A gay couple was beaten and bloodied in front of the Connecticut gay bar they own. The two men say the incident was a hate crime, but local authorities disagree.
In a statement shared Tuesday, Casey Fitzpatrick said he and his husband, Nicholas Ruiz — the owners of Troupe429 in Norwalk, Connecticut — were violently assaulted by a male bar patron who also disparaged them with anti-LGBTQ slurs. The incident, which occurred in mid-September, resulted in Ruiz being sent to the hospital and requiring over 50 stitches across his face and $20,000’s worth of plastic surgery, Fitzpatrick said in the statement, which was published Tuesday on the bar’s website.
Fitzpatrick said the assault amounted to a hate crime and that the incident is “being mishandled” by the Norwalk Police Department.
Nicholas Ruiz and Casey Fitzpatrick.via Troupe429
“As of October 11, nearly two and a half weeks after the assault, no charges have been filed, nor has the suspect been arrested,” Fitzpatrick wrote. “We are asking for your help and support in seeking justice for Nicholas.”
The Norwalk Police Department announced Wednesday that they arrested the suspect, Carmen Everett Parisi, earlier that day and said in a statement to NBC News that they found no evidence that the assault was fueled by anti-LGBTQ bias.
“The arrest follows the Police Department’s warrant issued by a judge, after completing investigative steps of reviewing of video footage from inside the bar and attempting to get sworn statements from the two victims,” Lt. Terrence Blake, the Norwalk Police Department’s public information officer and LGBTQ liaison, said in a statement Wednesday. “Video footage from the body-worn, on-the-scene body cameras show no findings of any racial, religious, ethnic, or sexual orientation (RRES) language or indication of any anti-LGBTQ motivation associated with the assault.”
On the evening of the attack, a male patron “repeatedly harassed and made several female patrons and our staff uncomfortable,” which prompted staff to “respectfully” escort the man out of the venue, according to Fitzpatrick’s statement.
When the man would not leave the bar’s entryway, Fitzpatrick said, Ruiz went outside to de-escalate the situation and “peacefully” pleaded with the man to leave the area. The man then made disparaging remarks about the bar and the people inside it using anti-LGBTQ slurs, Fitzpatrick recounted.
The man then became violent, repeatedly punching the right side of Ruiz’s face and clawing at his chest, causing his clothes to rip and a necklace to be torn from his neck, Fitzpatrick wrote. The suspect also punched Fitzpatrick in the neck, closing his airway, Fitzpatrick added.
The statement was coupled with a graphic image of Ruiz on the evening of the incident. Ruiz can be seen lying on a hospital bed with his cheek torn open and blood rushing down his body.
“As of October 11, nearly two and a half weeks after the assault, no charges have been filed, nor has the suspect been arrested,” Fitzpatrick wrote. “We are asking for your help and support in seeking justice for Nicholas.”
Troupe429 in Norwalk, Conn.Google Maps
The Norwalk Police Department and Fitzpatrick confirmed that the police responded to the incident the evening the assault occurred.
But in the weeks since, Fitzpatrick said he and Ruiz received “zero updates” despite Fitzpatrick’s repeated emails, calls and visits to the department. The Norwalk Police Department said in a statement to NBC News that it attempted to get sworn statements from the victims, “who did not show up for their appointments.”
In an email to NBC News on Thursday, Ruiz and Fitzpatrick said they were thankful that the police had arrested the suspect, but again rejected the department’s version of the events.
“We were always cooperative with law enforcement, never missed an appointment, and remain committed to assisting them however we can,” the couple said. “Our hearts are heavy having lived this experience and knowing violent attacks in our community go unanswered. It was scary having to speak up and not knowing if reliving the trauma would bring justice.”
The Norwalk incident is the latest in a slew of violent threats and attacks against LGBTQ people throughout the country this year.
At least three LGBTQ events were targeted by white nationalist groups in June — which is designated as LGBTQ Pride Month — and in April, a man walked into a New York City bar with a bottle of flammable liquid, poured it on the bar’s floor, lit a match and set the venue ablaze, police said.
Over 1,300 hate-based incidents against Americans were motivated by their sexual orientation or gender identity in 2020, accounting for 16% of all biased-fueled encounters that year, according to the FBI’s most recent hate crime data.
Students across Virginia protested Tuesday in response to new guidelines putting restrictions on transgender students in the state’s public schools.
Walkouts are set to take place throughout the day at more than 90 middle and high schools in the state, according to student-run advocacy group Pride Liberation Project, which organized the statewide effort. As of noon on Tuesday, students in Woodbridge, Springfield, Manassas, McLean and other Virginia cities were waving rainbow picket signs and shouting, “Trans rights are human rights!”
“Trans students are students just like everybody else. We don’t want to be out here fighting for our rights and protesting — we want to be in calculus class and learning how to drive,” said Ranger Balleisen, a transgender senior at McLean High School in Fairfax County who helped organize the protests. “But, instead, we have to be here, because they’re trying to take away our rights.”
