A middle school community in Virginia is fighting back after their principal was fired for starting an “LGBTQ+ Kindness” flex-time class to provide a safe space for LGBTQ+ students.
Dr. Jerry Putt, Frederick County Middle School’s principal since 2017, has been removed from his role after a divisive debate at the school board over his actions, The Winchester Gazette reports.
The controversy erupted on Tuesday at the Frederick County School Board meeting, where a conservative faction of parents and board members argued that the “LGBTQ+ Kindness” class deviated from state-approved curricula and called it “inappropriate.”
The leader of the group in opposition to the class was a Back Creek District resident named Chris Davey, who claimed the optional class was “perverted.”
He faulted Putt for permitting it without parental notice and took his frustrations to the school board, where he found a sympathetic audience.
The board put school staff “on notice” that “unsanctioned curriculum” additions wouldn’t be tolerated and could be grounds for termination.
Two days later, they made beloved principal Putt an example.
On Thursday, the school community received notice from district superintendent Dr. George Hummer announcing Dr. Putt’s removal without explanation, along with an introduction to an interim principal.
Wendy Werner, a former counselor at the school, described the events as “appalling” and criticized parents at the board meeting as “hateful and uninformed.”
Now she and other community members are fighting back with a grassroots campaign to reinstate Putt, starting with an online petition that has already gathered nearly 1300 signatures in the small town and has served as a forum to describe how the board and parents’ rights advocates have done a disservice to the community with their campaign of anti-LGBTQ+ hate.
One local resident called the board’s decision misguided.
“The principal is out because he created opportunities for ALL students during the school day and that was ‘off script,’” Luke Mason wrote, questioning whether other extracurricular activities, like the “four-wheeler club” or pep rallies, would face similar scrutiny.
Sonia Marfatia-Goode raised the issue of discrimination, explaining one parent wanted “the LGBTQ+ flex canceled but to keep all of flex for everyone else.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the division was sued over this,” she said with a warning of repercussions.
Marfatia-Goode said the divisive environment at recent school board meetings was having an effect on kids.
Children “pay attention, and they are finding out that if you don’t want something, you yell and yell until you get your way,” she wrote.
A teacher in the U.K. has been banned from the profession indefinitely for outing a transgender student on social media.
According to The Daily Mail, in May 2023, a whistleblower alerted the unnamed Manchester school where 54-year-old Camilla Hannan had been teaching since 2001 that Hannan had posted offensive and anti-trans sentiments on X, then known as Twitter. In one of her posts, Hannan even outed a transgender student by name.
“Where I teach we have gender identity policy,” Hannan wrote in one post alongside an eye-roll emoji. “It’s a load of nonsensical rubbish, as you’d imagine.”
In another post, Hannan wrote that she taught a student who had changed their pronouns, going so far as to include the student’s name in her post. “I worry about what the next steps will be,” she wrote.
“Where I teach the trans kids are untouchable,” she wrote in another post. “They get everything they ask for and everyone staff and other students alike, is petrified of upsetting them. They don’t seem oppressed to me more like oppressors tbh.”
In two other posts, she seemed to suggest a link between autism and being transgender, writing that her autistic students “are all plastered with trans flags and badges, without exception.”
Studies that have shown that transgender and nonbinary people are more likely to be autistic than cisgender people have been misused to fuel the anti-trans, ableist narrative that there is something “wrong” with transgender and nonbinary people and that their gender identity is the result of mental illness. Some trans and nonbinary people on the spectrum suggest that the real connection is that autistic people are less likely to feel a need to conform to social pressures around gender.
TheManchester Evening News reports that in August of this year, Hannan admitted to writing the posts. A Teaching Regulation Agency misconduct hearing was held to address the matter, and in September a panel found that she had shared the private medical information of the student named in her post without the student’s knowledge or consent. The panel noted that she had also “repeatedly misgendered” the student.
A report on the panel said that it had found that Hannan “had a deep-seated attitude, and that, whilst she was entitled to have that attitude and hold the views that she did, it was not acceptable for her to have posted these on social media in a way that was damaging to the profession, the School, pupils and in particular” the student she outed. The panel said that Hannan’s behavior was incompatible with a teacher’s duty to be a role model for students and the wider community.
