 million loss in value. However, the business’s stock price was already declining before March 11, when reports of Silva’s revoked membership began spreading online.
In fact, a five-year overview of Planet Fitness’ stock price shows that it usually peaks in January — a time of year when many people usually begin new gym memberships to fulfill their New Year’s resolution to get in shape and lose weight — and then declines in the following pre-summer months. Because the business’s overall profitability is determined by monthly memberships (and this alleged boycott started barely two weeks ago), there’s no concrete proof that the loss of the gym’s stock value is connected to member outrage over its trans-inclusive policies.
Fox Business A chart showing Planet Fitness’ stock price over the last month
Raichik claims that Planet Fitness is “covering up membership cancellations” by members upset over its trans-inclusive policies. As proof, she pointed to a single video of a man who said that gym employees refused to note his disagreement with its trans policies on his official cancellation form. Raichik also posted a recording of a Planet Fitness customer service representative allegedly claiming that Silva’s photo of the trans gym member wasn’t taken at a Planet Fitness gym.
Raichik also claimed that Planet Fitness is trying “to groom kids by giving them ‘queer books’ to confuse them about their identity and introduce them to the extremely harmful radical gender ideology.” In actuality, the gym previously partnered with the It Gets Better Project to provide LGBTQ+-themed books to gay-straight alliances in schools. Raichik and other right-wingers constantly claim that any mention of LGBTQ+ issues to kids is an attempt to “groom” them.
She also blamed Planet Fitness for allowing a registered sex offender, Adam Yindana, to join one of their gyms. However, she didn’t mention that Yindana joined the gym using an alias, that he isn’t trans and never said he was, and that he wasn’t harassing anyone in the women’s locker room. The gym canceled his membership and assisted police with their investigation when a gym member accused Yindana of following her around the facility and recording her with his smartphone.
LGBTQ Nation reached out to Planet Fitness for a comment regarding Raichik’s claims.
Davids is currently fighting to win her fourth term this November — a tough battle, as her district’s demographics have changed to become less Democratic-leaning, andRepublican opponents are lining up to challenge her. But she has also been fighting another very important battle: the fight for increased access to mental health care.
Davids has co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to fund mental health programs in local clinics, schools, and law enforcement centers, as well as a bipartisan bill tohelp people recovering from substance abuse reenter the workforce. She has also supported dozens of bills to bring down the costs of health care and prescription drugs and introducedthe Pride in Mental Health Act — legislation that would improve data collection and resources for at-risk queer youth.
For Davids, mental health strikes an especially personal chord since she’s part of two distinct groups with disproportionately high rates of suicide: Native Americans and young LGBTQ+ people. Native Americans die from suicide at higher rates than any other racial or ethnic group, according to a 2022 reportfrom the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Another recent CDC study found that LGBTQ+ young people are over four times more likely to attempt suicide than their cisgender and heterosexual peers.
Davids believes increasing access to mental health care isn’t merely “putting a Band-Aid on a broken arm.” Rather, she sees such access as an integral part of improving people’s overall emotional well-being.
“I think it’s like an all-of the-above approach, where we do need to be thinking about the most severe and sometimes acute issues happening around mental health or mental illness,” Davids says, “but we also need to be doing that long-term work that helps prevent things like bullying, helps prevent things like young people who are in the foster care system not having anyone around who understands, who has never gotten the training to understand what they’re going through as part of the LGBTQ+ community.”
“If what we’re doing over time is helping people understand how to cope, how to recognize the impacts of trauma, or help people interact with people who are experiencing those things,” she continues, “then I wouldn’t call that a Band-Aid. I would call it the necessary work for keeping people healthy and safe.”
Because many Americans have loved ones who have struggled with mental health, she’ll often watch her conservative colleagues’ committee hearings or press conferences to listen for an opening to reach across the aisle and engage them on this issue.