Earlier this month, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration rewrote Virginia’s model policies for the treatment of transgender students, mandating that all students use school facilities, including bathrooms or locker rooms, according to the sex they were assigned at birth. The policy revision also forbids trans students from changing their names and pronouns at school without a parent’s permission anddiscourages school staff from concealing students’ gender identities from their parents, regardless of whether a student prefers to keep their transition a secret.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during a news conference at the Capitol, in Richmond, Va., on Jan. 27, 2022.Steve Helber / AP file
Proponents welcomed the policy change, lauding the new measures for giving parents greater discretion over their child’s schooling experience. Parental rights in education was a central issue of Youngkin’s campaign for the Virginia governorship last year and was largely credited with sweeping him to victory.
“Parents should be a part of their children’s lives, and it’s apparent through the public protests and on-camera interviews that those objecting to the guidance already have their parents as part of that conversation,” Macaulay Porter, a spokeswoman for Youngkin, said in an email. “While students exercise their free speech today, we’d note that these policies state that students should be treated with compassion and schools should be free from bullying and harassment.”
The new guidelines are a sharp reversal from policies enacted last year by Youngkin’s Democratic predecessor, Ralph Northam. Northam’s guidelines said “school staff should abide by the student’s wishes” regarding names and pronouns. They also recommended that educators allow students to use school facilities, including bathrooms and locker rooms, that correspond with their gender identities. Additionally, the former rules advised that if a student did not want to share their gender identity with their family, “this should be respected.”
“When Barbara Johns walked out, people told her she should have stayed put too,” Virginia state Del. Danica Roem, who in 2018 became the first out trans person to be seated in a U.S. state legislature, tweeted, referring to the late civil rights leader who is credited with helping push the Supreme Court to deem racial school segregation illegal. “Student voices matter and #Virginia students today are following in her footsteps — and I know a lot of PWC parents are super proud of their kids for speaking up.”
Students have begun to walk out of Northern Virginia schools in protest of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed restrictions on transgender students’ rights.NBC News
When asked about the student walkouts at Tuesday’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reaffirmed the president’s commitment to the LGBTQ community.
“He believes transgender youth should be allowed to be able to go to school freely, to be able to express themselves freely, to be able to have the protections that they need to be who they are,” Jean-Pierre, who became the first openly LGBTQ White House press secretary earlier this year, told reporters.
Rivka Vizcardo-Lichter, a queer student at Oakton High School in Fairfax County and the lead organizer of the Pride Liberation Project, agreed. She added that since the new rules were drafted earlier this month, LGBTQ students across the state have turned to the group in distress.
“I’ve heard literally hundreds of stories telling me ‘I’m terrified for my own life,’” Vizacardo-Lichter said. “How are we supposed to focus on our classes — like calculus or biology — if we’re worried that our teachers are going to out us to our unsupportive parents?”
Vizcardo-Lichter, 15, added that the policies will exacerbate mental issues that disproportionately impact LGBTQ youths.
Nearly half of LGBTQ youths in the United States have “seriously considered” suicide in the past year, according a survey released earlier this year by LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization The Trevor Project. The same survey found that LGBTQ youth who found their school to be affirming reported lower rates of attempting suicide.
Youngkin’s office stressed that the new guidelines direct schools to prevent gender discrimination or harassment against all students and “attempt to accommodate students with distinctive needs, including any student with a persistent and sincere belief that his or her gender differs from his or her sex.”
Casey Calabia, a trans senior at McLean High School in Fairfax County who also helped organize the statewide protests, called Youngkin’s defense “tone deaf.”
“How can you stand there and say that this is for trans students when trans students are actively telling you — and as well as our allies left and right, both in the Virginia government and outside of it — these are going to hurt a non-inconsiderable portion of Virginia’s students?” Calabia asked, pointing to the protests.
The new guidelines are subject to a 30-day public comment period, which began Monday. Once the public comment period concludes, schools across the state will be required to adopt policies that are “consistent with” the new rules or “more comprehensive,” the document said.
As of Tuesday morning, more than 17,700 comments had been submitted.
CORRECTION (Sept. 27, 2022, 7:45 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated Rivka Vizcardo-Lichter’s role in the Pride Liberation Project. She’s the lead organizer, not the co-founder.
As cases of monkeypox surge around the globe, four pioneers of the AIDS activist movement watch in awe and with a sense of nostalgia.
Some of the similarities between the two viruses speak for themselves. Like the HIV strain that started the AIDS pandemic in the late 1970s, the current monkeypox outbreak has emerged from sub-Saharan Africa and has been found overwhelmingly in men who have sex with men who live in the world’s metropolises. And while epidemiologists have not reached a complete understanding of how the current outbreak of monkeypox spreads, recent research points to sexual transmission.