According to the Manchester Evening News, Hannan blamed her posts on her frustration with her workload and admitted that she had exercised “poor judgment.” In a statement, she said that she does “not bear trans people any malice or ill will” and she respects “their right to live as they please, and to ask others to refer to them by names and pronouns of their choice,” the Daily Mail reported. However, she added that she was concerned about so-called “gender ideology” — a clear anti-trans dog whistle — in schools.
But according to the Manchester Evening News, the panel noted that Hannan’s remorse seemed to be “somewhat self-serving.” They said that the fact that she believed her posts were anonymous suggested that her remorse “stemmed from being caught, rather than from reflections on her own behavior.”
The panel banned Hannan from teaching indefinitely. She will have the opportunity to appeal the decision in two years.
A Georgia man convicted of murdering a transgender woman is on the run after jumping bail during his trial.
Davonte Fore, 26, was convicted along with accomplice JaQuan Brooks, 25, on October 4 of Malice Murder, two counts of Felony Murder, Aggravated Assault, Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon, and Possession of a Firearm during the Commission of a Felony for the June 2021 murder of 25-year-old Skyler Gilmore.
According to a press release from the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, DeKalb County Police officers found Gilmore unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the torso in her Stone Mountain, Georgia, apartment in the early morning hours of June 4, 2021, after receiving a 911 call from a female friend reporting that the 25-year-old had been shot.
The friend told police that she had been on the phone with Gilmore when Gilmore told her she had to hang up to let someone into the front gate of her apartment complex. Gilmore later called the woman back and told her she’d been shot. The friend went to Gilmore’s apartment, where she called 911.
The friend told investigators that Gilmore was a transgender woman and had been involved in “survival sex,” which the DA’s press release describes as a form of sex work involving “sex in exchange for basic necessities like food or shelter.”
Investigators were able to link Fore’s phone number to multiple calls and text messages on Gilmore’s phone in the hour leading up to her murder, including one text in which she provided the code for her apartment complex’s front gate. They were also able to identify Fore and Brooks as the driver and passenger of a car entering the apartment complex shortly before the shooting via surveillance video. Detectives say Fore and Brooks were members of a local gang and had been ordered to kill Gilmore for sleeping with another gang member.
Fore was arrested in November 2022 but was released on bond this past February over the objections of state prosecutors. At some point during the trial, Fore failed to return to court and is now considered a fugitive. Brooks was taken into custody following the October guilty verdict.
“This is why our office works hard to get bonds denied in cases like this, but it’s not our decision to grant bond,” Jacques Spencer, Supervising Investigator in the Homicide and Gangs Unit at the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, told Fox 5 Atlanta.
Gilmore’s father, Chauncey Gilmore, told Fox 5 that Fore is “a bad guy” and that he hopes he’s caught.
“Personally, I don’t think that he’s supposed to have been out on a $25,000 bond on a murder case, but he was, and I understand that, but I’m hoping that the people get him, and they get him fast,” Gilmore said.
“Our focus is getting him in custody,” Spencer said. “We feel that he’s a danger to society and also the victim’s family deserves to be able to face him in court when he is sentenced for what he did.”
According to prosecutors, Fore has ties to California, and authorities are asking anyone with information about his whereabouts to contact the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office Fugitive Unit at 404-298-8132 but warned not to approach him as Fore is considered dangerous.
A Catholic school board trustee tried to ban the Pride flag after comparing it to the Nazi swastika a second time and got kicked off the board in the process.
The Niagara Catholic District School Board in Ontario censured Natalia Benoit in January after an independent investigator agreed she breached the board’s code of conduct by making the hateful comparison. She was relieved of her duties and barred from attending board meetings for six months. Catholic schools in Ontario get public funds.
Just weeks after returning, Benoit again introduced a “proposal to amend the flag-flying protocol to exclude the Pride flag,” which would bar schools and offices from displaying the inclusive standard
In an explanation caught on tape last year, Benoit claimed she didn’t support flying “any flag at all… Like the Nazi flag, we don’t want that up either, right?”
The Nazis killed six million Jews during World War II and started their reign of terror by singling out transgender people in a campaign of violence and book burning. More than 15,000 LGBTQ+ individuals were interred in concentration camps, according to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
The report investigating Benoit’s actions described the Nazi flag as “a distinctly recognizable symbol of Nazi propaganda,” and the Nazi regime “was characterized by its pursuit of racial ‘purity’ pursued through policies designed to exterminate Jews and other minorities – including homosexuals – by mass murder, among other means.”