“There are folks who care about youth mental health and emotional well-being in a way that it probably just doesn’t cross their mind to think about the LGBTQ+ impact,” she says. Some of her conservative colleagues are “often surprised” when they find out about the aforementioned CDC statistics. These discussions can sometimes lead to larger conversations about LGBTQ+ civil rights.
Praising David’s bill to improve data collection on the mental health of queer youth, Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of the LGBTQ+ student advocacy organization GLSEN, said, “Being excluded, erased, and further stigmatized — by discriminatory policies, peers, and by adults who should protect young people — harms LGBTQI+ youth’s mental health and overall well-being.”
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Davids says, “A lot of times, [my conservative colleagues] might not be aware of how often discriminatory practices [against LGBTQ+ people] are allowed under the law. It’s not right, and it’s not fair, and it doesn’t align with the values that, as Americans, we want to see and that we’re all constantly striving for,” she says.
The mental health disparities facing the LGBTQ+ community are just one part of the institutionalized discrimination experienced by queer people.
Studies suggest that when queer people have the same legal protections as their cisgender and heterosexual peers, their mental health improves, alleviating the anxiety and depression that otherwise accompany worries about discrimination. When Davids points out to colleagues that people can be rejected from a jurybased on their sexual orientation or denied housing based on their gender identity, she notes that she’s not trying to give “special rights” to people based on their unique identities — she’s just trying to make sure that all individuals are afforded the same rights, protections, and responsibilities as other citizens under the law.
Questioning the 2024 election’s long-term impact
The NYC Protect the Results Coalition gathered for a rally and march to demand that every vote be counted before a state can be “called” for a candidate, after Trump’s alleged intention to claim a victory before the results were tabulated. November 4, 2020. Photo by Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images.
Since arriving in Congress, Davids has noticed Republicans increasingly targeting LGBTQ+ rights amid their attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Last year, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and members of the far-right Freedom Caucus demanded the removal of LGBTQ+-inclusive DEI policies from 12 appropriation bills to effectively fund all U.S. government agencies. She and other Republicans claimed that policies are “woke,” are anti-American, waste taxpayer money, and make the nation less safe.
Similar criticisms have especially accelerated now that it’s an election year.
“There’s a shift, we’ve seen it, and we’re also seeing it in state legislatures that there’s a ‘two steps forward, one step back,’ ” she says. “There’s a ‘one step back’ happening in quite a few places on a number of different types of issues.”
“We have responsibilities to the people who come after us, but also to the people who came before us.”Rep. Sharice Davids
Polls have indicated that voters aren’t enthusiastic about a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Davids urges voters to not only consider the immediate issues facing their communities but also the long-term impacts of the policies we support, something her Native American identity as a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation has taught her to do.
“I ask questions about the long-term impacts — not for political purposes, but because it’s just kind of how I think about things,” she says. “We have responsibilities to our family, to our community, to our tribe; we have responsibilities to our country; and we have responsibilities to the people who come after us, but also to the people who came before us.”
Editor’s note: This article mentions suicide. If you need to talk to someone now, call the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860. It’s staffed by trans people, for trans people. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for LGBTQ youth at 866-488-7386 or text “start” to 678-678. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
Google has partly disabled its artificial intelligence (AI) image generator Gemini after the software produced racially diverse and historically inaccurate images of Black Vikings, female popes, and people of color as the United States “founding fathers.”
Gemini produced these images without being prompted by users, leading right-wing critics to blast the software as “woke.” However, the incident revealed not only a technical problem but a “philosophical” one about how AI and other tech should address biases against marginalized groups.
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“It’s clear that this feature missed the mark. Some of the images generated are inaccurate or even offensive,” Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan wrote in a company blog post addressing the matter.
He explained that Google tried to ensure that Gemini didn’t “fall into some of the traps we’ve seen in the past with image generation technology,” such as creating violent or sexually explicit images, depictions of real people, or images that only show people of just one type of ethnicity, gender, or other characteristics.
“Our tuning to ensure that Gemini showed a range of people failed to account for cases that should clearly not show a range,” Raghavan wrote. “[This] led the model to overcompensate in some cases … leading to images that were embarrassing and wrong.”
