A transgender “bathroom ban” in North Carolina caused a national uproar in 2016. Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Nick Jonas and a long list of other A-list performers canceled shows in the state. Global corporations Deutsche Bank and PayPal torpedoed plans to expand in Cary and Charlotte. The NCAA moved its scheduled championship games elsewhere.
Now, eight years later, after Utah passed a similar bill on Monday, the reaction beyond the state’s borders appears to be more of a shrug.
Neither of Utah’s largest businesses released statements in response to the legislation. Tens of thousands of out-of-towners, and an ensuing economic boost, were just heading home from the Sundance Film Festival, held annually in Park City. Global sensation — and queer icon — Bad Bunny is slated to headline a concert in Salt Lake City in upcoming weeks. Next month, Salt Lake City will be hosting first- and second-round games in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
Representatives for the NCAA, Bad Bunny and Sundance did not immediately return requests for comment.
In fact, nine other states passed so-called transgender bathroom bills in the years between those passed by North Carolina and Utah, with little fanfare as well.
Moral Monday demonstrators head toward the General Assembly from the Bicentennial Mall after gathering and calling for the repeal of HB2 in Raleigh, N.C., in 2016.Jill Knight / Raleigh News & Observer via Getty Images file
Allison Scott, who volunteered as an on-the-ground activist in North Carolina to fight HB 2, described this week’s lackluster reaction to Utah’s “bathroom bill” and the several others that have been passed in recent years as “very telling.”
“We were all saying that with HB 2: ‘It’s not over,’” said Scott, who is also the director of impact and innovation for the Campaign for Southern Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy group. “Now, here we are several years later and we’ve seen these bills grow and increase and grow and increase year over year over year, and we’re right back not only where we started but worse.”
While the enactment of the Utah law has immediate implications for the state’s trans community, the tepid response to its passage also reflects a broader retreat on transgender rights that less than a decade ago galvanized corporate America, elite sports and Hollywood.
Utah House Bill 257, which is titled “Sex-based Designations for Privacy, Anti-bullying and Women’s Opportunities,” limits transgender people’s access to bathrooms in public schools and government-operated buildings. These include restrooms at Salt Lake City International Airport, which is managed by local government, and in Utah’s public hospitals and universities. It also specifies the state’s legal definition of “male” and “female” is based on a person’s genitalia at birth rather than their gender identity.
The bill makes exceptions for trans people who have received genital surgery and changed their gender marker to match their gender identity on their birth certificates.
Critics of the legislation have said the law will create a “dangerous situation for trans youth.”
Supporters of the legislation have argued that without a measure in place, men posing as trans women will go into women’s public restrooms and commit sexual misconduct.
Rep. Kera Birkeland, who sponsored the Utah law, said that the bill was necessary to close a “giant loophole for predators” and will only criminally charge offenders who commit “an offense of lewdness,” as the bill states.
“If the people just go in and use the bathroom the way they’re supposed to be used, they will be fine. That has remained consistent throughout the bill, throughout any change,” Birkeland said in a phone call. “We’re not targeting just people who are transgender or people who are like, ‘I’m going to miss my flight, I’m going to duck into the men’s bathroom because the line is shorter.’”
She also pushed back on criticism that the bill would create an environment where Utahns are policing trans people in public restrooms, pointing to a provision in the bill that would criminally charge people for falsely reporting trans people in public restrooms.
“We do not want to incentivize any vigilante people out there trying to be jerks,” she said. “The whole goal is just to ensure that everyone feels like they have a safe place to do private things.”
Erin Reed, a transgender journalist and advocate, pushed back on this, arguing that the legislation will create disruption for trans people regardless of the bill’s specifics.
“People are not going to go through the fine points of a 12-page law,” Reed said. “More likely than not, you’re just going to see trans people and cis people challenged in bathrooms.”
Aside from Utah and North Carolina, lawmakers in nine other states have enacted similar legislation in recent years, including in Florida, Tennessee and Kentucky, according to a tally by The Associated Press. The measures largely restrict trans people’s access to restrooms solely in schools or in schools and government-operated buildings.
But North Carolina’s law, HB 2, went further, barring trans people from using restrooms and changing facilities that matched their gender identities in most public spaces.
A sign protesting a North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access in the bathroom stalls at the 21C Museum Hotel in Durham, N.C., in 2016. Jonathan Drake / Reuters file
HB 2 — which was later partially repealed in 2017 — also prevented local governments from passing LGBTQ nondiscrimination measures and rendered then-existing protections, including one in Charlotte, moot. For this reason, the law affected a much broader segment of the population compared to today’s bills and therefore drew national ire, said Shannon Gilreath, a professor at Wake Forest University’s School of Law and a faculty member of the university’s gender and sexuality program.
“When one’s own interests are not directly compromised by some form of discrimination, one is less likely to respond or to care,” Gilreath said. “I might not believe that’s necessarily the right attitude to have — to do what’s expedient versus to do what’s right in a situation — but that’s human nature.”
Some studies back Gilreath’s line of reasoning.
A survey from the nonpartisan research group Public Religion Research Institute conducted last year found an estimated 79% of Americans support anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people. Policies that largely favor trans Americans solely received significantly less support, the poll found. However, Americans who say they know at least one trans person are much more likely to support pro-trans policies, a 2022 survey from the Pew Research Center found.
Reed said that what’s changed from 2016 to now is that people — and even billion-dollar corporations — have become afraid of provoking the far-right.
She pointed to a group of conservative provocateurs who collectively have amassed tens of millions of social media followers in part by stoking outrage over LGBTQ issues. In several instances, threats of violence have followed the subjects of posts made or amplified by the group of right-wing influencers.
“These people are scary,” Reed said. “If the NBA All-Star Game threatened to pull a game right now? In this atmosphere? Today? They’d get bomb threats from conservatives.”
Last year, bomb threats were made to Budweiser factories across the country after trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s brand partnership with Bud Light created an online firestorm in pockets of right-wing social media. Target also pulled some of its LGBTQ-themed merchandise for Pride Month from its shelves last year after it said it received “threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work.”