The Pride flag, by contrast, is one “which always reflects in essence a rainbow” and “is born out of an intention to include persons historically marginalized in society.”
Benoit was unrepentant after the report was issued.
“There is no comparison of flags,” she wrote. “It is a statement that no flags should be flown which would cause conflict and controversy in our schools. Alleging the comparison was only spreading lies provoking a hostile environment.”
The board began flying the Pride flag at its high schools in 2021 and at elementary schools in 2022.
Board chair Danny Di Lorenzo said that despite Benoit’s provocation, he hadn’t received many complaints about flying the flag. “I got some negative, some positive” comments, he explained, adding it’s generally accepted within Ontario’s Catholic schools.
“The New Testament has many stories of Christ himself reaching out to those who are marginalized,” Director of Education Camillo Cipriano told CBClast week. After discussions with several priests and the local diocese, he said, “I will continue to fly it as long as it remains my decision.”
“I think that it’s a sign of inclusion, a sign of acceptance — not a sign of promotion,” board chair Di Lorenzo said. “The Bible also says acceptance of others and that Jesus accepts everyone. I think that’s where we have to stop and reflect on the Bible… We do have a loving God and we do have an accepting God.”
Benoit’s resurrected proposal goes to a vote before the board on Tuesday.
Several small business owners in Lancaster, Ohio, say they saw an increase in new customers after a local anti-LGBTQ+ group tried to start a boycott campaign against them.
According to local NBC affiliate WCMH, the group Fairfield County Conservatives began circulating a list of local small businesses on social media following two September city council meetings at which members protested drag performances hosted during Lancaster’s family-friendly Pride celebration the same month. Members characterized the events as “pornographic,” an anti-LGBTQ+ tactic that has become all too common in recent years.
Fairfield County Conservatives member Chuck Burgoon, who is also the executive director of Fairfield Family Forum, told WCMH that the group’s list was meant to inform the community about businesses that have supported The Rainbow Alliance of Fairfield County, a local LGBTQ+ group that hosted the Pride events.
“None of us have called for anyone to boycott these businesses; we were just trying to figure out who was supporting [the events],” Burgoon said. “Our downtown has suffered greatly, and it has come back now. We don’t want to lose that again, so we haven’t called for anybody to boycott anyone.”
But the owners of businesses on the list aren’t buying it. Brandon Love, owner of gift shop Bewilderment argues that the list was always meant to discourage people from patronizing the businesses on it. He claims to have seen posters slandering his shop around town, while Teresa Speakman, whose Mud Gallery was not on the list, says she’s seen Fairfield County Conservatives members taking photos and videos of businesses in downtown Lancaster with pro-LGBTQ+ signage and merchandise.
Love thinks that if Fairfield County Conservatives “are going to launch a boycott, they need to stand by it.”
If the group had intended to launch a boycott, their efforts apparently backfired.
“We’ve probably had at least 200 people who have never been to Lancaster that have come to town to support the boycotted businesses,” Love said. “People from, not just Columbus, but out of state have been visiting us on the daily now, and so it’s definitely something I didn’t expect.”
Speakman, an LGBTQ+ ally who displays a Pride flag at her gallery, said she’s also seen increased support. “I’ve had people come in here and say, ‘Oh, thank you for your flag, your rainbow flag, thank you for being here. Thank you for being a safe space,’” she told WCMH. “I’m always interested in building community, and I’m an ally of anyone that needs a safe space.”
Love has even responded to Fairfield County Conservatives’ list with his own, comprised of many of the same businesses on the anti-LGBTQ+ groups as well as others that are either LGBTQ+-owned or supportive.
“Brandon took their boycott list and made another list public that said, ‘Hey, these are actually businesses that you do want to support,” Speakman explained. “So, it was kind of turned around to being shared and shared and shared, and has brought me a lot more people that have found me.”
“I’ve been boycotted before as a queer-owned business, I think Ohio’s just kind of sick of their rhetoric and tired of being a hateful state,” said Love. “It’s just not true, this is our home, too. We’re queer people, we’re here, we have communities, we have businesses.”