He then said that Gemini will be improved “significantly” and receive “extensive testing” before generating more images of people. But he warned that AI is imperfect and may always “generate embarrassing, inaccurate, or offensive results.”
While some right-wing web commenters, like transphobic billionaire Elon Musk, accused Gemini of being “woke,” this sort of problem isn’t unique to Google. Sam Altman, the gay CEO of OpenAI, acknowledged in 2023 that his company’s technology “has shortcomings around bias” after its AI-driven ChatGPT software generated racist and sexist responses. Numerous kinds of AI-driven software have also exhibited bias against Black people and women, resulting in these groups being falsely labeled as criminals, denied medical care, or rejected from jobs.
Such bias in AI tech occurs because the technology makes its decisions based on massive pre-existing data sets. Since such data often skews in favor of or against a certain demographic, the technology will often reflect this bias as a result. For example, some AI-driven image generators, like Stable Diffusion, create racist and sexist images based on Western stereotypes that depict leaders as male, attractive people as thin and white, criminals and social service recipients as Black, and families and spouses as different-sex couples.
“You ask the AI to generate an image of a CEO. Lo and behold, it’s a man,” Voxtech writer Sigal Samuel wrote, explaining the dilemma of AI bias. “On the one hand, you live in a world where the vast majority of CEOs are male, so maybe your tool should accurately reflect that, creating images of man after man after man. On the other hand, that may reinforce gender stereotypes that keep women out of the C-suite. And there’s nothing in the definition of ‘CEO’ that specifies a gender. So should you instead make a tool that shows a balanced mix, even if it’s not a mix that reflects today’s reality?”
Resolving such biases isn’t easy and often requires a multi-pronged approach, Samuel explains. Foremost, AI developers must premeditate which biases might occur and then calibrate software to minimize them in a way that still produces desirable results. Some users of AI image generators, for example, may actually want pictures of a female pope or Black founding fathers — after all, art often creates new visions that challenge social standards.
But AI software also needs to give users a chance to offer feedback when the generated outcomes don’t match their expectations. This gives developers insights into what users want and helps them create interfaces that allow users to request specific characteristics, such as having certain ages, races, genders, sexualities, body types, and other traits reflected in images of people.
Sen. RonWyden (D-OR) has tried to legislate this issue by co-sponsoring the Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022, a bill that would require companies to conduct impact assessments for bias based on the code they use to generate results. The bill wouldn’t require companies to produce unbiased results, but it would at least provide insights into the ways that technology tends to prefer certain demographics over others.
Meanwhile, though critics blasted Gemini as “woke,” the software at least tried to create racially inclusive images, something many other image generators haven’t bothered to do. Google will now spend the next few weeks retooling Gemini to create more historically accurate images, but similar AI-powered image generators would do well to retool their own software to create more inclusive images. Until then, both will continue to churn out images that reflect our own biases rather than the world’s true diversity.
The CEOs of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Snap, and Discord testified in the Senate on Wednesday to discuss the online exploitation of children. The discussion brought up the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bipartisan bill that seeks to protect minors from online harm. But KOSA has come under fire from some LGBTQ+ activists and groups who fear that the bill will enable Republicans to block queer youth from seeing age-appropriate LGBTQ+ content online.
Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney with the Social Media Victims Law Center, says revisions to the bill have helped ensure that its current version will protect all kids and safeguard against potential misuse by anti-LGBTQ+ politicians. But Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit that protects people’s human rights in the digital age, says KOSA unconstitutionally violates free speech rights and will result in social media companies broadly censoring LGBTQ+ content rather than risking lawsuits from attorneys general.
It’s undeniable that social media can negatively impact mental health. Last year, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory noting how the frequency and kinds of information shown to young people on social media can cause a “profound risk of harm” to their mental health.