Pride month merchandise at the front of a Target store in Hackensack, N.J., last year.Seth Wenig / AP file
Reed also suggested that it might not be politically advantageous for Republicans to go against the grain when it comes to issues that affect trans people.
Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine faced political blowback after vetoing a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors in the state in December. Former President Donald Trump urged Ohio state lawmakers to override the veto, writing on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he was “finished” with the Republican governor. Ohio senators overrode the governor’s veto last week.
In recent weeks, local activists had been unsure whether Utah Gov. Spencer Cox would sign HB 257. Cox in 2022 vetoed legislation that aimed to limit transgender students’ ability to compete on girls sports teams in school, citing the disproportionate rate of suicidal ideation among trans kids.
Conservative lawmakers introduced more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures across the country, according to a tally by the ACLU, with the majority of them targeting trans people. Seventy-five of those bills became law, including a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in Utah, which Cox signedinto law.
Cox signed Utah’s “bathroom bill” on Monday evening with little fanfare and issued a short statement after weeks of speculation on his position.
“We want public facilities that are safe and accommodating for everyone and this bill increases privacy protections for all,” the statement read.
The law is effective immediately.
In addition to Utah, legislators in five states — South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas and Iowa — have introduced their own “bathroom bills” or legislation that further expands “bathroom bills” already on the books, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Utah lawmakers passed a bill on Friday that would bar transgender people from using bathrooms in schools and government buildings that correspond with their gender identities.
House Bill 257, which is titled “Sex-based Designations for Privacy, Anti-bullying and Women’s Opportunities,” also specifies the state’s legal definition of “male” and “female” is based on a person’s genitalia rather than their gender identity. The bill now heads to the governor’s desk for enactment.
This is the third year in a row that lawmakers in Utah have passed legislation that limits the rights of the state’s trans community.
The bill’s passage also comes less than seven years after the enactment of a similar piece of legislation in North Carolina, HB 2, caused national outrage. While HB 2 triggered a boycott of the state by global corporations, big-name performers and college sports leagues, there has been little fanfare over the Utah bill other than from advocates and LGBTQ people living in the state.
If the bill is enacted, it will be the 13th law in the country to limit trans people’s ability to use public facilities in some capacity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ research group that has been tracking the bills.
Supporters of the measure argued that the bill is necessary to prevent “predators seeking to harm women” from entering bathrooms and changing facilities under the guise that they are trans women.
“Let’s be clear, sexual assault knows no boundaries. Keeping men from women’s spaces is an appropriate and much needed boundary in Utah and across America,” Utah state Rep. Kera Birkeland, the bill’s lead sponsor, said on X on Thursday. “Nobody is calling out the transgender community for crimes against women.”
Conversely, critics have condemned the bill for singling out the state’s trans community.
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, called the legislation an “invasion into our basic freedoms.”
“No student should be denied access to the bathroom that aligns with who they are,” she said in a statement on Friday. “No one should fear harassment in the most private of settings. Period.”
It is unclear if Republican Gov. Spencer Cox will sign the bill into law. Cox’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment and the governor has not commented publicly regarding the bill.
In 2022, Cox vetoed legislation that aimed to limit transgender students’ ability to compete on girls sports teams in school. (Subsequently, Utah lawmakers overrode their Republican governor’s veto and the bill became law.) But last year, Cox signed a ban on gender affirming care for minors into law within the first few weeks of the legislative session.
Equality Utah, an LGBTQ advocacy group, said in a statement on X Friday that it successfully fought to include language in the text of HB 257 that would prevent criminal action against minors who go against the law and that it would continue to advocate on behalf of trans youth.
The original bill’s text would have effectively banned transgender people from using public restrooms that match their gender identity at any facility in the state that receives public funding, including hospitals and airports. But the state’s Senate amended the language to limit the scope of the prohibitions to public schools and government-owned facilities, which state House lawmakers overwhelmingly agreed to.
“It’s very clear that right now there are going to be continued and constant political attacks on transgender and nonbinary Utahns,” Aaron Welcher, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, said. “And it’s really unfortunate for all the reasons that we fight for people’s rights and civil liberties, but it is also really unfortunate because many of these people who have been affected over the last three years are youth.”
Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has been quietly mounting a legal battle against World Aquatics to overturn the swimming governing body’s effective ban on most trans women competing in the highest levels of the sport, a lawyer representing Thomas confirmed to NBC News on Friday.
Carlos Sayao, a partner at top Canadian law firm Tyr, said Thomas is asking the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland to overturn the new World Aquatics rules, issued in June 2022, that prohibit trans women from competing in women’s swimming events unless they transitioned before age 12.
The U.K.’s Telegraph was the first to report on Thomas’ behind-closed-doors legal challenge in an article published Thursday evening. Details of Thomas’ challenge, which The Telegraph reported began in September, were not made public previously because cases brought before the Court of Arbitration for Sport are meant to be kept confidential by all parties involved.
The new rules, which would effectively bar trans women from competing in women’s swimming events at the Olympics, came several months after Thomas, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania, made history by becoming the first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship. And in May 2022, Thomas told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” that it’s been a lifelong goal of hers to compete in the Olympics.
Thomas made global headlines for her NCAA win and became the face — and often conservative media’s punching bag — of the worldwide debate over whether trans women should compete in women’s sports.
Lia Thomas competes on March 17, 2022, at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta. Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire via AP
Sayao confirmed his comments to The Telegraph regarding the rules imposed by World Aquatics, which he called “discriminatory” and said caused “profound harm to trans women.”
“Trans women are particularly vulnerable in society and they suffer from higher rates of violence, abuse and harassment than cis women,” he told the British newspaper.
Sayao declined to comment further.
World Aquatics and the Court of Arbitration for Sport did not immediately return requests for comment.
Jorge Giovani Estevez, 33, was arrested Wednesday and charged with one count of battery with prejudice, according to arrest records shared by the Miami Police Department. Daiken Fernandez, 25, was arrested the same day and charged with two counts of felony battery with prejudice, the records show.
