Mira Lazine

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Fact Check: Does Kamala Harris support “taxpayer-funded sex changes” for prisoners & immigrants?

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Former President Donald Trump’s campaign released a new ad centered around the claim that Vice President Kamala Harris “supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.” The ad highlights this claim while showing pictures of her with a trans person, a nonbinary person, and a drag queen.

“Kamala is for they/them,” the 30-second ad says. “President Trump is for you.”

LGBTQ Nation evaluated the ad to see whether it holds up to scrutiny.

Kamala’s History

While not explicitly stated within the ad, the core of the claim refers to a 2019 questionnaire sent out from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asking for Harris’s stance on key policy issues when she was running as a presidential candidate independent from then-candidate Joe Biden. 

The questionnaire asked: “As President will you use your executive authority to ensure that transgender and non-binary people who rely on the state for medical care — including those in prison and immigration detention — will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care? If yes, how will you do so?”

Harris said yes and replied: “It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition. That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates. I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained. Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.”

Is This Extreme? No, Actually. 

The Trump ad frames Harris’ position as if it’s a very unusual and extreme stance. However, her stance is actually required by the Constitution. The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution restricts “cruel and unusual punishment” from being applied to prisoners or detainees in any context — this extends to healthcare as well. Because of this amendment, it’s unlawful to deny essential healthcare to anyone detained by the U.S. government.

Gender-affirming care is medically necessary according to leading medical associations like the American Medical Association and also the U.S. government. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Offices for Civil Rights details how denial of coverage for gender-affirming care violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. Earlier this year, federal courts ruled that such care is medically necessary and needs to be included in state-funded health insurance plans.

Gender-affirming care includes hormone replacement therapy, fertility preservation treatments, and gender-affirming surgeries, which may include surgeries to change one’s chest and genitalia.

As such, failure to provide inmates and detainees gender-affirming care — including “sex-change surgeries” is unlawful and unconstitutional. 

What Is Kamala’s Current Stance?

In a statement provided to CNN in September, Harris stated that her opinions on such policies are “shaped by three years of effective governance as part of the Biden-Harris Administration,” and that “as President, she will take that same pragmatic approach, focusing on common-sense solutions for the sake of progress.” CNN did not elaborate on whether Harris currently supports these claims.

Harris has made no public comment about her stances on these issues since. Michael Tyler, communications director for the Harris campaign told Fox News that the information within the questionnaire is not a part of her platform or proposals. Tyler didn’t offer new details on where she currently stands on the issue.

Are These Procedures Common?

Gender-affirming procedures, particularly surgeries, are not commonly conducted on federal inmates or detainees. According to a statement from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to FactCheck.org, only two federal prisoners — out of over 2,000 transgender federal prisoners — have received any form of gender-affirming surgery.

The Bureau of Prisons has a public document describing their procedures for trans prisoners. It says, “For transgender inmates in Bureau custody, surgery may be the final stage in the transition process and is generally considered only after one year of clear conduct and compliance with mental health, medical, and programming services at the gender-affirming facility. Once that period elapses, an inmate may submit a request to his or her Warden requesting surgical consideration”

As for undocumented immigrants detained by Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE), there is no public record of any surgeries being conducted. Such a surgery would be difficult to conduct – immigrants are held by Customs and Border Patrol for less than a week on average, while those held with ICE are detained for, on average, 47 days. Pre-operative preparations and post-surgical recovery time may require more time. 

ICE said to FactCheck.com of their policies for trans inmates, “The agency recognizes that detained transgender noncitizens have unique needs while in ICE custody. In response to those needs, we have developed structures within our operation to safeguard their rights and ensure their emergent care needs are met from the moment they arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.”

While ICE policy does recommend providing gender-affirming care to detainees, such surgeries would be difficult to provide due to the complexities involved. Gender-affirming surgeries involve multiple consultations with a surgeon over the course of a year and often have lengthy waiting lists. The surgeries also have a lengthy recovery period that is highly individualized, with post-surgical care requiring many months to upkeep. This is especially unlikely to occur in ICE custody. As of October 2024, there were fewer than 300 trans immigrants in custody.

There is, however, evidence of immigrants being deprived of such medically necessary care. Not only does ICE have a reputation of allegedly providing almost torturous conditions to detainees that often involve solitary confinement and deprivation of medical care, but trans immigrants have reported medical neglect in ICE facilities with the denial of hormone replacement therapy. One transgender woman even had a breast implant burst, which led to inadequate after-care and endless delays.