“Children and adolescents on social media are commonly exposed to extreme, inappropriate, and harmful content, and those who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of poor mental health including experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety,” the Surgeon General’s report on Social Media and Youth Mental Health said. Social media’s content and design can also make some young people feel addicted to it, increasing body dysmorphia, low self-esteem, and even self-harming behaviors, the report added.
KOSA tries to remedy this by requiring online platforms to take measures to prevent recommending content that promotes mental health disorders (like eating disorders, drug use, self-harm, sexual abuse, and bullying) unless minors specifically search for such content. KOSA also requires platforms to limit features that result in compulsive usage — like autoplay and infinite scroll — or allow adults to contact or track young users’ location. The bill says platforms must provide parents with easy-to-use tools to safeguard their child’s social media settings and notify parents if their kids are exposed to potentially hazardous materials or interactions.
Furthermore, KOSA requires platforms to submit annual reports to the federal government containing details about their non-adult users, the internal steps they’ve taken to protect minors from online harms, the “concern reports” – or reports platforms issue parents when their child encounters any harmful content – they’ve issued to parents, and descriptions of interventions they’ve taken to mitigate harms to minors. These reports will be overseen by an independent third-party auditor who consults with parents, researchers, and youth experts on additional methods and best practices for safeguarding minors’ well-being online.
KOSA has bipartisan support, including that of President Joe Biden as well as 46 senatorial co-sponsors, 21 of whom are Democrats, including lesbian Sen. Tammy Baldwin (WI) and LGBTQ+ allies like Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA). LGBTQ Nation reached out to Baldwin and Warren’s offices for additional comment but didn’t receive a response by the time of publication. KOSA is also supported by groups like Common Sense Media, Fairplay, Design It For Us, Accountable Tech, Eating Disorders Coalition, American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
But while parents of transgender youth and numerous pro-LGBTQ+ organizations agree that social media can negatively impact young people’s mental health, many other groups have nonetheless opposed the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, the LGBT Technology Partnership, as well as LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations in six states.
“KOSA is, at its heart, a censorship bill,” Mandy Salley, Chief Operating Officer of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, a group that advocates for sexual freedom as a fundamental human right, told LGBTQ Nation. “If passed in its current form, we believe that KOSA will hinder the ability of everyone to access information online and negatively harm many communities that are already censored online, including sex therapists, sex workers, sex educators, and the broader LGBTQ+ community. Our human right to free expression cannot be ignored in favor of supposed ‘safety’ on the Internet.”
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The big sticking point: KOSA’s Duty of Care provision
Specifically, Woodhull and the other aforementioned organizations are worried about the bill’s Duty of Care provision that allows attorneys general to conduct investigations, issue subpoenas, require documentation from, and file civil lawsuits against any platforms that have “threatened or adversely affected” minors’ well-being. LGBTQ+ advocates fear that Republican attorneys general who consider LGBTQ+ identities as harmful forms of mental illness will use KOSA to censor such web content and prosecute platforms that provide access to such content.
In a July 2023 Teen Vogue op-ed, digital rights organizer Sarah Philips wrote that the bill “authorizes state attorneys general to be the ultimate arbiters of what is good or bad for kids. If a state attorney general asserts that information about gender-affirming care or abortion care could cause a child depression or anxiety, they could sue an app or website for not removing that content.”
It didn’t help that KOSA was introduced by anti-LGBTQ+ Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who has said that one of the bill’s top priorities is to protect children from “the transgender in this culture.”
“[Social media] is where children are being indoctrinated,” Blackburn told the Family Policy Alliance, a conservative Christian organization, in a September 2023 speech. “They’re hearing things at school and then they’re getting onto YouTube to watch a video and all of a sudden this comes to them… They click on something and, the next thing you know, they’re being inundated with it.”
Blackburn’s office told LGBTQ Nation that her comment had been “taken out of context” and wasn’t related to KOSA, stating, “KOSA will not — nor was it designed to — target or censor any individual or community.” But the anti-LGBTQ+ conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has also said it wishes to use the law to “guard” kids against the “harms of… transgender content.”