Efforts to reach Estevez and Fernandez on Tuesday were unsuccessful, and their defense attorneys have not yet been announced.
The incident took place Nov. 26 in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, which is known worldwide for its art galleries and colorful street murals. In video footage obtained last month by NBC South Florida, two men can be seen attacking the two women and their male friend, who reportedly tried to intervene.
“This group of guys, basically, they just started screaming stuff at us, anti-lesbian comments … and he used a profanity word,” one of the victims, who asked that her name not be published because of fears of retaliation from her attackers, told NBC South Florida in a video interview last month.
She added that she was punched in the face three times and that her injuries may require surgery.
The beatings caused the other woman — who also asked that her name not be published for the same reason as her friend — to fall, strike her head and lose consciousness, she said.
“I definitely felt targeted for sure; I mean they were definitely trying to hate on the fact that we were gay,” she told NBC South Florida. “I don’t understand to this day why.”
Miami Police Chief Manuel A. Morales told NBC South Florida that such encounters are rare in the city and will not be tolerated.
“We need to respect one another and respect the rights of our fellow citizens to actually live life in a safe and happy way,” he said.
Estevez was released on a $5,000 bond and Fernandez was released on a $7,500 bond, according to a spokesperson for Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez. The men are set to be arraigned Jan. 26, the spokesperson added.
If convicted, the pair could face up to 15 year prison sentences for each of the felony counts against them, according to NBC South Florida.
The New Hampshire attorney general’s office filed a civil rights lawsuit against a neo-Nazi group on Wednesday alleging it disrupted a drag story hour at a café in June.
Attorney General John Formella filed the complaint against 19 unnamed members of the New England neo-Nazi group NSC-131, which stands for Nationalist Social Club, and their leader, Christopher Hood, 25, accusing them of violating the state’s anti-discrimination laws for trying to stop the café’s drag story hour through acts of intimidation.
The event, where drag queens read children’s books to kids, took place during Pride Month at Teatotaller, an LGBTQ-owned coffee shop in Concord, the state’s capital. A viral video posted by Juicy Garland, the drag queen hosting the event, shows the group of neo-Nazis wearing masks, sunglasses, baseball caps and matching shirts and pants, shouting, raising their right arms in unison and banging on the coffee shop’s windows.
“Acts of hate designed to terrorize an individual or business into violating our State’s antidiscrimination laws are simply wrong and will not be tolerated,” Formella said in a statement. “The Department of Justice will continue to enforce the State’s antidiscrimination laws to the greatest extent possible to ensure that people of all backgrounds can live free from discrimination, fear, and intimidation because of who they are.”
William E. Gens, an attorney for Hood, said he has not yet read the complaint but summed it up to “virtue signaling” by Formella.
“This attorney general has a rather narrow view of free speech and he’s lost and he’s going to try it again,” Gens said, referring to a similar complaint the attorney general filed against Hood in January that was later dismissed. “Maybe he thinks he’ll find a judge that thinks like he does. I hope not, not just for Chris Hood’s sake but for all our sakes.”
If Hood and the 19 unnamed men are found to have violated the state’s anti-discrimination law, they can face a $10,000 penalty, according to a news releaseissued by the attorney general’s office on Wednesday.
Emmett Soldati, the coffee shop’s owner, applauded the attorney general’s complaint, saying that it “sends a very strong message” of support to the state’s LGBTQ people.
“Though we have kind of gone on largely focusing on selling bubbletea and lattes and hosting shows since June, that this is still important to the attorney general’s office and to the state of New Hampshire is a demonstration to our community that we belong here,” Soldati said.
In his previous complaint, Formella accused Hood and another NSC-131 member of violating civil rights law when they hung a banner along a New Hampshire highway that read, “Keep New England White.” The charges were dismissed in June.
Gens said that since the case was dismissed, Hood has been “keeping kind of quiet” and paying attention to his newborn child.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell’s office also filed a complaint against Hood and the neo-Nazi group last week, accusing them of violating the state’s civil rights laws in a series of incidents between July 2022 and October 2023.
Within the last few years, anti-LGBTQ demonstrations and acts of violence against the community have surged. Demonstrations against drag events and performances have been particularly pronounced.
Between June 1, 2022 and May 20, 2023, there were more than 200 anti-drag incidents across the nation, according to a June report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The report also found that there were more demonstrations within the first five months of this year than in the last seven months of last year.
Florida officials temporarily barred a transgender student from participating in any of her high school’s sports teams, saying the teenager violated state law by playing on the girls volleyball team.
In a letter sent Tuesday to the unnamed student’s school, Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, officials from the Florida High School Athletic Association said the trans teenager was “declared ineligible to represent any member school” and therefore barred from competing on any school sports team for just under a year.
Officials also placed the South Florida high school on probation for 11 months, fined it $16,500 and mandated that its staff undergo a series of compliance trainings.
The state’s penalties come just a few weeks after the high school’s principal and several other school officials were reassigned after county officials opened an investigation into “allegations of improper student participation in sports,” flagged by an anonymous tipster.
A spokesperson for Broward County Public Schools confirmed Wednesday that the district received the Florida High School Athletic Association’s letter and that its investigation into the matter is ongoing.
Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group which is serving as the trans student’s legal representation, condemned the state’s action’s in a statement Tuesday.
“Today’s determination by the Florida High School Athletics Association does not change the fact that the law preventing transgender girls from playing sports with their peers is unconstitutionally rooted in anti-transgender bias, and the Association’s claim to ensure equal opportunities for student athletes rings hollow,” Jason Starr, a litigation strategist at the HRC, said in the statement. “The reckless indifference to the wellbeing of our client and her family, and all transgender students across the State, will not be ignored.”
Through the HRC, the trans student and her parents, Jessica and Gary Norton, declined to comment. The student’s mother did, however, issue a statement last week suggesting county officials outed her daughter by launching the investigation.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, signed a law in 2021 barring trans girls and women from competing on female sports teams in public schools. About half of the country’s states have similar laws restricting trans athletes’ ability to participate in school sports. A representative for the Florida governor’s office directed NBC News’ request for comment to the state’s Education Department.
