Canada this week banned conversion therapy, a debunked treatment that aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
A bill making it a crime to subject Canadians of any age to the discredited practice became law Wednesday after Canada’s Parliament passed the measure this month.
“It’s official: Our government’s legislation banning the despicable and degrading practice of conversion therapy has received Royal Assent — meaning it is now law. LGBTQ2 Canadians, we’ll always stand up for you and your rights,” Canadian President Justin Trudeau wrote on Twitter. https://iframe.nbcnews.com/M7hDVJs?_showcaption=true&app=1
The Canadian law is the latest instance of a growing global effort to eradicate conversion therapy, a practice that ranges from religious counseling to electric shock therapy and has been associated with “severe psychological distress.”
Canada’s ban follows that of Germany, Malta, Ecuador, Brazil and Taiwan. Some of the nations, such as Germany, have passed bans exclusively for minors, whereas others, like Malta, have passed bans for all citizens.
In the United States, 20 states and the District of Columbia have restrictions in place for minors, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank. Three states — Florida, Alabama and Georgia — are in a federal judicial circuit with an injunction that blocks conversion therapy bans.
In addition to Canada, France’s Senate voted in favor of legislation this week that would also criminalize the practice, with prison sentences of two to three years and fines up to $50,000.
In 2019, the American Medical Association voiced its support for state and federal efforts to ban conversion therapy, saying that it “has no foundation as scientifically valid medical care and lacks credible evidence to support its efficacy or safety.”
And last year, the United Nations called for the practice to be banned internationally and released a detailed report on the practice’s global implications.
“The attempts to pathologize and erase the identity of individuals, negate their existence as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or gender diverse and provoke self-loathing have profound consequences on their physical and psychological integrity and well-being,” the report stated.
LGBTQ advocates hailed the Canadian law’s passage.
“To the survivors who have fought for years for a safer, more equal future: thank you and congratulations. This is your moment,” No Conversion Canada, a Canadian nonprofit coalition to end conversion therapy, wrote on Twitter this week.
As Covid-19 brought nearly every corner of the Earth to a halt early last year, researchers around the world scrambled to develop a vaccine to fend off the deadly respiratory coronavirus. And just several months later — in a process that normally takes years — several vaccines were ready for worldwide distribution.
In comparison, about 40 years since the earliest reports of what became known as AIDS, scientists are still scratching their heads to develop a vaccine against the virus that causes the life-threatening disease — HIV.
But as the anniversary of the first Covid-19 vaccine shots approaches, experts say the brisk development of the lifesaving and highly effective coronavirus vaccines may have brought researchers closer to cracking the code to develop an HIV vaccine.
“There’s a lot of new energy and buzz among scientists looking at how quickly some of the Covid science got done,” said Rowena Johnston, the vice president and director of research at amfAR, an international nonprofit AIDS research group. “I think there’s been a lot of soul-searching about how the scientific enterprise can be improved so that we can better serve the people we’re trying to help.”
Before the coronavirus vaccines, the most rapidly developed vaccine ever created — from sampling to deployment — was for the mumps in the 1960s. The process took about four years.
The federal government has conducted five large-scale Phase 3 HIV vaccine trials, all of which have failed. Its third Phase 3 trial was notable for increasing the likelihood of HIV infection among those who were vaccinated.
Scientists largely blame HIV’s unrelenting evolution inside the body.
“The scale of mutations that HIV produces are beyond anything that’s even in the same realm of what coronavirus does,” Johnston said. “If you mapped out a genetic tree of all the different variants of HIV inside the body of one person, it’s about as equivalent of all the genetic variations of all the influenza virus of all people around the world during one year.”
Therefore, HIV is always one step ahead of the antibody response that failed vaccines trigger in the body, said Dr. Ronald Desrosiers, a professor at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, who was one of the first scientists to study SIV — the monkey disease from which HIV is thought to have originated.
“The antibodies that’s present in a person can neutralize the virus that was present three months ago, but it can’t neutralize the virus that’s replicating at the current time,” Desrosiers said. “It would be predicted to make development of a vaccine very, very difficult, and those predictions have come true.”