But Marquez-Garrett told LGBTQ Nation that these concerns are based on an old version of the bill that has since been revised after consultation with concerned LGBTQ+ activists.
“If [the possibility of an attorney general misusing a law is] the standard by which we judge all laws, we’re never going to have new laws because the reality is an unscrupulous attorney general can try,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean they’re going to succeed.”
First, she points out that Philips’s concern about attorney generals suing platforms for not removing pro-LGBTQ+ content doesn’t necessarily apply for two reasons: KOSA doesn’t regulate what LGBTQ+ or allegedly harmful content a site can host — it regulates what content that websites automatically suggest to young users. Users of all ages can still access any material that they deliberately search for.
Moreover, attorneys general have to prove to a judge and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that, by KOSA’s definitions, LGBTQ+ content harms young users’ mental health. Such arguments won’t pass muster with every judge or FTC commissioner.
Marquez-Garret noted that after Sen. Blackburn made her concerning comments, the bill was revised with input from queer advocates and reintroduced with amendments meant to account for those concerns. For example, while the original bill broadly required web platforms to prevent all “harms” to minors, the revised bill specifically mentions the harms companies must work against (including suicidal behaviors, eating disorders, substance use, sexual exploitation, and ads for tobacco and alcohol).
She also notes that KOSA says an attorney general who begins civil actions under KOSA will be required to issue a report of any action to the FTC. The FTC will then have the right to intervene.
“The FTC is only as good as the people running it,” Marquez-Garrett told LGBTQ Nation. “And we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.” But, assuming that the FTC is “not nefarious and is reasonable,” she continued, if the FTC begins an investigation into the actions, the attorney general’s home state is forbidden from taking any additional actions.
Marquez-Garrett also points out that the revised version of KOSA contains a carveout that says that if a minor searches for any sort of content, including LGBTQ+ content, then they’re allowed to see it even if an attorney general considers it harmful. Additionally, KOSA also explicitly excludes many websites from its control, including government platforms, libraries, and non-profits. That means if a minor finds pro-LGBTQ+ content on the websites of the ACLU, The Trevor Project, or the Human Rights Campaign, an attorney general can’t prosecute.
Furthermore, under the revised KOSA, websites aren’t required to install age verification or parental consent functionality that might prevent young people from accessing different platforms. Though Greer questioned how social media platforms can comply with the bill without conducting age verification, Marquez-Garrett says Greer’s question ignores KOSA’s plain language and echoes “another Big Tech narrative about Big Tech’s ability or inability to comply with KOSA.”
Regardless, under KOSA, platforms are also expressly forbidden from being required to disclose a minor’s browsing behavior, search history, messages, contact list, or other content or metadata of their communications that could potentially out them to their parents.
“We totally agree that big tech platforms and the surveillance capitalist business model that they employ are doing real harm, and that they’re specifically harming LGBTQ people and communities,” Greer, director of Fight for the Future (FFF), told LGBTQ Nation. “But as long as KOSA attempts to dictate what content platforms can recommend, it will be unconstitutional.”
FFF and the ACLU have said that the government cannot force platforms to suppress entire categories of content or to suppress all content that might lead to a minor becoming depressed or anxious without violating the First Amendment.
Greer said that legislators behind KOSA should have consulted more with civil liberties and human rights advocates, like her organization and the ACLU, to consider a bill’s potential constitutional and human rights pitfalls.
Marquez-Garrett disagrees with Greer’s characterization, telling LGBTQ Nation, “KOSA does not prohibit content of any sort, nor does it prohibit posting of any content by third parties, so does not run afoul of the First Amendment.”
Apart from the constitutionality issue, Greer most worries that if social companies are subjected to liability for content, they will over-remove content to avoid getting sued. “This is exactly what happened with SESTA,” she said, referencing two bipartisan laws passed in 2018 that sought to reduce sex trafficking online.