The department did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment, but in a social media post Tuesday, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. commended the association’s decision to penalize the high school and the trans athlete and the state law that led to those actions.
“Thanks to @GovRonDeSantis, Florida passed legislation to protect girls’ sports and we will not tolerate any school that violates this law,” he said in a post on X. “We applaud the swift action taken by the @FHSAA to ensure there are serious consequences for this illegal behavior.”
The trans student at the center of Monarch High School’s sports controversy and her parents filed a suit over the sports law in 2021 against DeSantis, the Broward County School Board and several other Florida officials. The family argued that the state law violated Title IX, a landmark civil rights law that prevents sex-based discrimination at both public and private schools that receive funding from the federal government. A federal judge denied the family’s challenge to the law last month.
Eddie Ashley was looking for a hookup. So like countless others on a Saturday night in New York City, he went to The Ritz, a gay bar in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.
He drank too much, he said. And he did end up going home with someone — one of his victims.
Eighteen months later, Ashley, 30, was sentenced to nine years in state prison for robbing the man he left the bar with in May 2022, along with various other crimes he pleaded guilty to committing in recent years.
Authorities said Ashley and the victim went to the victim’s apartment several blocks north of the bar, and Ashley stole the man’s phone and wallet.
But this was not, prosecutors said, a one-off robbery among so many others across the city on any given night. The encounter was part of a broader crime ring in which authorities said at least 16 victims, many of them gay men, were targeted from September 2021 to August 2022 at bars and nightclubs, then often drugged and robbed of thousands of dollars while they were incapacitated. In several cases, surviving victims and their family members believe the assailants used facial recognition technology to unlock their mark’s phones. Two of the men were killed. Ashley denies knowledge of the wider crime ring and was not charged with murder.
The attacks happened quietly throughout the city’s busy nightlife, striking run-of-the-mill bars, multistory nightclubs, and underground gay leather bars across two Manhattan neighborhoods, with intoxicated gay men often the targets. The danger lurking in the venues didn’t come into broad public view until May 2022 — eight months after it started — when NBC News reported that a 25-year-old gay man had been killed.
After months of pressure from the victims’ families, the news media and politicians, the New York City Police Department said it had finally cracked the case: Officers arrested six suspects earlier this year who they said were part of the drugging-and-robbery ring. The arrests were announced at a news conference that included the mayor, police commissioner and the Manhattan district attorney — and was met with long-awaited relief within the city’s gay community.
People hold signs for a vigil commemorating Julio Ramirez in New York in June 2022.Julius Constantine Motal / NBC News
Five of the suspects pleaded not guilty charges that included murder, conspiracy and grand larceny.
Eddie Ashley, though, admitted he was guilty.
One of the four crimes to which he pleaded guilty, the May 2022 robbery, was linked by prosecutors to the broader crime ring. Awaiting his sentencing three weeks ago, he asked if theexpected punishment fit the crime.
“I lost a lot being in here, financially, I lost my grandma — so I’m kind of messed up. This is basically a bad situation right now for something that was just one night,” Ashley told NBC News at Rikers Island jail complex in his first interview about the crimes.
Ashley’s sentencing is the most significant development in the year-old case, and it provides the best insights yet into how the investigation unfolded. But it also highlights how much is still not known.
A separate crime ring was committing similar crimes at bars in Manhattan’s Lower East Side within the same time period, according to prosecutors. Some victims still don’t know if their specific cases are linked to one or the other alleged crime ring — or neither. And there’s even bigger gaps: One man remembers being victimized in March of this year by a woman — yet all the people who have been charged are men.
And almost all of the victims who spoke with NBC News say they wonder whether the reign of terror afflicting New York City’s nightlife still continues, unnoticed once again.
Julio Ramirez and John Umberger.Ramirez family photo; Linda Clary
Julio Ramirez was a 25-year-old social worker. John Umberger was a 33-year-old political consultant. Both went out to gay bars in Hell’s Kitchen 38 days apart last spring. Both ended up drugged, robbed and dead.
Police initially told relatives that their deaths appeared to be self-inflicted: accidental overdoses, the families said.
But that didn’t add up to the families. They suspected foul play.
Both Ramirez and Umberger each left a bar with at least one man. Both had their bank accounts drained. Both appeared to be reading text messages on their phoneafter their bodies were found.
“Right away I knew something was wrong,” Ramirez’s brother, Carlos, said. “He would never intentionally take any drugs or anything that could harm him.”
Umberger’s family was similarly not convinced by the police explanation.
To them, “it looked like John had gone out to a club, been robbed, emptied his credit cards out of his wallet — but he still had his wallet, no phone — and he came home and did a bunch of drugs because he was so depressed over what happened,” Umberger’s mother, Linda Clary, previously told NBC News. “That’s where it was like, ‘I’m sorry, that’s not my child.’ I can assure you if that were to happen, that’s not what John would have done.”
Both families were determined to take matters into their own hands.
In the days following her son’s death last spring, Clary flew to New York from her home in Georgia, seeking answers. With the help of six family members and her son’s friends, she retraced his last steps from what she gathered from his bank transactions, phone records and those who saw him last. Similarly, after several failed login attempts to Ramirez’s computer, Carlos Ramirez gained access and uncovered suspicious banking records from his brother’s accounts. Clary and Ramirez both said thousands of dollars had been drained from their loved one’s accounts following their deaths.
Both families took their findings to the NYPD.
“They looked at us like we were from outer space,” Clary previously said. “No one was interested in finding out the truth.”
Two days after speaking with authorities, Clary said a homicide detective was assigned to her son’s case.
But still frustrated with the pace of the investigations, both families brought their stories to the media, hoping it would put pressure on authorities.
Had she not gone to reporters, Clary speculated, “it would have continued to be pushed under the carpet, and things would still be going on.”
Linda Clary in her home in Highlands, N.C. Will Crooks for NBC News
Once the news of Umberger’s death became known, gay men who said they had survived similarly harrowing experiences stepped forward to share their stories publicly.