Four pioneering AIDS activists of the 1980s and ‘90s contend that there are other, consequential yet less obvious parallels playing out in real-time.
People hold up signs representing the number of AIDS victims in a demonstration in Central Park in New York City on Aug. 8, 1983. Allan Tannenbaum / Getty Images file
As in the early days of the AIDS crisis, they argue, government messaging around the outbreak has been flawed, gay men have been blindsided and public health officials have failed to defeat a severe disease plaguing the LGBTQ community.
“It feels like déjà vu,” said gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, who was a leading member of the Gay Liberation Front in the United Kingdom. “The lessons from the AIDS crisis and Covid have clearly not been learned.”
Public health officials around the world were slow to combat AIDS when it first began to emerge in men who have sex with men during the late 1970s. It wasn’t until June 5, 1981, that the United States released the world’s first government report on the infectious disease in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a government bulletin on perplexing disease cases.
“In the period October 1980-May 1981, 5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California,” the report read. “Two of the patients died.”
Three years later, the U.S. government announced the development of an AIDS test, in addition to a vaccine, which never came to fruition. By 1985, an estimated 12,000 Americans had died of the disease.
Similarly, activists argue that the global response to tame monkeypox has been too slow to curb ballooning case numbers — more than 20,500 cases of the current monkeypox outbreak have been reported globally across 77 countries and territories since the start of May, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
No one has died from monkeypox outside the 11 African nations where the infectious disease has become endemic since it was discovered in 1970. However, a substantial proportion of patients infected with monkeypox have been hospitalized for severe pain caused by pimple-like sores that commonly develop.
Since the first cases were discovered in May, the United States has distributed nearly 200,000 Jynneos vaccines — a two-dose vaccine to prevent smallpox and monkeypox — to the most at-risk population, which falls far short of its roughly 3.8 million gay men. In France, only an estimated 6,000 people have been vaccinated across more than 100 vaccine centers in recent weeks, French Minister of Social Affairs and Health François Braun said on Monday. And in the United Kingdom, health officials ordered an additional 100,000 vaccine doses last week to keep up with burgeoning demand.
Last Saturday, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern, a designation reserved for the most threatening global disease outbreaks, after initially forgoing to do so last month. More than two months after the first U.S. case of monkeypox was detected in mid-May, on Thursday public health officials in New York City issued a declaration that the infectious disease posed an imminent threat to public health, and officials in San Francisco declared a state of emergency.
“What’s interesting is that many of the scientists and clinicians who were trained during the AIDS epidemic or were there at the beginning, people like Tony Fauci, know this history, but the response to monkeypox has been alarmingly slow and chaotic,” said Gregg Gonsalves, who joined Act Up — the leading group that fought for action to combat AIDS — in 1990 and is now a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. “As an individual, it’s like, ‘Three strikes you’re out, man.’ HIV, Covid and now monkeypox? How many times can you make the same mistakes over and over again?”
Representatives from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Dr. Anthony Fauci has directed since 1984, and officials from the White House, where Fauci serves as the chief medical adviser to the president, did not immediately respond to NBC News’ requests for comment.
Images of men waiting in long lines outside clinics around the world to get vaccinated, technical issues with online vaccine portals and reports that accused the U.S. government of developing a “wait-and-see” response to the outbreak — reportedly calling for shipments of vaccines only as cases surged in the last handful of weeks — have piled on to activists’ fears that the public health response to monkeypox is shaping up to be a repeat of its flawed strategy to combat AIDS.
People lined up outside a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene clinic on June 23, in New York.Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Although the virus started spreading in May, the U.S. didn’t order more doses of the monkeypox vaccine to add to its stockpile until June. Regulators also had not finished inspecting a key Denmark facility manufacturing monkeypox vaccines until July, leaving 1.1 million ready-to-distribute doses stuck in Europe.
“Just like during the AIDS pandemic, it seems that some governments care very little so long as monkeypox is just affecting men who have sex with men,” said Tatchell, who was turned away from a hospital in London that had run out of monkeypox vaccine last Sunday. “What other explanation can there be? Governments should have been rolling out emergency vaccination programs for gay and bisexual men two or three weeks ago.”
Some veteran AIDS activists also argue that as during the AIDS crisis, the messaging to combat monkeypox has not been tailored enough to reach the LGBTQ community.
Ron Goldberg, an early AIDS activist who joined Act Up in 1987, points to the “America Responds to AIDS” public service announcement campaign, which the government launched at the height of the crisis in the late 1980s. Many of the commercials featured heterosexual couples and displayed messages including “AIDS Is Everyone’s Problem.”
“At that time, they were so afraid of talking about gay sex, or anything like that, they had to bland out the message when they were trying to give some information,” Goldberg said. “If it’s happening within a certain population, you have to direct your messaging to that certain population.”