At the same time, Burgoon and other members of Fairfield County Conservatives continue to push for the Lancaster city council to adopt a measure banning “adult cabaret performances.” According to WCMH, the measure would be similar to House Bill 245, a Republican-backed bill introduced in July 2023 that opponents say would amount to a state-wide ban on drag performances in public spaces.
During testimony before the Ohio House Criminal Justice Committee in June, Democrats questioned why the bill would be necessary when local laws address lewd behavior.
But for members of Fairfield County Conservatives, those existing laws don’t go far enough. At a September 23 city council meeting, members of the group shared a screenshot from a video taken during a September 14 Lancaster Pride event showing a drag performer with their legs splayed open. Lancaster city law director Stephanie Hall argued that while she considered the image “tasteless,” the performer did not break any laws.
“The video from that night shows the performer in question was in that position for a split second while performing a dance routine. Dance, like speech, is an expression that is protected,” Hall said, according to WCMH.
Fairfield County Conservatives member Robert Knisley said this was why the group is “pursuing a legislative solution.”
Police in Moscow raided two gay clubs last weekend, detaining over 50 people, in what Novaya Gazeta Europe described as the continued escalation of the Russian government’s crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community.
Photos and video from the raids was posted on pro-Russia Telegram channels MSK1 and SHOT on October 12 showing masked police storming into downtown Moscow club Central Station, forcing shouting at patrons and forcing them to lie on the ground. One clip shows officers searching people, with one cop violently kicking a detainee’s leg.
Novaya Gazeta Europe reports that the club was holding a Friday, October 11, event marking National Coming Out Day. Police stormed the venue at around 1 a.m. on Saturday morning under the pretext of fighting “drug trafficking.” A photo on MSK1 and a video on SHOT show one clubgoer who appears to have been forced to empty their bag, the contents laid out on the floor.
According to Novaya Gazeta, about 200 people were at Central Station at the time of the raid. It’s unclear where the more than 50 people taken into custody were being detained.
Police also raided another popular central Moscow LGBTQ+ venue, Three Monkeys, which is reportedly managed by the same owners as Central Station.
The raids follow what one post on SHOT reportedly described as “civilian complaints.” An October 7 post on the channel included photos and video of drag performers at Three Monkeys, with Moscow locals reportedly complaining of “all sorts of naughty things” and “Half-naked men dressed as women dance around the stage, and the guy guests [kissing] each other freely.”
The same day, another pro-Russia Telegram channel posted video of drag shows at Central Station in which performers allegedly mocked the country’s invasion of Ukraine. The channel wrote that the venue, along with Three Monkeys, should be shut down for “discrediting the Russian army,” according to Novaya Gazeta.
As the outlet noted, last weekend’s raids are just the latest in Russia’s continued crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community. Since the country’s Supreme Court declared the “international LGBT social movement” an “extremist organization” last November, there have been multiple raids on LGBTQ+ bars and other establishments in cities across Russia, and multiple people have been arrestedand charged under the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Following a similar raid on a nightclub in the city of Orenburg in March, the venue’s art director and administrator were both charged with being members of an “extremist organization.” The case was reportedly the first of its kind since the Russian Supreme Court’s ruling.
According to Novaya Gazeta, this is not the first time Central Station has been targeted. The venue was briefly forced to close in 2014 following violent attacks in the wake of Russia’s 2013 law banning so-called “gay propaganda” in the presence of children. The club’s St. Petersburg location was forced to close late last year.
Convicted killer Daqua Lameek Ritter was sentenced to life in prison following a guilty verdict in the death of Pebbles LaDime “Dime” Doe, a 24-year-old Black transgender South Carolina woman who Ritter was in a relationship with.
Ritter is the first individual to be tried and convicted for a hate crime motivated by gender identity under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.
In 2019, Ritter’s relationship with Doe was discovered by his girlfriend, which prosecutors said motivated him to take Doe’s life. Prosecutors said Ritter, in a fit of rage fueled by the news their relationship spreading among friends, lured Doe to an isolated location and shot her three times in the head.
“We want the Black trans community to know that you are seen and heard, that we stand with the LGBTQI+ community and that we will use every tool available to seek justice for victims and their families,” Clarke said in a departmental statement.
“Every day is a struggle,” Doe’s mother, Debra Saab, said at Ritter’s sentencing. “He shouldn’t get to see the light of day.”