NBC News spoke with six people who say they or their family members had been the victims of crimes from December 2021 to this March that broadly fit the pattern of the Ramirez and Umberger cases. Many of the victims say the suspects used their faces while incapacitated to unlock their phones, via facial recognition technology, and access their bank accounts. Some of them asked that their names not be published out of fear of retaliation by the people who harmed them. All of the men say they filed police reports shortly after their encounters occurred and most said their cases are ongoing.
In December 2021, Tyler Burt, 28, was walking home after a night out with friends when he stopped in at the Boiler Room, a gay bar in Manhattan’s East Village for one last drink. Sitting alone at the bar was the last thing he remembered before waking up the next day in his apartment fully clothed, with his shoes still on and roughly $15,000 and personal belongings stolen, Burt said.
“I feel lucky in a way that I didn’t get murdered,” Burt said. “Something horrible happened to me, but I’m still alive to tell the tale. I’m very grateful for that.”
Tyler Burt in New York.Vincent Tullo for NBC News
In July 2022, a 51-year-old Manhattan resident said he woke up on his living room floor in a pile of his own vomit after having a single drink at the 9th Avenue Saloon, a gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen. The last thing he remembered was saying goodbye to his friends. He said that he had a single drink the entire evening and that roughly $8,000 had been taken from his account.
“The only reason I didn’t die was because they left me on my stomach,” he said. “And thank God I wasn’t raped.”
“Why can’t I go out and have fun and not worry that I’m not going to make it home?” the man added.
And this March, Michael, a 30-year-old gay man, said he was approached by an unknown woman after visiting The Eagle NYC, a gay bar in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. When he came to, he said, the same woman — who he said knew his name — was shaking him on an empty street in East Harlem, about 80 blocks north of the bar, “trying to get rid of me.” The next day, he realized that $5,000 was missing from his bank account.
“The way that they systematically went through all of my banking and credit card apps on my phone, it was like practice,” he said. “You could tell that they’d done this before.”
The medical examiner’s office ruled in March that Ramirez and Umberger’s deaths were homicides caused by a “drug-facilitated theft.” Multiple drugs were found in their systems, including fentanyl, lidocaine and cocaine.
In the following weeks, six men — Ashley, Jayqwan Hamilton, 36; Robert Demaio, 35; Jacob Barroso, 30; Andre Butts, 29; and Shane Hoskins, 32 — were chargedin connection with the crime scheme that led to the deaths of Ramirez and Umberger. Three — Hamilton, Demaio and Barroso — were charged with murder.
While many of the victims were gay men, all were targeted for financial gain and not because of their sexual orientation, prosecutors said.
The initial court appearance in April for three of the suspects — two of whom were charged with murder — was tense.
The small Manhattan courtroom was packed with family members and friends of the deceased sitting across a tight aisle from the family and friends of the men accused of killing their loved ones.
When the three defendants appeared, they were surrounded by a swarm of roughly a dozen court officers. Carlos Ramirez and his parents were visibly distressed, realizing they were seated directly behind where the defendants would be sitting, prompting others in the gallery to make room for them to move.
“It was such a bad, dark feeling just thinking that these were the last people my brother was with when he died,” Ramirez said. “That just really messed me up.”
As the judge spoke, a relative of one of the defendants got into a verbal altercation with a police officer after the officer asked them to quiet down. When the man asked why, the officer got in the man’s face and screamed: “Because I said so! You’re in our house.” When the man yelled expletives back, he was escorted out of the courtroom by several officers.
Once the courtroom became quiet again, all that could be heard through the whispers were the sniffles of tearful grieving family members.
Outside, supporters of one of the suspects, Barroso, went in front of the news cameras and yelled that he is “not a murderer. You guys got this backwards. We will prove his innocence.”
A few weeks later, Clary flew from Georgia to New York to attend the first court appearance for Hamilton, one of the two men charged in her son’s murder.
It was the first time she had been to New York since recovering her son’s body.
At the courthouse she was swarmed by a gaggle of reporters and news cameras, which she described as “overwhelming.” The attention on Clary was unsurprising.
After months of raising awareness about the gay bar killings, Clary — a devout Christian from the South — had become somewhat of a leading voice for the safety and well-being of New York City’s gay men.
“It does strike me as being odd the more that I think about it though,” Clary said. “Here you are in New York, the bastion of progressivism, and yet I’m the one having to raise the flag.”
“Life is full of ironies,” she added.
Linda Clary in her home in Highlands, N.C. Will Crooks for NBC News
Ashley grew up downtown. As a high school dropout, he said he had been working toward earning some sort of employment certificate before he was sent to Rikers. He was living with his elderly grandmother in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and taking care of her.
“I had a lot of s— going on before,” Ashley said. “I was trying to get my life together.”
On May 14, 2022, Ashley went to The Ritz — the same bar where Ramirez was last seen a month before — looking for a hookup, he said. He said he had been to the bar two or three times before.
Prosecutors said Ashley left the bar and went to the apartment of the man whose phone and wallet Ashley would later steal. Ashley said he does not remember going back to the man’s apartment but does remember that he had not met the man before. He described the man as being in his 20s and Latino.
The Ritz Bar and Lounge in Hell’s Kitchen.Julius Constantine Motal / NBC News
Police obtained security footage of Ashley using the victim’s phone to pay for Taco Bell that same morning via Apple Pay, according to prosecutors. Ashley said he does remember getting Taco Bell but suggested the victim could have bought him food.
In April, Ashley was arrested and charged with robbery, grand larceny, petit larceny and identity theft for four incidents from October 2021 to August 2022, including the May 2022 encounter, which was linked to the broader crime scheme, according to prosecutors. Unable to make bail, he was sent to the notorious Rikers Island jail.
After nearly seven months there, Ashley said he changed his plea to guilty so he can serve time in prison elsewhere. For years, the massive jail complex has been under scrutiny by criminal justice activists and lawmakers from around the country for its allegedly “inhumane conditions.”