But however elusive an HIV vaccine may be, scientists — including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to the president — say it is “likely” that one could develop from the pioneering technology used to make coronavirus vaccines.
Two of the coronavirus vaccines, those made by the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, were the first vaccines ever to successfully trigger immune responses using messenger RNA, or mRNA, a genetic material that our cells read to make proteins. The mRNA coronavirus vaccines have proven to be more effective at fending off the virus than the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which resembles more traditional influenza vaccines and does not use mRNA.
Moderna announced in August that it would soon launch a Phase 1 clinical trial for two new mRNA-based HIV vaccines, giving scientists fresh hope.
“If it were just another way to deliver the vaccine ingredients, I would say it would probably have no chance of succeeding where others have failed,” Johnston said.
However, what has piqued Johnston’s interest is that the mRNA coronavirus vaccine is delivered in the body through its lipid nanoparticles. Johnston said the lipid nanoparticles not only help deliver the drug but also act as an adjuvant, a substance that helps strengthen a drug’s effect. And in this case, the adjuvant stimulation effect is working at “a greater extent than any conventional vaccine,” she said.
“When I learned that, it really did give me some hope that finally we have a really, truly a new concept to test in HIV,” she said. “So let’s put our optimistic hats on and hope that this might be the thing that gets us over the finish line.”
Aside from the scientific advancements it sparked, some experts say, the coronavirus pandemic may also indirectly help the HIV vaccine effort by generating more interest in science.
“The world has now increased its scientific literacy. I think the opportunity to build on that in HIV and make people more vaccine-aware and engage in vaccine research and introduction has grown exponentially,” said Mitchell Warren, the executive director of AVAC, a nonprofit organization promoting global HIV treatment.
But others worry that the enthusiasm to stave off the coronavirus pandemic may have come at a cost to HIV research.
When the pandemic pummeled the globe last year, many of the world’s leading HIV researchers shifted gears to the coronavirus. For instance, Johnson & Johnson tapped Dr. Dan Barouch of Harvard Medical School, who has studied HIV for over 15 years, to help develop its coronavirus vaccine.
Overall, scientists who did not pursue Covid-19-related research initiated 36 percent fewer new projects last year compared to 2019, according to a study by Northwestern University that was published in October.
“Sometimes people chase the exciting new thing, they follow the dollars. But we need to get people back to HIV, or there will be a price,” said the director of the Infectious Diseases Initiative at Georgetown University, Jeffrey S. Crowley, a former director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.
Regardless of whether the coronavirus will lead to scientific improvements or setbacks, some scientists say defeating HIV will rely more heavily on commonsense global health practices.
“Any pandemic is a day away, and we sort of learned that initially with HIV, but this pandemic has brought that home in an extremely strong way,” said Dr. Kenneth Mayer, a Harvard Medical School professor who is the medical research director of Fenway Health. “What happens in one part of the world doesn’t stay in that part of the world.”
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed to suggest earlier this week that landmark LGBTQ cases could support overturning federal abortion rights.
The Supreme Court heard 90 minutes of oral arguments Wednesday concerning a Mississippi law that would ban almost all abortions in the state after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
A majority of the court’s conservative justices appeared prepared to uphold the law and possibly overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision holdingthat women have a constitutional right to have an abortion before fetal viability, usually around 24 weeks.
The crux of Wednesday’s oral arguments centered around whether the justices should preserve or walk back on precedent, a court decision that is considered authority for subsequent cases involving similar or identical circumstances. The court’s liberal justices warned that reversing a decades-old ruling would politicize the country’s highest court.
However, citing two landmark gay rights cases — Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state laws criminalizing consensual same-sex activity in 2003, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which resulted in the legalization of same-sex marriage across the United States in 2015 — Kavanaugh suggested that overruling the court’s previous opinions was standard procedure.