A jury found Ritter guilty on all charges in February for what Clarke called the “heinous and tragic murder” of Doe.
“His crime was motivated by his anger at being mocked for having a sexual relationship with a transgender woman,” prosecutors wrote in court documents introduced during trial. Ritter’s girlfriend called him an anti-gay slur, they believe, which made him “extremely upset.”
Prosecutors said Ritter lied to police about his whereabouts at the time of the killing and got people to help him burn his clothes and hide his weapon as he fled South Carolina for New York.
Video of a traffic stop placed Ritter in Doe’s car just hours before she was killed, along with DNA evidence. Several witnesses said Ritter told them that he killed her.
“He was afraid, shooken up” when he confessed to killing Doe, Ritter’s cousin said during the trial. The cousin said that Ritter asked him to keep the murder a secret and was mad that Doe wouldn’t delete a picture of him from her phone.
A friend of Ritter’s, present when he was burning his clothes after the murder, testified Ritter said, “Nobody gonna have to worry about [Doe] anymore.”
According to the Human Rights Campaign, 27 transgender people have been killed so far in 2024 — 48% were Black transgender women, and 63% were killed with a gun.
In video shared by Fox News on Monday, Donald Trump again claimed schools around the country are “taking” kids and performing “operations” on them.
“There are some places your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl,” Trump insisted without proof.
“Okay? Without parental consent. What is that all about? That’s like — when they talk about a threat to democracy, they’re a threat,” Trump continued, apparently referring to his Democratic opponent and clearly rattled that her message about his authoritarian nature and cognitive decline are taking hold.
In a rambling answer to a Bronx dad at what the New York Post described as a “surprise” visit to a barbershop packed with Black men who support Trump, the former president, slumped in a barber chair, held forth incoherently on his solution for problems at America’s schools: stopping teachers and administrators from transitioning kids.
All of this was in response to the dad’s question about how Trump would help Bronx public schools perform better – the dad didn’t mention trans kids at all.
“Could you imagine without parental consent? At first, what I was told that was actually happening, I said, you know, it’s an exaggeration. No. It happens! It happens in areas where it happens. We’re not going to let it happen, but we are going to straighten out a lot,” Trump said, untethered from the facts or syntax.
Trump also added his stock answer of all but eliminating the Department of Education, claiming he’d abolish every job at the Cabinet-level agency save the head of the department and a secretary for the Secretary.
“We’re moving them back from Washington, where you have people that don’t care about New York, frankly,” Trump told his Bronx questioner. “You know, in Washington, I don’t know if you ever noticed that you got Department of Education, Department of Education. You got half the buildings are Department of Education.”
“I never saw – you don’t need any of them. You know, I want one person and a secretary to just make sure they’re teaching English. Okay. Give a little English,” he said. “Okay? I say reading, writing, and arithmetic. No transgender, no operations.”
The sputtering appearance was just one in a week marked by the Republican nominee’s deteriorating campaign performances. Earlier in the week, Trump swayed to his Spotify playlist at a rally in Pennsylvania for close to 40 minutes, gesturing along to favorites like “Ave Maria” and “Memory” from Cats. On Sunday, Trump donned a Dukakis-worthy hat and McDonald’s apron to work the frier and hand out free orders to fake drive-thru customers at a closed restaurant location. At a rally in Detroit, an 18-minute microphone malfunction left the 78-year-old fuming and wandering the stage.
The faux “surprise” visit at Knockout Barber in The Bronx Thursday — hosted spontaneously if you believe the campaign’s claim by “Fox & Friends” co-host Lawrence Jones — had “customers” waiting in the shop during a security lockdown from 9:30 in the morning until Trump staggered in at 4 p.m.
Adding to the surreality at the barbershop: a clip reveals one barber shearing the neckline of a stand-in customer for thirty seconds, but not cutting his hair at all, one more clue to the staged nature of the supposedly spontaneous campaign stop.
In June, the Trump campaign tricked the owner of a Black barbershop in Georgia into hosting what he said they characterized as a small business roundtable, not a Trump campaign event.
“You guys are the same as me,” the slumped billionaire candidate told his Bronx barbershop fans. “We were born the same way… I know you people so well. I know you so well.”