Ashley had one word to describe his time at Rikers: “rough.”
He said he’s been in fights with inmates, adding, “Maybe two or three altercations with officers’ use of force, but that’s about it.”
Being in custody has also taken an immense emotional toll, he said. His grandmother died while he was behind bars.
He explained that, regardless of the other crimes he committed, he believes the May 2022 encounter had an outsize impact on his sentencing because it was linked to the wider scheme.
Ashley was not charged with murder and was not present on the nights of either Ramirez’s or Umberger’s deaths, according to prosecutors. He said he only found out about the wider crime scheme when he obtained an attorney upon his arraignment.
“I knew it had nothing to do with me,” he said of victims who were drugged and died.
Prosecutors allege that another one of the six suspects, Hamilton, who was charged with murder in the deaths of both Ramirez and Umberger, was present on the night Ashley committed the robbery in May 2022. Hamilton was accused of giving Ashley’s victim an unknown illicit substance outside the bar and using the victim’s phone to steal $2,000 from his bank accounts. Hamilton’s lawyer declined to comment.
Ashley said he remembers Hamilton being at the bar that night, but he maintains that he never saw Hamilton drugging anyone. Ashley declined to say how he knew Hamilton, citing Hamilton’s ongoing case, but said they were not friends. He also denied knowing any of the other four defendants.
After sitting with NBC News in the Rikers visitors’ hall — a nearly empty room that could seat hundreds — for about 15 minutes, Ashley called a correction officer over to end the meeting.
“I don’t even care anymore,” Ashley said when asked about being connected by authorities to a broader scheme that led to the death of two men, walking off. “It’s behind me.”
People hold signs for a vigil commemorating Julio Ramirez in New York in June 2022.Julius Constantine Motal / NBC News
For the victims and families of the deceased, the yearslong crime scheme has been difficult to leave behind.
Many of the victims who spoke with NBC News described re-entering New York City’s nightlife scene with apprehension.
The 51-year-old man said he’s been out only once or twice since he was robbed. He said he’s afraid that his assailants — who he said do not appear to be any of the suspects arrested in recent months — might recognize him.
“I go straight to work and straight to home,” he said. “I’m always looking around; I’m always suspicious of everything.”
Michael said he is slowly trying to re-enter New York’s nightlife scene after being abandoned in East Harlem.
“My therapist has told me to be more discerning around people, and that’s a good defense mechanism, but I don’t really like that, you know?” Michael said. “I like the person I am. I like being friendly and trusting and open, and it would really suck if that’s something that was permanently changed by this experience.”
Michael went back to The Eagle NYC for the first time last month. Instead of opting for a late night out, he went for happy hour earlier in the evening.
All but one of the surviving victims who spoke with NBC News said they still have facial recognition software on their phones out of convenience. Some note that the larger issue is the danger of being drugged, regardless of whether a criminal can unlock a person’s phone and steal their money.
The Ramirez family did not celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas last year, Carlos said, and does not plan on doing so this year either. For Carlos personally, he said he misses his best friend.
“When something happens and it’s good news and he’s not here, I can’t share it with him. It kind of takes away from it,” Carlos said. “That’s really hard.”
Clary said she hasn’t built up the courage to go through her son’s belongings in his apartment in Washington, D.C. More recently, she’s made a handful of trips to New York City for the pretrial court appearances of the suspects charged in connection with her son’s death.
Clary has been enjoying her new role as a grandmother in recent months. But even that, she said, has been challenging at times.
“That whole experience is diminished because John is not here,” she said. “At some point I have to let go of John not being here and trust God that He has a plan that this life, that we think is everything, is so small compared to eternity.”
When she’s in New York, she said she likes to frequent some of her son’s favorite restaurants in Manhattan: The Waverly Inn in the West Village, Minetta Tavern in Greenwich Village and La Goulue on the Upper East Side, across the street from the apartment where her son died.
“It is a kind of ridiculous, not logical thing,” Clary said. “But you like to go to the places he enjoyed being at because you’re thinking, ‘Yeah, this is the closest thing you have to him being here.’”
Linda Clary holds a family photo of her and her son John Umberger at her home in Highlands, N.C. Will Crooks for NBC News
It’s been more than two years since authorities say this crime ring, which largely targeted gay bars, began. Yet victims of similar crimes to the ones that killed Ramirez and Umberger say they are still nearly as perplexed about the encounters as they were when they first regained consciousness immediately afterward.
Michael said police and prosecutors told him his case was linked to the same group being charged in the two men’s deaths. Police sources also confirmed the connection with NBC News.
However, Michael said authorities were never able to identify the sole person he remembers from the encounter: an unknown woman.
“That tells me that there are still people on the streets who did this to me, to other people,” Michael said. “There’s no way they caught everyone who were doing these robberies.”
Some survivors have even less clarity. They say police told them their cases have not been connected to the ring related to Ramirez and Umberger or the second known ring.
A 48-year-old man, who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation from people involved in his encounter, said he was drugged and robbed after visiting The Eagle NYC in October 2022. He said his case is still ongoing.
“I know what happened legally with the Hell’s Kitchen cases, but I feel like The Eagle cases just sort of fell off the radar,” the man said. “Were they connected to other cases? Have they all been caught? Are there suspects still at large? Is this still happening?”
The NYPD and mayor’s office launched a program in June to re-examine unsolved drugging, robbery and homicide cases involving LGBTQ victims, which was largely seen as a response to criticisms surviving victims made in the news media.
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said that the NYPD has not received any requests to have cases re-examined as of last month and that the lack of applications could suggest that there is not a need to re-examine any cases.
However, Burt said he applied to have his case re-examined in June. He said he tried following up with the NYPD in July, but he did not receive a response to his last emails, which he shared with NBC News.
“I’m just disappointed in how this whole thing has been handled,” Burt said. “Every step of the way has made me feel like this is not a priority.”
Tyler Burt in New York.Vincent Tullo for NBC News
The NYPD defended how the cases were handled.