“If you think about some of the most important cases, the most consequential cases in this court’s history, there’s a string of them where the cases overruled precedent,” Kavanaugh said. “If we think that the prior precedents are seriously wrong, if that, why then doesn’t the history of this court’s practice with respect to those cases tell us that the right answer is actually a return to the position of neutrality and — and not stick with those precedents in the same way that all those other cases didn’t?”
The lawyers who argued in favor of gay rights in the landmark LGBTQ cases offered differing views on the validity of the argument by Kavanaugh, who was appointed in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump.
Mary Bonauto, who argued on behalf of same-sex couples in Obergefell v. Hodges and now serves as the Civil Rights Project director at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD, challenged Kavanaugh’s analogy.
“It’s a pretty thin interpretation of a reversal,” she told NBC News. “The reversals that Justice Kavanaugh is citing were about righting wrongs. They were centered on the rights of individuals and expanding constitutional protections to more individuals, not about taking rights away.”
When the court ruled in favor of same-sex couples in Obergefell v. Hodges, it effectively overturned its prior decision in Baker v. Nelson. That ruling centered on Jack Baker and Mike McConnell, who in 1970 were blocked from obtaining a marriage license. The high court rejected the men’s case in 1972 without ever hearing oral arguments.
Bonauto argued against Kavanaugh’s comparison of reversing Baker v. Nelson to the potential reversal of Roe v. Wade.
“There was no briefing, there was no argument. They just essentially utterly dismissed the case for basically: ‘There’s no way same-sex couples seeking to marry have claim under the Constitution.’ The end,” she said.
LGBTQ advocates largely agreed with Bonauto, saying that the landmark gay rights decisions in Obergefell v. Hodges and Lawrence v. Texas “reflected the growing societal understanding of our common humanity.”
“To that we say, NOT IN OUR NAME,” Sharon McGowan, legal director of the LGBTQ advocacy group Lambda Legal, said of Kavanaugh’s argument in a statement Wednesday. “Those landmark LGBTQ decisions EXPANDED individual liberty, not the opposite.”
But Paul Smith, who argued in favor of LGBTQ rights in Lawrence v. Texas — which overruled the court’s 1986 decision in Bowers v. Hardwick — suggested that Kavanaugh’s comparison was valid. Smith said that in order to win Lawrence v. Texas, he also had to bolster the argument for the court overriding precedent.
“We really, actually made those arguments ourselves in Lawrence because that was the whole point — we had to get rid of Bowers v. Hardwick,” Smith, who is now a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said. “It is certainly one of the most prominent examples of an overruling that’s happened in the last 20 years.”
“People talk about stare decisis when they like the prior decision and not when they don’t,” Smith added, referring to the legal term for following what the court has ruled previously.
But during the oral arguments, Justice Sonia Sotomayor raised the question of whether overruling Roe v. Wade could open the floodgates for the court’s 6-3 conservative majority to overrule a broad swath of previous opinions it does not agree with.
“Why do we now say that somehow … Roe and Casey are so unusual that they must be overturned?” Sotomayor said Wednesday, referring to Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 opinion that affirmed Roe v. Wade.
Later, during the oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart, who was defending the Mississippi abortion limits, to address Sotomayor’s assertion.
Stewart said that several of the other cases Sotomayor cited, including the LGBTQ cases, produced “clear rules that have engendered strong reliance interests and that have not produced negative consequences,” in contrast to Roe v. Wade.
But if the court does overrule the landmark abortion law, some legal experts warn that previous rulings, including the landmark LGBTQ decisions, would be in danger.
“You can be sure that the Alliance Defending Freedom has the lawsuit ready to file the day after the Supreme Court issues an opinion broadly overruling Roe,” Katherine Franke, the director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School, said referring to a Christian law firm with a decadeslong track record of litigating against LGBTQ rights. “They will file the next day challenging Obergefell and even Lawrence. I have every confidence that that is what they’reto do.”
The court is expected to decide on the Mississippi abortion law early next summer.