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LGBTQ+ ballot initiatives have long been used as a wedge issue to turn out the conservative vote and to give or take away freedoms that are usually guaranteed by the government. The 2024 election is no different. This November continues a decades-long tradition of leaving LGBTQ+ civil rights up to public debate.
New Yorkers will consider whether to add sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression to their anti-discrimination amendment in the state constitution. Reproductive rights are on the ballot in 10 states as well.
And California, Colorado, and Hawaii voters will decide if their states will repeal their constitutions’ bans on same-sex marriage.
Same-sex unions have, in fact, always been the top issue on state referendums. 34 states have sent the question to voters since 1998, many passing state constitutional amendments against same-sex partnerships. Putting these amendments on the ballot was used as a strategy to turn out the conservative vote for George W. Bush in 2004, when 11 states passed them.
Marriage equality lost at the ballot box every time until 2012, when it was put to a vote in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington and won in all of them. This followed national public opinion polls, where support for same-sex marriage crossed the 50% threshold around 2009.
All states’ anti-marriage equality constitutional amendments were rendered invalid in 2015 with the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision, but the amendments remain in several state constitutions. As such, activists are fighting to repeal them, especially in the event the conservative-dominated Supreme Court overturns Obergefell – something Justice Clarence Thomas hinted was a possibility after the court overturned Roe v Wade.
“Saving” the children
The 1978 election in California introduced the first state ballot initiative related to LGBTQ+ rights. Prop 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative since it was sponsored by Orange County legislator John Briggs, garnered national attention and public denunciation from then-president Jimmy Carter (D), and even from then-California governor Ronald Reagan (R).
The initiative sought to ban anyone who engaged in “public homosexual activity” or “conduct” from working in California public schools. The proposal was part of a trend of other states repealing anti-discrimination measures, inspired by anti-gay activist Anita Bryant’s successful 1977 “Save Our Children” campaign to repeal Dade County, Florida’s ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, also done by popular vote. Harvey Milk helped to lead the campaign against Prop 6, which was defeated by a 16-point margin.
Other state ballot initiatives have sought to legalize or ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity — and voters more often sided with anti-discrimination as the years went on. In Oregon in 1988, voters revoked the governor’s authority to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, and in 2018, Massachusetts voters upheld a law prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity.
Maine and Oregon have most frequently put LGBTQ+ rights to a vote. In Maine, voters first blocked same-sex marriage in 2009 and then approved it in 2012, both times with 53% of the vote. Anti-discriminating protections for LGBTQ+ people in Maine were denied by referendum in 1998 and 2000 and then approved in 2005. In Oregon, voters defeated a “don’t say gay” measure in 2000 by a 5.7% margin.
The concept of using sexual orientation as a protected identity at all was also put to a vote multiple times as a conservative strategy to block “homosexuality” from being added to anti-discrimination ordinances. In the 1990s, the majority voted to allow sexual orientation to be a protected identity in Oregon, Idaho, and Maine.
And it isn’t just laws explicitly about LGBTQ+ rights that affect the community. Other ballot-driven Voter ID laws, including those in Arkansas and North Carolina, will no doubt prevent some trans folks from voting, as well as other LGBTQ+ people who are intersectionality marginalized.
Regardless of ballot measures, the state representatives voters choose this election will also have a significant impact on LGBTQ+ rights. Legislatures led by publicly-elected Republicans have introduced or passed hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills in recent years, including banning or limiting access to gender-affirming health care, bathrooms, accurate IDs, inclusive education, inclusive books, drag performances, and sports participation. Voting for state-level and local candidates who support LGBTQ+ rights will impact laws for years to come, even when they are not put to referendum.
Vote like your rights depend on it
Civil rights for other groups have also gone to public referendum dozens of times since 1868, like the question of legality of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and disability. Like sexual orientation, voters supported discrimination in earlier years and began to support equal rights later on. Women’s rights, however, gained approval in the 1970s while LGBTQ+ rights didn’t see popular support until the 2000s.
The decision to provide or deny civil rights is more often determined by courts and legislatures — which are becoming more conservative — and the idea that constitutional rights can be determined by public opinion has allowed racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination to become enshrined into law.
Public opinion about LGB and transgender rights is often conflicted and in flux, so ballot measures are not a safe option for gaining rights either, though the majority do currently support anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ+ people.