Because the law held online companies liable for any user content that could be seen as facilitating sex work, many online businesses just opted to shut down any forums for sex or dating. Others banned any potential “adult content” (including discussion boards), deleted content about avoiding sexually transmitted infections, and created rules forbidding sexual comments. The law made sex workers much more vulnerable to traffickers and made actual sex trafficking much more difficult to track, its critics say. Even Sen. Warren, who supported the law, expressed regret for its unintended consequences.
“Do I think that Mark Zuckerberg is going to go to bat in court to protect my kid’s ability to continue engaging in the online communities that she finds supportive and loving and caring? Absolutely not,” Greer said. “He’s gonna roll over and do whatever he thinks he needs to do to avoid his company getting sued,” she added, especially if they’re threatened by “rogue” attorneys general, conservative judges, or an FTC run by the administration of Donald Trump.
“Do people really want to gamble with trans kids’ lives hoping that we’ll never have a bigot in the White House ever again? I sure don’t,” Greer added.
In an informational white paper, FFF said that if a user searches for “Why do I feel different from other boys,” and a platform returns search results about gender identity, an attorney general can argue that that’s not what the user was searching for, and thus the platform is liable for “algorithmically recommending” that content.
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Is there a way to fix KOSA’s potential problems?
If KOSA becomes law, social media companies won’t risk attracting these attorneys’ attention, Greer and other groups worry. Instead, the companies will react by omitting, algorithmically suppressing, or blocking large swaths of LGBTQ+ content — not just “recommended” served by platform algorithms.
This would affect not only content related to LGBTQ+ issues and other controversial but important topics for users they believe could be minors (including content from The Trevor Project or the Human Rights Campaign, Greer says), but also any users’ or resources’ posts sharing information about queer health resources, life experiences, and social events, Greer predicted, since all social media content is regulated by algorithms.
“I truly believe that legislation [like KOSA] that enables this type of government censorship makes kids less safe, and not more safe,” Greer says. “It feels to me like it’s driven by the same bad thinking behind abstinence-only sex education: the idea that we protect kids by cutting them off from information rather than by allowing them to access it.”
Marquez-Garrett disagrees. “KOSA is plain on its face, and efforts to misinterpret KOSA will not succeed. If a conservative attorney general could simply attack a type of content it doesn’t like, then liberal attorneys general could do the same, such as with guns, or political content, or any number of potentially objectionable topics. And KOSA’s own limitations would provide complying platforms with viable defenses.”
But instead of supporting KOSA in its current form, FFF has encouraged legislators to ditch its Duty of Care provision and replace it with a strict privacy regime that bans any use of minors’ personal data to power algorithmic recommendation systems. The FFF also suggested explicitly prohibiting specific manipulative business practices, like autoplay, infinite scroll, intrusive notifications, and surveillance advertising.
Lawmakers should also drop the provision in KOSA allowing enforcement by attorneys general, the FFF suggests. Instead, its provisions could be enforced by the FTC as “unfair or deceptive business practices,” which the FTC already has a mandate to crack down on. This would aid the law’s constitutionality and bring the law into the realm of regulating these businesses the same way that the federal government already regulates many other businesses.
Some social media platforms and influencers are opposed to any government oversight, Marquez-Garrett says, because policies that limit what their algorithms can recommend also reduce their overall content engagement and, thus, their profits.
Currently, social media platforms aren’t protecting LGBTQ+ kids, she adds. A minor who searches for “gay pride” may be served videos telling them that being gay is bad and that gay people are going to hell and should kill themselves. Platforms also regularly remove LGBTQ+ content for allegedly violating platform policies or potentially offending users in other countries.
She believes that KOSA could help open the playing field for platforms that don’t harmfully target kids because any such actions will become a matter of public record and scrutiny. This will allow ethical web designers to create better systems that protect children’s needs. That’s especially important, she said, since numerous studies have shown that access to positive online LGBTQ+ media and communities can improve young queers’ mental health.
Ultimately, she believes that everyone should support protecting children, especially as more studies show how negative online experiences can increase mental distress and suicidality among kids.
“We cannot give big tech a free pass and assume they have our kids’ best interests at heart,” she said.