Eight cities in the United States scored a zero out of 100 on the 10th annual Municipal Equality Index, which evaluates cities and towns based on the level of LGBTQ inclusion found in their local laws, policies and services.
LGBTQ advocacy groups Human Rights Campaign and Equality Federation evaluated 506 municipalities — including the country’s 50 state capitals and 200 largest cities — on 49 criteria for the index. The criteria included nondiscrimination protections, policies for municipal employees and city leadership.
This year’s zero-point earners span from South Carolina to Wyoming, and they all came in at zero on last year’s index, too. But on the flip side, 22 percent of cities earned a perfect score, up from 8 percent in 2012, the report’s inaugural year.
“If you’re scoring a zero, it’s because you’re making that choice. There are definitely some low-hanging fruit ways to get off of that zero place,” said Cathryn Oakley, the founding author of the index and the state legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign. “That is a statement on their end about how they’re willing to engage in these issues.”
Here are the eight cities that scored a failing grade on this year’s Municipal Equality Index:
Florence, Alabama
Downtown Florence, Ala. Robin Zeigler / Getty Images
Located in the northwest corner of Alabama, Florence sits on the Tennessee River, has a population of about 40,000 and is home to the University of North Alabama. The city made headlines in 2017, when several members of white nationalist groups, some dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes, staged a protest during northwest Alabama’s first Pride parade.
Jonesboro, with a population of nearly 80,000, is Arkansas’ fifth largest city. It sits in the northeastern part of the state and is home to Arkansas State University. Earlier this year, a Pride Month book display — which included the children’s book “The GayBCs” — ignited a backlash at a public library in the city, The Jonesboro Sun reported.
Southaven, Mississippi
The Southaven Municipal Complex in Southaven, Miss.Google Maps
Southaven sits on the border of Mississippi and its northern neighbor, Tennessee, and is just 13 miles from Memphis. The city, which has about 55,000 residents, made news in 2019 after a same-sex couple said they were kicked out of a local Baptist churchbecause the women wouldn’t end their “forbidden” marriage and “repent.”
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
The historic Rose District of Broken Arrow, Okla. Denis Tangney Jr. / Getty Images
Located just outside Tulsa in the northeastern part of the state, Broken Arrow is the fourth largest city in Oklahoma, with a population of about 113,000. Oklahoma is the only state to have two cities earn zero points on this year’s Municipal Equality Index.
Moore, Oklahoma
Veterans Memorial Park in Moore, Okla.Google Maps
Moore, a city of about 63,000 residents, is part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, which sits in the middle of the state. Moore made national news back in 2017 after Ralph Shortey, a “family values” Republican who had served in the Oklahoma Senate, was found with a 17-year-old male in a local motel (Shortey was eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison on child sex-trafficking charges).
Clemson, South Carolina
Tillman Hall on the campus of Clemson University in Clemson, S.C.Maddie Meyer / Getty Images
Home to Clemson University, this small South Carolina city, with a population of 17,700, sits in the northwest part of the state near the borders of both Georgia and North Carolina. While the city of Clemson scored a zero out of 100 on this year’s Municipal Equality Index, the university scored a 3 out of 5 on the LGBTQ nonprofit Campus Pride’s annual index. The university also opened Lavender Place, an LGBTQ “living-learning community,” in August.
Pierre, South Dakota
The State Capitol in Pierre, S.D.Getty Images/iStockphoto
With a population of roughly 14,100, Pierre is the second-least populous state capital in the country, following Montpelier, Vermont. Home to the state’s legislature, the city hosts many of the state’s protests concerning LGBTQ issues. In January, Pierre made national headlines when a group of LGBTQ advocates protested against a proposed law that would ban people from changing the sex designation on their birth certificates. A South Dakota House committee later rejected the bill in February.
Rocks Springs, Wyoming
Rock Springs, Wyo. Jacob Boomsma / Getty Images/iStockphoto
Rock Springs is a city in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, with a population of about 23,500. Despite scoring a zero out of 100 on this and last year’s Municipal Equality Index, a Rock Springs church made history after hosting what it called the state’s first LGBTQ pride worship service in 2019, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.