Nevertheless, LGBTQ+ rights are on the ballot. As such, it’s essential to vote this year — both on the LGBTQ+ rights referendums and for candidates who will have the power to enact pro-equality legislation.
In a state like Georgia that has a Republican trifecta — a Republican governor and a party majority in both chambers of the state legislature — queer community leaders and political strategists are working diligently to prove Atlanta isn’t the state’s only allegedly progressive community.
Georgia has roughly 8 million registered (active and inactive) voters. Georgia’s Secretary of State online data hub indicates there have been 121,898 more active voters since the December 2022 runoff election, and each one will count in a battleground state that could determine the nation’s future.
In September, the Georgia State Election Board voted to have all cast ballots counted by hand. Many consider this rule change an ongoing effort to undermine or at least delay election results. Democrats, who were once pushing Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to hold an ethics hearing, filed a lawsuit to have a judge push Kemp to remove some of the members of the elections board believed to be former President Donald Trump loyalists. While one judge dismissed the case in early October, a Fulton County Superior Court Judge issued an injunction blocking the hand count rule on the first day of early voting in the state. The judge felt the new rule was approved too close to Election Day and would create “administrative chaos.”
Related:
Your LGBTQ+ guide to Election 2024
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Georgia’s narrative as a battleground state has been a major talking point in recent years. According to some reports, Stacey Abrams’ 2018 gubernatorial campaign was a test case to prove if the Democratic party mounted a “sustained voter outreach campaign,” the state could flip from red to blue. In Georgia, Joe Biden narrowly beat Trump by 11,779 votes during the 2020 election, garnering him the Electoral College votes needed to become the 46th president of the United States and strengthening the argument that Georgia could be a viable player on the national stage. Two years later, Sen. Raphael Warnock’s runoff win over Republican challenger Herschel Walker solidified the state’s status as a bonafide swing state.
How has this happened? An increasing number of LGBTQ+ community leaders and political strategists have worked tirelessly to galvanize voters of all ages, backgrounds, and identities to build a coalition beyond the state’s capital, Atlanta. They have also proven, to some extent, that they carry political power in the state and have built effective grassroots efforts in their local communities.
Georgians are fighting for people over politics
FTR Political Strategies co-founder Mo Pippin.
At 28, Mo Pippin (they/them) is one Georgian hoping to turn the state from purple to blue. In 2023, they co-founded FTR Political Strategies out of a need for greater engagement in local elections and voter education.
“Here in Roswell — which is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Athens — we’re doing the work to boil down these large, sometimes scary federal issues to local and state issues that are digestible, recognizable, and salient to people; and trying to connect them with better representatives,” Pippin told LGBTQ Nation. “I believe fully that young people have been primed to have conversations with people who are different from us. One of the primary things that we do to engage voters is we canvas; we knock on doors.”
Pippin said voters have warned them to be careful in their neighborhood whenever they canvass in traditionally conservative areas of Roswell. They believe the warning is rooted in an assumption that other residents in the region will not be welcoming and potentially combative.
“If I’m looking at our state government and I don’t see people who look like me or who act like me or who share the same values as I do, it’s an easy assumption that, because of what we’re told about democracy, these people who got into office through the means of popular vote naturally represent our entire population,” they said. “But that’s not the case. Our voter turnout in the state is incredibly low. The system is made that way. There are all of these structural reasons – getting their children to school, getting to work themselves, making sure their families are fed, and their health needs are met – why people are not able to engage in the [political process] in our state. People are too tired and too busy to vote.”
Organizations like Georgia Equality, the state’s largest and oldest LGBTQ+-centered advocacy organization, are actively working to engage, educate, and advocate. This past year, it played an integral role in helping defeat the nearly 20 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in the state legislature by appearing regularly at the state Capitol for hearings, votes, and meetings alongside other pro-LGBTQ+ groups. The organization also leveraged the community, organizing more than 5,000 people to make calls to their representatives during the session.
“Our priority is not to leave any LGBTQ+ Georgian behind,” Noël Heatherland (they/them), statewide organizing manager for Georgia Equality, told LGBTQ Nation. “And making sure that everyone, especially those who do not live inside the bubble of the city of Atlanta, is remembered and included throughout the year, especially during a time where our civic engagement and letting our voices be heard is so important.”