“The Detective Bureau is committed to conducting solid, high-quality investigations and ensuring that each investigation is handled efficiently with dedication and professionalism,” an NYPD spokesperson said in an email.
Michael suggested that while it is important to find and punish those who were responsible for the past crimes, it is equally paramount that people understand that the technological tactics used to access their financial accounts are likely being replicated by others.
“As long as there is a convenient way for you to unlock your phone without having to enter a pin, people are going to use it and people are going to find ways to exploit it,” he said. “Awareness is the most important thing.”
“Maybe they’re laying low, maybe it’s hard to find them,” he added, “but they’re definitely still out there.”
Vatican officials said Wednesday that transgender people can be baptized in the Catholic church.
“A transgender person, even if they have undergone hormone therapy and sex-reassignment surgery, can receive baptism under the same conditions as other faithful, if there are no situations in which there is a risk of generating a public scandal or disorientation among the faithful,” a Vatican office said in a documentpublished Wednesday in Italian on its website.
The document was a response to six questions that Bishop Jose Negri of Santo Amaro in Brazil sent to the Vatican in July, regarding LGBTQ people’s involvement in routine Catholic practices, and released by the Vatican’s Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith. The document said it had been approved by Pope Francis on Oct. 31.
Vatican officials also concluded that transgender people can be godparents and witnesses at religious weddings. They added that an individual in a same-sex relationship can also be a witness in Catholic weddings.
The document appeared to suggest that children either adopted by same-sex couples or conceived through surrogacy cannot be baptized. It also implied that people in same-sex relationships should not be godparents to baptized children.
The Vatican’s stated willingness to include trans people in the church is the latest step it has taken to extend itself to the LGBTQ community.
Last month, Francis signaled an openness to allowing Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples on a case-by-case basis. However, Francis, 86, added that same-sex blessings should not be seen as synonymous with heterosexual weddings.
Some leading Catholics who have advocated for the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the church praised the Vatican’s statement.
The Rev. James Martin, an American Jesuit who runs outreach ministry for LGBTQ Catholics, wrote on the X platform that pastors in some dioceses had prevented transgender people from being baptized, serving as godparents or being witnesses to marriages.
“As such, this is an important step forward in the church seeing transgender people not only as people (in a church where some say they don’t really exist) but as Catholics,” Martin said.
The unexpected elevation of fourth-term Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana to speaker of the House on Wednesday swiftly prompted unforgiving criticism and fresh scrutiny on the once obscure representative’s views on LGBTQ rights.
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, said Johnson would be “the most anti-equality” speaker in U.S. history.
“This is a choice that will be a stain on the record of everyone who voted for him,” Robinson said in a statement Wednesday. “Johnson is someone who doesn’t hesitate to express his disdain for the LGTBQ+ community from the rooftops and then introduces legislation that seeks to erase us from society.”
Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., one of the few openly gay members of Congress, appeared to take a jab at Johnson during the speaker vote on the House floor Wednesday, yelling, “Happy wedding anniversary to my wife!” before voting for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
Even outspoken conservative Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had gripes with Johnson’s ascension to power.
“So we just elected a raging homophobe to speaker…..?” McCain wrote on X. “Way to break stereotypes and win over hearts and minds!”
A representative for Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding criticisms of his views and prior comments on LGBTQ issues.
Until Wednesday, the Louisiana Republican was relatively unknown outside of Capitol Hill, having only joined Congress in 2017. But after the historic ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker and the failure of three other GOP members to clinch the House’s top job, Johnson — who has been called an “architect” of the effort to overturn the 2020 election — is suddenly second in line to the presidency.
Amicus briefs and op-eds
In the early 2000s, Johnson worked as an attorney and spokesperson for the evangelical Christian legal group Alliance Defense Fund, now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom. For decades, ADF — designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a designation the Arizona-based group disputes — spearheaded legal efforts to criminalize same-sex sexual activity, block efforts to legalize same-sex marriage, allow for businesses to deny service to LGBTQ people, and ban transgender people from using restrooms that correspond with their gender identities.
During his ADF tenure, Johnson sued the city of New Orleans in 2003 on behalf of the group over a local law that gave health care benefits to the partners of gay city workers.
That same year, he wrote a prominent amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, arguing in favor of allowing states to criminalize same-sex consensual sex. The brief argues that sex between men should be banned because it is more likely to spread sexually transmitted diseases than sex between men and women and therefore poses “a distinct public health problem.”
Shortly after the high court’s 2003 ruling in the landmark case, where it struck down the nation’s remaining anti-sodomy laws, Johnson wrote an editorial for The Times of Shreveport, Louisiana, in which he suggested decriminalizing gay sex could lead to the legalization of prostitution and illicit drug-use.
“There is clearly no ‘right to sodomy’ in the Constitution, and the right of ‘privacy of the home’ has never placed all activity within the home outside the bounds of the criminal law,” Johnson wrote at the time. “What about drugs, prostitution and counterfeiting? Make no mistake, the Lawrence decision opens the door to the undermining of many important laws and is ultimately a strategic first shot for the homosexual lobby’s ultimate prize — the redefinition of marriage.”
The following year, Johnson wrote another editorial in favor of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Louisiana, suggesting that gay people marrying each other could prompt people to start marrying animals.
“Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone,” he wrote. “Society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.”
In a separate op-ed that same year, Johnson said that “homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”
Support for same-sex marriage remains at an all-time high in the country. More than 70% of Americans support sax-sex marriage, according to a poll Gallup released in June, including 49% of Republicans.
Entering public office
In 2015, Johnson ran unopposed for a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives. During his short stint as a state lawmaker, he introduced the Marriage and Conscience Act, which critics argued would allow people to discriminate against same-sex married couples. Johnson defended the bill at the time, arguing that it only prevented the state from taking action against business owners who exercised their beliefs on same-sex marriage, The Advocate reported. The bill was never brought for a vote.
SarahJane Guidry, executive director of Forum for Equality, a Louisiana LGBTQ rights group, said Johnson’s tenure in the state House was “short but impactful.”