A settlement was reached Thursday in the nearly decade-old case of a Christian flower shop owner in Washington state who refused to provide a same-sex couple flowers for their wedding despite the state’s anti-discrimination laws.
The U.S. Supreme Court left intact the state court rulings against Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, in July. Shortly afterward, Stutzman petitioned for a rehearing.
Stutzman withdrew her petition Thursday and agreed to pay a settlement of $5,000 to the couple, Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed.
“We took on this case because we were worried about the harm being turned away would cause LGBTQ people. We are glad the Washington Supreme Court rulings will stay in place to ensure that same-sex couples are protected from discrimination and should be served by businesses like anyone else,” the couple said in a statement. “It was painful to be turned away and we are thankful that this long journey for us is finally over.”
The case dates to 2013, when Stutzman refused to provide flowers for the couple’s wedding. She said it would violate her Southern Baptist beliefs and her “relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Using an argument similar to that of Colorado baker Jack Phillips in the hot-button 2018 Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Stutzman argued that her floral arrangements are works of art and that having to create them for same-sex weddings would trample on her freedom of expression.
A lower court ruled in 2015 that Stutzman broke a Washington law that bars businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. The state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the couple in 2017 and then again in 2019, findingthat selling flowers for a wedding “does not inherently express a message about that wedding.”
Ingersoll and Freed will donate the $5,000 to a local chapter of PFLAG, an LGBTQ advocacy group, and they also plan to match the donation, Thursday’s statement said.
As state legislatures around the country pursue anti-LGBTQ legislation in what advocates have said is the “worst year” for LGBTQ rights in modern history, a report released Thursday highlights how cities are quietly moving the needle in the opposite direction.
In their 10th annual Municipal Equality Index, or MEI, two LGBTQ advocacy groups, the Human Rights Campaign and the Equality Federation, evaluated 506 municipalities — including the country’s 50 state capitals and its 200 largest cities — on how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people are included in their local laws, policies and services.
They found that over the last decade, the average MEI score rose 44 percent to 85 points this year from a score of 59 points in 2012, the report’s inaugural year.
“I literally gasped when I did the math,” said the founding author of the MEI, Cathryn Oakley, the state legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign. “The things that those points represent, they’re things that matter for people’s lives.”
To boost their scores, cities would have had to implement or improve upon any of the MEI’s 49 criteria, which include nondiscrimination protections, pro-LGBTQ policies or benefits for municipal employees and city leaders.
But while the report shows an expansion of LGBTQ rights in cities and towns around the country, its findings coincide with the pursuit of hundreds of bills that target LGBTQ people in state legislatures.
The bulk of the state legislation proposed this year has been aimed at transgender minors, including bills that seek to prohibit trans students from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities and those that restrict transition-related health care.
Other bills include a requirement that parents sign off on any mention of gender identity or sexual orientation in school curriculums.
Twenty-five anti-LGBTQ bills have been signed into law, including measures in Tennessee, Texas and Arkansas, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Oakley reasoned that the divide between state legislatures and city governments comes down to the motives of city officials compared to those of state officials, which she described as “less aspirational” and “practical.”
“They’re used to coming up with pragmatic solutions that are going to benefit people now,” she said of city officials. “They don’t get as bogged down in the hyperbole and misinformation.”
This year, city officials across the country have continued to advance LGBTQ rights as the wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation makes its way through state legislatures.
In May, the Pittsburgh City Council passed a bill that adds LGBTQ-owned businesses to the list of minority- and women-owned businesses eligible for government aid and support. The City Council in Columbia, South Carolina, passed a ban on conversion therapy for minors in June. And several cities in North Carolina passed nondiscrimination ordinances throughout the year, with Raleigh doing so just last month.
Thursday’s report also found that cities in states with anti-LGBTQ laws or without LGBTQ protections have still moved the needle on queer rights. It found that 72 cities earned MEI scores over 85 points this year, despite hailing from states without nondiscrimination statutes that explicitly protect sexual orientation and gender identity.