Activists have largely applauded public health officials’ efforts to not link monkeypox directly to the LGBTQ community — as many believe they did with AIDS — and thereby create stigma. However, some argue that repeated statements from public health officials that “anyone can get monkeypox” mirrors AIDS messaging that “anyone can get the AIDS virus” and also circumvents efforts to alert the demographic most at risk.
Research overwhelmingly suggests that the current outbreak of monkeypox is being driven overwhelmingly by men who have sex with men. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine published last week found that of the 528 cases of monkeypox researchers analyzed, 98% were found in men who identified as gay or bisexual. Another recent report by the the British Health Security Agency finding that of the 699 monkeypox cases for which there was available information, 97% were in gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men.
“The numbers are there,” said Didier Lastrade, who founded the first French chapter of Act Up in 1989. “We shouldn’t shy away from this. … We’re big people, we’re grown-ups, we can take it. The stigmatization is happening either way.”
On Thursday, the WHO recommended that gay and bisexual men limit their number of sexual partners to protect themselves from monkeypox and contain its spread.
But compiled with two years of pandemic isolation and big summer events, such as last weekend’s annual Pines Party on Fire Island, some activists fear it will be difficult to get gay and bisexual men to curtail their sexual behaviors.
“You want to be able to reach people in their 20s and 30s and say, ‘Look, this is no joke. You’ve all seen the pictures. You’ve all had friends who have had monkeypox. You don’t want it,’” Gonsalves said.
More broadly speaking, Lastrade argued, the advent of pre-exposure prophylaxis, the HIV prevention pill (also known as PrEP), along with scientific proof over the past decade that treating HIV can prevent transmission, have caused gay and bisexual men to fall asleep at the wheel when it comes to their sexual health.
“The new generation totally forgot about the story of AIDS. I keep on writing books about AIDS but nobody reads them,” said Lastrade. “When s— happens, they forget their reflexes that we used to have because it was a question of life or death.”
Regardless of the messaging, with a lackluster global vaccine rollout, the activists fear the virus will become an infectious disease the LGBTQ community has to permanently live with, as it did with AIDS decades ago.
“Many people are saying we’re past the point of containment, that we already missed our chance,” Gonsalves said. “If that’s true, that is incredibly serious because this disease doesn’t necessarily kill, but the enormous suffering and expense of all of this is going to put a burden on many, many people, many, many health systems and many, many communities who have been already plagued.”
A Boston affordable housing project for LGBTQ seniors was vandalized with homophobic and threatening graffiti Sunday.
The Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization that is leading the housing project’s construction, LGBTQ Senior Housing Inc., shared photos of the hateful messages — including “we will burn this” and “the f—– will die by fire” — on Facebook over the weekend.
“We were heartbroken to wake up this morning to the terrible news that The Pryde was vandalized overnight with hate speech and threats spraypainted on virtually every sign,” the group wrote in a statement on Facebook, referring to the project’s name. “We will not let bullies and cowards stop our work to create safe and welcome affordable housing for our LGBTQ elders. We will not let hate go unchallenged in Hyde Park.”
A vandalized sign that reads “we will burn this” at the affordable housing project for LGBTQ seniors.LGBTQ Senior Housing Inc. / via Facebook
The Pryde, which began construction last month, will convert a former middle school in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood into 74 units of mixed-income housing for seniors. It was billed as New England’s first LGBTQ senior affordable housing project, and it is expected to welcome its first residents late next year.
“To see cowards come out under the dark of night and try to intimidate or put their hate on this larger community, it doesn’t represent what we’ve seen throughout this multiyear process, and we are just going to move even faster to get this done,” Mayor Michelle Wu said at an event Sunday held to condemn the vandalism, NBC Boston reported.
Affordable housing options for LGBTQ seniors have become increasingly popular in recent years, as elderly LGBTQ people are less likely to have family or financial support.
LGBTQ adults ages 45 or older report being less likely to have designated caretakers, according to a recent survey by AARP. Almost half of LGBTQ respondents said they were either extremely or very concerned about having enough family and social support as they age, and 52% reported feeling socially isolated.
The vandalism Sunday comes amid a wave of acts and threats of violence against the LGBTQ community across the country.
Most notably, police arrested 31 people at an annual LGBTQ Pride in the Park event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, last month on charges of suspicion of conspiracy to riot. Those who were arrested went to the event with gas masks and shields.
But in recent months, threats against LGBTQ people have also picked up in the country’s urban centers, which are largely seen as being the most accepting of the LGBTQ community.
Last month, police also arrested a Canadian who alleged to have threatened to shoot up a Pride on the Block event in West Palm Beach, Florida. In April, a man walked into a Brooklyn, New York, bar with a bottle of flammable liquid, poured it on the bar’s floor, lit a match and set the venue ablaze, police said. At a different bar in Brooklyn in February, someone threw a pepper bomb on the dance floor at a party for the Black queer community.