The queer experience in the state’s southern region comes with its own set of issues and specific concerns, said Heatherland, a native of Albany, Georgia. While recent reports suggest that most LGBTQ+ voters are motivated to support the Democratic party and concerned about issues like restricting women’s rights and banning medical care for transgender youth, Heatherland said queer Georgians are also concerned with a lot of the same issues that impact people across various communities and demographics.
Omarion Smart agrees. A senior at Georgia State University, Smart is a native of Bainbridge, Georgia, in the southwest region. He’s also policy director for Voters of Tomorrow, a social welfare organization for Gez Z, by Gen Z. Housing, food security, and the cost of living are key issues queer voters are taking to the ballot box this November, he said. Healtherland adds queer voters in the state are also concerned about quality education for their children and the safety of their children in schools. According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, the LGBTQ+ population makes up about 4.7% of the population in the state of Georgia, with 27% of them having children.
“The majority of Georgians agree on these things,” Smart said. “We agree that housing should be affordable. We agree that we should have health care and that Medicare and Medicaid should be expanded. The economy. Housing. As well as the rise of transgender hate ideology and reproductive rights. They are all important issues to voters in Georgia. No one issue has priority over the other. Yet we have those in the legislature that do not reflect the population of our state, and it’s time that we change that.”
Smart’s concerns manifested this August when Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R) launched the Georgia Senate Special Committee on the Protection of Women’s Sports “to ensure that female athletes across Georgia have the right to compete on a fair and level playing field.” Smart believes the committee and its purpose are “disgusting.”
“It’s not even intended to learn about these issues,” Smart said. “That’s just how the politics in our state are. Their goal is to spew their blatant hate and not be called out on their hatred.”
“We have those in the legislature that do not reflect the population of our state, and it’s time that we change that.”Omarian Smart, policy director, Voters of Tomorrow
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As far as Shawn Harris is concerned, the energy behind anti-LGBTQ+ and transgender legislation by the conservative party is a smokescreen. Harris is challenging Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for Georgia’s 14th congressional district, which includes Rome, Calhoun, and Dalton in the northwest. He said that Greene has created a narrative about the region that makes it seem problematic. Harris, however, says local voters are more focused on quality of life, including jobs and affordable housing.
“People get up every day from our area and drive either to Atlanta to go to work or they drive to Chattanooga, Tennessee. They get up every morning at 4 a.m. to beat the traffic,” Harris told LGBTQ Nation. “They’re not home when it’s time for their kids to get off from school. They’re not home for their kid’s soccer games or whatever. They do this for a good-paying job with insurance. And they need affordable housing.”
As election day gets closer, queer voters in Georgia have an impressive slate of candidates to consider: Gen Z Democrat Ashwin Ramaswamy is running for state Senate District 48, challenging Trump loyalist Shawn Still, who was indicted in the Fulton County election interference case last year; RaShaun Kemp won the Democratic primary to fill state Senate seat District 38 and is reportedly the first openly gay man elected to the state Senate; and Laura Judge is running for the County School Board, Post 5.
Rashaun Kemp. Photo via rashaunforgeorgia.com.
“The Cobb County school system has been implementing a ton of book bans against a variety of different books and also enacting discriminatory policies,” said strategist Pippin. “If she wins, control of the Cobb Board of Education would flip and stop the madness happening there. Her district is extremely competitive, and I’m cheering for her big time.”
One candidate with personal stakes is JD Jordan, running against John Albers for Georgia Senate District 56.
“He is running to protect his children from harmful state policies. The incumbent is a co-sponsor of anti-trans legislation that threatens healthcare access for JD’s children,” said Pippin. “He has five kids between the ages of 14 and 19, and two of them identify as transgender.”
Georgia Equality’s Heatherland said Albers is not cordial to LGBTQ+ people or allies and is not willing to listen to them when they are at the Capitol to discuss issues – even if they are his constituents. The district is now trending as one of the state’s most “flippable” districts.
“It’s one thing to speak up on behalf of LGBTQ+ children, and specifically transgender people, when you’re running for something in Atlanta and like 85% of the people you’re talking to agree with you,” added Pippin. “It’s another to do that in a district that is red like SD56, and JD is out here fighting that fight and helping dispel all the misinformation that is spewed about the queer community. He is the dad many of us in the community wish we had growing up.”