Other highlights from the report include a rise in the proportion of municipalities scoring a perfect 100 — 22 percent this year, compared to 8 percent in 2012 — and a year-over-year rise in the average score of every region of the country.
However, Gabriele Magni, an assistant professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, who was not involved with the report, argued that because the study pools data from cities with big populations, which generally have large pockets of Democratic voters, the findings may be somewhat skewed.
“We should be happy, but we should not be complacent about this. This is probably further evidence of the increasing divide between cities and rural areas when it comes to LGBTQ rights,” Magni said. “Cities governed by Democrats are making progress. State legislatures where rural areas have more voice, where Republicans have more power, they’re going in the opposite direction.”
Eight cities in the report, including Florence, Alabama; Jonesboro, Arkansas; and Southaven, Mississippi, scored an average of zero points.
The International Olympic Committee announced a new framework for transgender and intersex athletes Tuesday, dropping controversial policies that required competing athletes to undergo “medically unnecessary” procedures or treatment.
In a six-page document, the IOC outlined 10 principles, which it described as “grounded on the respect for internationally recognised human rights,” that sports competitions should follow. It also said it will no longer require athletes to undergo hormone level modifications to compete.
“This Framework recognises both the need to ensure that everyone, irrespective of their gender identity or sex variations, can practise sport in a safe, harassment-free environment that recognises and respects their needs and identities,” the committee said.
The new framework is not legally binding and was developed following an “extensive consultation” with athletes, other sports organizations and experts in the fields of human rights, law and medicine, the IOC said. It comes just three months after the Tokyo Olympics, which saw the first transgender and intersex athletes compete in the Games’ history.
Tuesday’s framework replaces guidelines the IOC released in 2015, which put a limit on athletes’ testosterone levels that required some of them to undergo treatments the IOC now describes as “medically unnecessary.” Before 2015, the IOC required athletes to undergo genital surgery.
Chris Mosier was the first out trans athlete to compete on a U.S. national team, in the 2016 world championship for the sprint duathlon, and has challenged some of the previous guidelines. Mosier applauded the release of the new framework, writing on Twitter that it “takes the next step in centering human rights as the foundation of sport.”
“The new IOC Framework makes clear that no athlete has an inherent advantage & moves away from eligibility criteria focused on testosterone levels, a practice that caused harmful & abusive practices such as invasive physical examinations & sex testing,” he wrote.https://iframe.nbcnews.com/oak990r?_showcaption=true&app=1
Canadian soccer gold medalist Quinn, who in July became the first openly transgender athlete to participate in the Olympics, also chimed in, calling the new framework “groundbreaking.”
“Far too often, sport policy does not reflect the lived experience of marginalized athletes, and that’s especially true when it comes to transgender athletes and athletes with sex variations,” Quinn said in a statement. “This new IOC framework is groundbreaking in the way that it reflects what we know to be true — that athletes like me and my peers participate in sports without any inherent advantage, and that our humanity deserves to be respected.”
Quinn of the Canada women’s soccer team poses with their gold medal in Yokohama, Japan, on Aug. 6.Naomi Baker / Getty Images
LGBTQ advocates welcomed the IOC’s new guidelines but stressed that following the implementation process is necessary.
“As with any set of guidelines, the success of this new framework in ensuring a safe and welcoming environment within the Olympic movement will largely depend on the education and implementation process with national governing bodies, international federations, and other key stakeholders,” Anne Lieberman, the director of policy and programs at LGBTQ advocacy group Athlete Ally, said in a statement.
Some advocates argued that while the IOC’s new framework is intended for elite athletes, it bolsters their case in their fight against state bills in the United States that restrict transgender students’ participation in school sports.
“On the heels of the most anti-LGBTQ legislative session in history with the majority of bills targeting trans youth in sports, every state and lawmaker should listen to the experts from the world of sports, medicine, and athletes themselves to allow transgender youth the same opportunities to play with their friends, have fun, learn, grow, and benefit from the lasting life lessons and supportive community sports can provide,” Alex Schmider, the associate director of transgender representation at LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said in a statement.