“Hate has no boundary. There are going to be people that have anti-LGBTQ views even in very progressive metropolitan areas,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law’s Cyberlaw Clinic and a transgender rights advocate who has been tracking threats against the LGBTQ community. “Places that are much more open are just more likely to be seen by people who share an intense hatred for the community.”
The rise in acts and threats of violence against LGBTQ Americans coincides with a surge in charged rhetoric surrounding LGBTQ issues.
In recent months, conservative lawmakers, television pundits and other public figures have accused opponents of a newly enacted Florida education legislation — which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law — of trying to “groom” or “indoctrinate” children. The word “grooming” has long been associated with mischaracterizing LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and transgender women, as child sex abusers.
“When you start conflating LGBTQ people to pedophiles and being dangerous to children, it’s no surprise that people start to take radical actions into their hands and inflicting violence,” Caraballo said.
As Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law — or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law — comes into effect Friday, some of the state’s public school districts have begun rolling out new policies to limit LGBTQ issues and identities from being discussed in the classroom.
On Tuesday night, the Leon County School Board unanimously approved its “LGBTQ Inclusive School Guide,” which includes a provision to alert parents if a student who is “open about their gender identity” is in their child’s physical education class or with them on an overnight school trip.
“Upon notification or determination of a student who is open about their gender identity, parents of the affected students will be notified of reasonable accommodation options available,” the guidelines read. “Parents or students who have concerns about rooming assignments for their student’s upcoming overnight event based on religious or privacy concerns may request an accommodation.”
Representatives of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association accused school officials Monday of verbally warning educators not to wear rainbow articles of clothing, to remove pictures of their same-sex spouses from their desks andto remove LGBTQ safe space stickers from classroom doors. The district’s legal department confirmed in a statement provided to the teachers’ association that covers the Orlando area that staff who come into contact with students in kindergarten through third grade were cautioned concerning LGBTQ issues.
And late last month, the School District of Palm Beach County sent out a questionnaire to its teachers, asking them to review all course material and flag any books with references to sexual orientation, gender identity or race, a Palm Beach County high school special education teacher, Michael Woods, told NBC News. Several weeks prior, the district removed two books — “I Am Jazz” and “Call Me Max” — which touch upon gender identity, he said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signs the Parental Rights in Education bill at Classical Preparatory School in Shady Hills, Fla. on Mar. 28, 2022.Douglas R. Clifford / AP file
The so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, HB 1557, bans “instruction” about sexual orientation or gender identity “in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” A provision in the law also requires school staff to alert parents on “critical decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being,” which many advocates have interpreted as a method to force educators to out their gay or trans students. In cases where teachers “believe that disclosure would result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect,” they are exempt from doing so.
Lawmakers who support the legislation — which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed in March — have repeatedly stressed that it will only apply to children in kindergarten through third grade and is about giving parents more jurisdiction over their young children’s education. They have also contended that it will not prohibit teachers and students from talking about their LGBTQ families or bar classroom discussions about LGBTQ history, including events like the 2016 attack at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando.
But critics and legal experts have said that the broad language of the law could open school districts and teachers to lawsuits from parents who believe any conversation about LGBTQ people or issues is “not age appropriate.” (Parents will be able to sue school districts for alleged violations, damages or legal fees.)
The state’s Department of Education is expected to release more information on the parameters of its standards later this summer. In an interview in April with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, DeSantis suggested the standards would apply the law beyond third grade and added “things like woke gender ideology have no place in the schools, period.”
State Rep. Carlos Smith, a Florida Democrat who is gay and has been an outspoken critic of the new law, said he was “not surprised” by the policies and guidelines being announced by schools in the state.
“We talked about this from the beginning,” he said. “What’s happening right now — with the censorship of rainbow flags and school districts preparing to basically push LGBTQ students and teachers into the closet — is exactly what we said would happen with the ‘Don’t Say Gay law.’”
When asked if the governor wanted to respond to school districts’ new guidelines on LGBTQ issues that appear to supersede the parameters of the new law, DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, said the state Department of Education is responsible for working with school districts to implement policies.
“This is not something the governor himself does,” she wrote in an email.
Members and supporters of the LGBTQ community attend the “Say Gay Anyway” rally in Miami Beach, Fl .,on March 13, 2022.Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images file
Beyond Florida, five other states — all of them in the South — have enacted laws that limit instruction or discussions about LGBTQ people or issues in school, and at least 32 other states have proposed such measures so far this year, according to according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank that has been tracking the bills.
Smith stressed that these policies will have consequences for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students, pointing to the disproportionately high rates of suicide attempts among the nation’s LGBTQ youths. A survey this year by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that nearly 50% of the 35,000 LGBTQ youths surveyed said they seriously considered suicide within the last year.