“He really did pave the way for the types of conversations, types of legislation and types of attacks that we’re seeing in Louisiana today, whether it’s the ban on gender-affirming health care, or the ban on trans youth playing sports,” Guidry said. “His track record, while he wasn’t here very long, definitely had a long impact.”
The Republican Party, she added, “is really making sure that those very vocal opinions that Speaker Johnson has made in the past and is currently making are the interests of the party going forward, and I find that to be a very scary situation, for not only Louisiana, but the country to be in.”
Shortly after Rep. John Fleming, R-La., announced in 2015 that he would be leaving the House to run for a vacant Senate seat, Johnson declared his candidacy for the House and was elected.
As a member of Congress, Johnson chaired the Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus of conservative House members. Reports in 2019 found that the committee was pressuring Amazon to rescind its ban on books by an author who is considered “the father of conversion therapy.”
On Capitol Hill, Johnson also spearheaded the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, which aimed to prohibit the instruction of sexual orientation, gender identity and “transgenderism,” among other topics, for children under the age of 10. The bill, which Johnson introduced last year, was seen as a federal version of Florida’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law.
A ‘dangerous’ House speaker for LGBTQ rights?
Gabriele Magni, an assistant professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and director of the school’s LGBTQ Politics Research Initiative, said Johnson’s ascension to leadership could be “dangerous” for LGBTQ rights. He said Johnson will be able to prioritize, fund raise for and give greater visibility to anti-LGBTQ policies in unparalleled ways as the 56th House speaker.
“These are going to become even more mainstream positions within the Republican Party because they’re not the positions of the minority, but they are the priority of the leadership, someone who is second in line to the presidency,” Magni said.
Johnson’s most recent Republican predecessors as speaker, McCarthy and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, maintained anti-LGBTQ standpoints as well, though Johnson has put far more focus on the issue.
Throughout his time in Congress, Ryan opposed same-sex marriage, the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and voted against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act, enacted in 2009 by the Obama administration, extended federal hate crimes laws to cover sexual orientation, gender identity and disabilities.
McCarthy voted against the Equality Act, federal legislation that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, in 2021. As speaker, McCarthy — whose speakership became the shortest in more than 140 years — also did little to quell a chorus of increasingly bigoted rhetoric from several firebrand Republican House members.
One of those lawmakers, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga, appeared to celebrate Johnson’s election as speaker on Wednesday specifically for his stances on LGBTQ issues.
“Mike has a conservative voting record and has committed to helping me move important legislation forward, like my Protect Children’s Innocence Act, to end the genital mutilation of kids,” Greene wrote on X, referring to her bill to criminalize gender-affirming care for minors. “Let’s get to work!”
Several Republicans said they voted against Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., for speaker this week in part because Emmer voted for a bill last year that codified same-sex marriage protections into federal law. Emmer’s loss opened up the speakership for Johnson.
Despite being arguably to the right of his Republican predecessors on LGBTQ issues and more vocal in his opposition to LGBTQ rights, Johnson’s positions are also largely inline with mainstream Republican ideals. The Republican National Committee’s most recent platform, dopted in 2016 and renewed in 2020, refers to marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman at least five times.
State and local Republican lawmakers have also shifted to the right on LGBTQ issues in recent years. So far this year, state lawmakers have introduced more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills, and at least 80 have become law, according to a tallyby the American Civil Liberties Union.
On Wednesday afternoon, after her initial social media post about the House speaker vote, Craig weighed in again, appearing to confirm that mention of her anniversary was a dig at Johnson.
“Proud to vote against him on my 15th anniversary with my wife, Cheryl,” she wrote on X. “@RepMikeJohnson, enjoy it while it lasts — it won’t be long.”
President Joe Biden acknowledged the 25th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death on Thursday and condemned the nation’s recent uptick in anti-LGBTQ threats and acts of violence.
Shepard, a gay college freshman at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, was abducted, robbed and beaten into a coma on Oct. 6, 1998. The two men who attacked Shepard tied him to a fence in freezing weather. He was discovered 18 hours later by a bicyclist, who initially mistook him for a scarecrow. Shepard died in a Colorado hospital on Oct. 12, 1998, surrounded by family.
“Matthew’s tragic and senseless murder shook the conscience of the American people,” Biden said in a statement. “And his courageous parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, turned Matthew’s memory into a movement, galvanizing millions of people to combat the scourge of anti-LGBTQI+ hate and violence in America.”
The two assailants, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder, but they were not charged with hate crimes. At the time, attacks motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity did not qualify as hate crimes under Wyoming law. Wyoming is currently one of just two states, along with South Carolina, that does not have a law allowing additional penalties in hate-motivated crimes.
In 2009, the Obama administration enacted the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The law extended federal hate crimes laws to cover sexual orientation, gender identity and disabilities and was named after Shepard and a Texas Black man who was murdered by white supremacists the same year of Shepard’s killing.
Biden, who was vice president at the time, lauded the 2009 law on Thursday and vowed to “continue the fight against hate, against violence, and against bigotry in all its forms.”
“Today, as threats and violence targeting the LGBTQI+ community continue to rise, our work is far from finished,” he said. “No American should face hate or violence for who they are or who they love.”
Anti-LGBTQ demonstrations have spiked over the past year, in addition to several high-profile acts of violence allegedly incited by anti-LGBTQ sentiments.
In August, a teenager was arrested for stabbing a 28-year-old gay professional dancer, O’Shae Sibley, to death at a gas station in Brooklyn, New York, in what police later said was a hate crime. That same month, Laura Ann Carleto, a California business owner and mother of nine, was shot and killed over a Pride flag displayed in her clothing store.
From June 2022 to May, there was an average of 39 anti-LGBTQ protests per month in the U.S. compared with just three a month from January 2017 through May 2022, according to a recent reportby the Crowd Counting Consortium, a research group that tracks political protests.
In his statement Thursday, Biden also again called for Congress to pass the Equality Act, legislation that would amend the 1969 Civil Rights Act to include anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The legislation passed in the then-Democratic-controlled House in 2021 — with support of three Republicans — but has since stalled in the Senate.