Ten U.S. states have enacted laws restricting trans students’ participation in school sports, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank. An additional 21 states have considered similar bills in 2021, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Breaking with its usual practices on LGBTQ rights and issues, China launched its first medical clinic to treat transgender children and adolescents.
The Chinese state-backed media outlet The Global Times recently reported that the clinic opened at the Children’s Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, saying that it will “serve as a bridge between transgender children, parents, doctors and the various circles of society.”
The clinic’s opening and its celebratory coverage in Chinese state media comes as the country simultaneously works to limit LGBTQ activism and voices.
Homosexuality has not been illegal in China since 1997, but restrictions for LGBTQ people still remain.
Last week, a Chinese LGBTQ advocacy group that has led many of the country’s legal cases to expand LGBTQ rights announced that it would be halting its work “indefinitely.”
Chinese tech giant Tencent’s WeChat social media platform deleteddozens of LGBTQ accounts run by university students in July, saying that the accounts had broken Chinese internet rules. But critics argued that the wipeout of the accounts amounted to censoring LGBTQ activism.
And after 11 years in operation, Shanghai Pride canceled its annual LGBTQ celebration last year and said — without explanation — that it would no longer hold the event.
The Global Times reported that research by Chinese scholars linking transgender youths to higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicide attempts led doctors to believe that specialized care for trans minors was necessary.
In the United States, advocates and scholars have also been warning about the disproportionate rates of bullying, harassment and mental health issues plaguing trans youths.
A survey of over 35,000 LGBTQ youths and young adults this year by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that more than half of transgender and nonbinary respondents seriously considered suicide.
It’s unclear how many children in China identify as transgender, as there is little research from the country on its trans community. However, a 2021 analysis by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found that 14 percent of over 1,000 Chinese respondents say that they have transgender acquaintances.
Navy veteran Rhett Chalk was rendered quadriplegic on Thanksgiving Day in 2003 after his knee — which he severely impaired while serving in Vietnam — gave out, causing him to suffer a life-changing spinal injury.
At the time, Chalk had been with his partner, Lawrence Vilord, for roughly 26 years. However, Vilord was barred from riding alongside Chalk in the ambulance or from consulting with his doctors because he was not his legal spouse or family member.
But that day, Vilord became the one who would care for Chalk until the veteran died in June 2020.
“Practically every night when I gave him a shower, religiously every night, he would say to me, without a doubt, ‘Thank God I have you in my life’ because he says ‘I would never have been able to survive; you’ve been my Rock of Gibraltar,'” Vilord, 77, told NBC News.
So when he was denied the full amount of enhanced Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) benefits — which are granted to surviving spouses of disabled veterans — by the Department of Veterans Affairs last November, he said it frustrated him “to the point of no return.”
“It was just another nail in the coffin. It was another nail in my heart,” Vilord said. “It was just another thing to delegitimize who I was and who he was.”
He qualified for the VA’s standard Dependency and Indemnity Compensation benefits for surviving spouses, which amounts to $1,300 a month. Vilord and Chalk married in 2017 after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage nationally in 2015.
However, because the pair were not married for at least eight years, Vilord was denied last October the VA’s enhanced benefits for survivors of certain veterans who are declared totally disabled at the time of death, for which Chalk qualified. The benefits would grant Vilord another $280 per month.
Vilord appealed his denial before the VA and in federal court last week, arguing that the rule effectively disqualifies all same-sex couples in nearly every state, including in his home state of Florida.
“Our argument though is that the mechanical application of that requirement does injustices in cases such as Mr. Vilord’s where he could not possibly have met the requirement,” said Tyler Patrick, one of the student members of the Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law School, which is representing him. “It’s unconstitutional, not to mention nearly unjust, to deny him these benefits, these benefits that he is deserved after serving as his partner’s caretaker for 18 years, on the basis that Florida prevented him from marrying until 2015.”