“Creating safe spaces for LGBTQ kids in schools is a matter of life or death,” Smith said. “Ron DeSantis is creating toxic environments in our classrooms that can have devastating consequences for queer youth, and he does not care. It’s all about politics for him.”
In a letter addressed to the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, the district’s general counsel claimed a number of statements about what the Parental Rights in Education law would prohibit are not accurate, including a claim that “safe space stickers will be removed from classroom doors.” However, the letter then states it is “recommended that the safe space stickers be removed from K-3 classrooms so that classroom instruction did not inadvertently occur on the prohibited content of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“Out of one side of their mouth, they’re saying it’s not accurate, and out of the other side, they’re saying, ‘Yeah, you might want to be careful,’” Clinton McCracken, the president-elect of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, said.
He expressed overall frustration with the new law and said his district’s attempt to clarify the legislation created even more confusion.
“So, which is it? Are teachers in K through eight supposed to go back into the closet, according to our legal team? Or are they allowed to act like every other heterosexual teacher who has a picture of a spouse on their desk?”
In Palm Beach County, Woods, who is gay, said that after receiving the questionnaire from school officials to flag course material or books with LGBTQ references, many of his colleagues are nervous they’ll be reprimanded if they miss something.
“I’ve had colleagues say to me, ‘Well, I’m just going to pack all of my books away and not have any out at all,’” he said. “That sounds like a knee-jerk reaction, but when you’re in that situation, it’s just one more stressor that you’re going to put on yourself. And is that really the hill you want to die on?”
Some LGBTQ teachers in school districts where guidelines have yet to be issued are even less sure of what they can or cannot say and wear next school year.
Brian Kerekes teaches math at a high school in Osceola County, which has yet to issue guidance for complying with the new law. Without guidelines in place, he worries that mistakes are bound to happen. Recently, he said, a staffer was asked to remove a “genderbread person” — an animated diagram used to teach children about gender identity — from his office.
“We’re just caught in the middle trying to figure out what is and isn’t OK while still trying to do what is our primary function, which is supporting our students and giving them a safe space to learn,” he said. “It’s going to be a mess.”
Kerekes said he also anticipates school districts will start letting go of teachers who are accused of violating the law even if they are found to have done nothing wrong. He points to the fact that all of the state’s public school teachers are hired on a year-to-year contractual basis and that the law prohibits school districts from recouping legal fees in cases where they win.
“Even if an investigation turns out to be bogus, a principal could still decide that it just isn’t worth having the teacher around anymore and just drop them,” he said. “I just worry that we’re going to be spending our time on nonissues instead of doing our jobs.”
A majority of Americans favor protecting transgender people from discrimination, but a rising share say a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth, and most support trans sports bans, a new poll from the Pew Research Center found.
The survey of more than 10,000 adults, which was conducted May 16-22 and published Tuesday, found that 60% say a person’s gender is determined at birth, up from 56% in 2021 and 54% in 2017.
Views on gender identity differ by age groups and even more sharply by political affiliation. Half of adults ages 18 to 29 say someone can be a different gender than the one assigned to them at birth, compared with about 4 in 10 of those ages 30 to 49 and about a third of those 50 and older, the report found. Democrats and those who lean toward the Democratic Party were four times more likely than Republicans and conservative-leaning people to say that someone’s gender can be different than the one assigned to them at birth.
The new poll also shed light on how people in the United States feel about one of the most politically debated issues regarding trans people — whether they should be allowed to compete on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity. Nearly 6 in 10 (58%) support policies that would require transgender athletes to compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, the survey found.
Of the hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills filed in recent years — over 670 since 2018, according to an NBC News analysis — measures that would limit trans people’s participation in sports have been among the most popular and politically contentious in the nation’s state legislatures. Eighteen states have enacted the bills into law within recent years, with Louisiana doing so earlier this month.
Proponents of transgender sports bans say they are protecting fairness in women’s sports, arguing that trans girls and women have inherent advantages over cisgender girls and women.
Critics say the measures are less about protecting women’s sports and more about discriminating against trans people.
The Texas Republican Party unveiled its official position on LGBTQ issues over the weekend, defining homosexuality as an “abnormal lifestyle choice” and also opposing “all efforts to validate transgender identity.”
Thousands of Republican activists met at the party’s biennial convention in Houston on Saturday to agree to the party’s platformon a range of issues, including the rejection of the 2020 election results and a call to repeal of the 1965 Voting Right Act, which was enacted to prevent discrimination against Black voters.
In a section titled “Homosexuality and gender issues,” the party suggested that LGBTQ people should not be legally protected from discrimination and that being gay or trans is a choice.
“Homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice,” the 40-page resolution reads. “We believe there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin, and we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.”
In addition, Texas Republicans called for the ban of gender-affirming care — including the distribution of puberty blockers or hormone-suppressing therapies, and the performance of gender-affirming surgeries — for anyone under the age of 21.