“We argue that because the VA in making this determination looks to Florida state law, a state law which was unconstitutional and unconstitutionally as ruled in Obergefell prevented Mr. Vilord and Mr. Chalk from marrying, VA can’t then use that unconstitutional state law as the basis for its denial of his enhanced DIC benefits,” Patrick continued.
The VA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Patrick also points to previous cases where LGBTQ widowers have successfully petitioned for Social Security survivors benefits, after arguing that they were prevented from marrying, and therefore qualifying, because of bans on same-sex marriage.
Last year, federal district courts in Arizona and Washington ruled that excluding same-sex partners from Social Security benefits was unconstitutional. Shortly after, the benefits were put in legal limbo after the Department of Justice under the then-Trump administration appealed the two rulings. However, the department and the Social Security Administration under the Biden administration dismissed the appeals earlier this month.
Patrick said Harvard Law School determined that Vilord is the first person to challenge the requirement, making it a precedent-setting case for LGBTQ widowers of disabled veterans.
Vilord says he hopes his case will help others earn the benefits that they deserve.
“I just feel that there’s got to be somebody else out there that this will make a difference for,” he said. “I may not need it, OK? It’s not going to make a huge difference in my life. It’s not a great deal of money. It’s just the principle behind it.”
British Olympic diver Tom Daley said that he will make it his “mission” to stop countries where homosexuality is punishable by death from competing in the Olympics.
“I think it’s really important to try and create change, rather than just highlighting or shining a light on those things,” Daley, who is gay, said Wednesday while accepting the Sport Award at the 2021 Attitude Awards. “So I want to make it my mission over the next, well, hopefully before the Paris Olympics in 2024, to make it so that the countries [where it’s] punishable by death for LGBT people are not allowed to compete at the Olympic Games.”https://iframe.nbcnews.com/zgXuflE
There are 11 countries where homosexuality is punishable by death — including Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran — and approximately 60 other nations where same-sex relations are criminalized in some capacity, according to Human Dignity Trust, a global advocacy group for LGBTQ rights. Many, if not all, of these countries competed at the Tokyo Olympics.
Daley also criticized the organizers of the FIFA World Cup for hosting the 2022 competition in Qatar, where the death penalty is a legal possibility, according to Human Dignity Trust.
“I think it should not be allowed for a sporting event to host in a country that criminalizes against basic human rights,” Daley said. “So, that is going to be my mission now to change that.”
International sporting organizations have previously banned countries from competing on grounds of discriminatory policies. From 1964 to 1988, the International Olympic Committee, the governing body of the Olympics, banned South Africa from competing because of apartheid, a brutal system of racial discrimination against nonwhite citizens.
The Olympic Committee has also taken measures to prevent anti-LGBTQ cities from hosting competitions since the 2014 Sochi Winter Games were criticized for Russia’s “gay propaganda law.” Tokyo passed anti-LGBTQ discrimination laws in 2018 in accordance with the committee’s policy for hosting cities, but efforts to implement similar policies throughout all of Japan have stalled.
“We fully respect Tom Daley and his view,” the Olympic Committee said to NBC News in an email.
“At the same time, the IOC has neither the mandate nor the capability to change the laws or the political system of a sovereign country,” it said. “This must rightfully remain the legitimate role of governments and respective intergovernmental organizations.”
Daley noted Wednesday that the Tokyo Games had a historic number of openly LGBTQ athletes compete. At least 186 openly LGBTQ athletes took part, according to Outsports, nearly triple the 56 who participated in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.
After winning a gold medal at the Tokyo Games, his first out of his four Olympic competitions, Daley took to the podium and dedicated his win to LGBTQ people.
“I hope that any young LGBT person out there can see that no matter how alone you feel right now, you are not alone,” he said, crying tears of joy. “That you can achieve anything and that there is a whole lot of your chosen family out here, ready to support you.”
The 2022 Winter Games will be held in Beijing, where LGBTQ people are not protected by anti-discrimination laws.