The party’s new official stance on LGBTQ issues was unveiled during Pride Month, and as advocates fight against a record number of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in states across the country this year — more than 340, according to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group.
LGBTQ+ advocates rally at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas on May 4, 2021.Erich Schlegel / AP Images for Human Rights Campaign file
Texas lawmakers have not enacted anti-LGBTQ legislation into law this year but have pushed headline-generating anti-LGBTQ policies in other ways.
In February, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the state’s child welfare agency to investigate child abuse claims filed against parents who might be providing their trans children with gender-affirming medical care. And earlier this month, a Texas lawmaker announced that he would introduce novel legislation to ban minors from attending drag shows in the state.
Ricardo Martinez, the CEO of Equality Texas, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group, called the platform “extreme, but not necessarily new.”
“I’m glad that they’re being really explicit in their words because these words now match their actions,” Martinez said. “This is not surprising, but it certainly is painful for LGBTQ people who live here in Texas.”
The Texas Republican Party blocked the Log Cabin Republicans, a longstanding group of gay conservatives — which also supports many of the party’s anti-LGBTQ policies — from having a booth at Saturday’s convention. The group rebuked the party’s decision to bar it from participating, calling on the state’s GOP to “expand the tent.”
“President Trump, who historically expanded the GOP’s coalition, made clear that LGBT conservatives are welcome in the America First movement and the Republican Party,” the organization said in a statement last week. “It’s shameful that the Texas GOP leadership is choosing to not follow his lead.”
The party’s new official stance on sexual orientation and gender identity also coincides with a recent nationwide surge in charged rhetoric from media pundits and politicians about LGBTQ issues.
In recent months, conservative lawmakers, television pundits and other public figures have accused opponents of a newly enacted Florida education legislation — which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law — of trying to “groom” or “indoctrinate” children. The word “grooming” has long been associated with mischaracterizing LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and transgender women, as child sex abusers.
Advocates have been urging public officials against using the charged rhetoric, warning that it could cause violence directed at LGBTQ Americans.
At least three LGBTQ events were targeted by white nationalist groups this month, with police arresting 31 people at an annual Pride in the Park event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on charges of suspicion of conspiracy to riot. Those arrested came to the event with gas masks and shields.
The Texas Republican Party’s new platform also counters President Joe Biden’s recent efforts to expand LGBTQ rights through the executive branch.
Last week, the president signed an executive order that will direct federal health and education agencies to expand access to gender-affirming care and advance LGBTQ-inclusive learning environments at American schools. It will also curb federal funding for the debunked practice of “conversion therapy,” which nearly every leading U.S. medical association has condemned, and ask the Federal Trade Commission to consider whether the practice constitutes an unfair or deceptive act.
The Texas GOP’s stance on same-sex marriage aligns with the national party. The most recent Republican National Committee platform — which was enacted in 2016 and renewed in 2020 — includes at least five references to marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman.
President Joe Biden is set to sign an executive order Wednesday aimed at combating a historic number of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in state legislatures across the country.
The order will direct federal health and education agencies to expand access to gender affirming care and advance LGBTQ-inclusive learning environments at American schools.
The president’s order comes during LBGTQ Pride month and as advocates fight against a record number of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in states across the country this year — more than 320, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group.
“President Biden always stands up to bullies and that’s what these extreme MAGA laws and policies do — they bully kids,” a senior administration official told reporters in a briefing on Wednesday. “Hateful, discriminatory laws that target children are out of line with where the American people are, and President Biden is going to use his executive authority to protect kids and families.”
A bulk of the bills signed into law in recent months — 24 in 13 states, according to the HRC — aim to limit access to gender affirming care for transgender youth, prohibit trans girls and women from competing on girls’ sports teams in school, and bar the instruction of LGBTQ issues in school.
Under the executive order, a coordinating committee will also be established to lead efforts across federal agencies to strengthen the collection of data on sexual orientation and gender identity.
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It will also direct the Department of Health and Human Services to expand resources to address LGBTQ youth suicide and homelessness and study barriers same-sex married couples face in accessing government benefits.
The new measures coincide with a recent surge in charged rhetoric surrounding how and whether children should learn about LGBTQ issues.
In recent months, conservative lawmakers, television pundits and other public figures have accused opponents of a newly enacted Florida education law, which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law, of trying to “groom” or “indoctrinate” children. The word “grooming” has long been used to mischaracterize LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and transgender women, as child sex abusers.
Advocates have been urging public officials against using the charged rhetoric, warning that it could cause violence directed at LGBTQ Americans.
At least three LGBTQ events were targeted by white nationalist groups last weekend, with police arresting 31 people at an annual Pride in the Park event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on charges of suspicion of conspiracy to riot. Those arrested came to the event with gas masks and shields.
The president has been urging Congress to pass comprehensive LGBTQ rights legislation in the form of the Equality Act. But after passing in the House last year, the bill stalled in the Senate. Biden again called on Congress to take action in a White House fact sheet.
Gloria Allen, a Black transgender icon and activist who dedicated her life to Chicago’s trans community, died on Monday at the age of 76.
Allen — also known as “Mama Gloria” — is believed to have died peacefully while asleep in her Chicago apartment at an LGBTQ senior residence home, according to a statement from Luchina Fisher, who directed a documentary about Allen in 2020.
Allen transitioned in the 1950s, prior to the modern LGBTQ rights movement that began with the 1969 Stonewall riots and long before the term “transgender” became mainstream. In a previous interview with NBC News, she credited her coming out to the love and support of her mother, Alma, a showgirl and former Jet magazine centerfold, and her grandmother, Mildred, a seamstress for cross-dressers and strippers.
“I didn’t have all the tools that they have out today for the younger people. So I had to do my thing, and I did it. I walked with my head up high due to my family,” she said, noting there weren’t any community centers or resources for LGBTQ people that she could readily access. “I didn’t know anything about lesbians and gays, because we didn’t have any rights back then.”
Allen worked at the University of Chicago Hospital as a licensed practical nurse and then in private homes as a nurse’s aide. But she was best known for her work in transgender activism.
More than a decade ago, as a trans elder, Allen started a charm school at Center on Halsted in Chicago to educate trans youth about etiquette and proper behavior. Her school inspired the 2015 play “Charm,” written by Philip Dawkins, which ran in Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C.
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Allen then rose to national prominence nearly two years ago, when she became the subject of a documentary feature “Mama Gloria.” The documentary showcased the intersection of race- and gender-based oppression, and it showed how trans people can thrive when they are loved and supported by their families.
“I want the world to know I have a life, and I have a right to be here on this planet,” Allen told NBC News shortly after the documentary’s release. “I’m happy to tell my story.”
Fisher paid tribute on Tuesday to Allen and her accomplishments for trans rights.
“Mama Gloria Allen always called me her angel. But she was my angel,” Fisher wrote on Twitter. “These last four years have been life-changing. I will carry her love and spirit with me always. RIP #mamagloria“
San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Monday that she would not march in the city’s annual Pride parade in June unless its organizers reverse a ban on uniformed police officers from marching.
The group that hosts the city’s march, San Francisco Pride, initially enacted restrictions on uniformed police officers in 2020, following the nationwide protests for racial justice sparked by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Last year’s parade was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
For this year’s event, Pride organizers reinstated the uniform ban citing safety concerns for marginalized groups within the LGBTQ community. Officers are encouraged to participate, but wearing department T-shirts instead of uniforms.
Breed, a Democrat, condemned the move.
“One of the central planks of the movement for better policing is a demand that the people who serve in uniform better represent the communities they are policing,” Breed said. “We can’t say, ‘We want more Black officers,’ or ‘We want more LGBTQ officers,’ and then treat those officers with disrespect when they actually step up and serve.”
Conflicts between U.S. law enforcement and the LGBTQ communityare nothing new. In fact, the country’s first LGBTQ Pride marches — held in June 1970 — were organized to commemorate the one-year anniversary of a police raid at New York City gay bar Stonewall Inn, or what became known as the 1969 Stonewall Uprising.
But in recent years, tensions between police and the queer community have grown in the wake of a global racial reckoning.
In 2017, Toronto Pride banned uniformed officers from participating in its annual march due to concerns of racial injustice raised by the Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter. Vancouver’s Pride parade followed suit in 2020.
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On Monday, the San Francisco Police Officer’s Pride Alliance also denounced San Francisco Pride’s uniform ban, pleading with the group’s board of advisers to reverse its decision.
“The board decided to punish LGBTQ+ peace officers for the failings of others,” the group said in a statement. “This is its own form of prejudice and further erodes the tenuous relationship between peace officers and the communities we keep safe.”
“For LGBTQ+ officers, this brings us back to a time when we had to hide at work that we were LGBTQ+,” the group added. “Now they ask us to hide the fact of where we work.”
San Francisco Pride’s interim president, Suzanne Ford, and its board of directors said in a statement on Monday that while they have been working with the city’s law enforcement to come to an agreement on uniforms at the parade, they have “not come to a solution that is mutually beneficial.”
“SF Pride remains committed to practicing radical inclusion, practicing harm reduction in our space, and supporting those who are marginalized within our community,” the group said. “We acknowledge and appreciate the steps that have been taken to heal decades of distrust between law enforcement agencies and the LGBTQ+ communities.”
The group added, “We look forward to working with Pride organizations and law enforcement agencies from around the world in finding a solution that is satisfactory to all.”
San Francisco’s annual Pride parade will take place on Sunday, June 26.