Expert Opinions and Verdict

LGBTQ Nation reached out to the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment on this issue, however neither responded before publication.

Amy Whelan, Senior Staff Attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said, “People in prisons and immigration facilities have protections under both the U.S. Constitution and federal law when they experience serious medical conditions.”

“Because those people have no ability to seek care on their own, they must be provided with medical care that sufficiently treats those serious conditions,” Whelan added. “As the medical community has understood for decades, surgery is medically necessary for some people who are experiencing serious gender dysphoria, just as insulin may be medically necessary for diabetics or removing a tumor may be medically necessary for someone diagnosed with cancer. These are foundational principles that apply to all people.”

Based on the above evidence, LGBTQ Nation rates this claim as having a mixture of truth and falsehoods within it.

While Harris has previously stated that she supports providing gender-affirming care to trans inmates and detainees, she has not provided up-to-date comment on the matter. There is scarce evidence that these procedures even occur with any notable frequency, and if anything there is an intense medical neglect of trans people being detained from care.

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Missouri “experts” defending gender-affirming care ban exposed as quacks

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In the midst of an ongoing legal battle over Missouri’s ban on gender-affirming care, so-called expert witnesses in favor of the ban have had their credibility called into question, meaning their testimonies may either be thrown out or given little weight in the court’s decisions.

John Michael Bailey, a fringe psychologist who promotes the debunked theory of autogynephilia, was called by Missouri’s Attorney General as an expert witness in support of the legislation, The Missouri Independent reports. Autogynephilia refers to the idea that trans women transition either due to the act of transitioning being a sexual fetish or to lure straight men into a relationship. 

Bailey is also the author of a retracted study on the also debunked concept of “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD), the idea that being trans is a trend that youth rapidly latch on to due to social pressure. Bailey was examined by Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter over the reliability of his study along with his views on some controversial subjects.

Bailey’s study did not verify if any of the participants were actually diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Instead, it surveyed participants from ParentsofROGDKids.com, a website dedicated to parents who believe ROGD is a valid concept that has afflicted their children. The co-researcher on the study was someone under a pseudonym who was tied to the website, and Bailey did not even know who the person actually was.

Bailey has claimed that his study – which was retracted due to issues of informed consent – was actually retracted due to pressure from activists.

Additional work he’s done involved him looking into Reddit threads with people who consider themselves ‘detrans’ and ‘desisting.’ These concepts refer to trans people who have stopped transitioning or stopped identifying as trans.

But the main issue calling his credibility into question centered on Jerry Sandusky, a former college football coach who was convicted of sexually assaulting young boys over the course of 15 years. Bailey believes Sandusky is innocent.

“You believe the people testifying against Jerry Sandusky are lying?” Carter asked him. 

“I can see that if you are not familiar with the evidence that I am familiar with, you would be shocked,” Bailey told him.

Bailey got his information from a podcast and praised conservative commentator John Ziegler.

“Do you know [Ziegler]? Have you talked to anybody that was an eyewitness in that case?” Carter pressed. 

“I have read testimony, but I have not talked to anyone,” Bailey responded.

All of this cast doubt on Bailey’s authority as a medical professional.

The court also called into question the supposed expertise of endocrinologist Dr. Daniel Weiss, as it was revealed that he had not published any research on trans youth and did not have clinical experience with minors. He was paid by the Center for Christian Virtue, a conservative Christian advocacy organization, to serve as an expert witness, the Independent reported.

He said of whether he’d publish research on gender affirming care, “My article, if I were to write one, would be rejected by most medical journals because there is no good treatment. I call it child-harming treatment. There is no good intervention.”

The Missouri bill in question, Senate Bill 49, completely restricts anyone under the age of 18 from accessing any form of gender affirming care, including puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and surgeries.

In addition to the ban, state officials have quietly made it harder to change gender markers on driver’s licenses and have also attempted to restrict care for trans adults.

The fate of gender-affirming care will ultimately be determined by the Supreme Court this fall with the case U.S. v. Jonathan Skrmetti et al, which concerns Tennessee’s ban on care for minors. This case will decide whether or not trans kids will be able to transition in Tennessee, with expectations that it will effect gender-affirming care for all minors across the nation. It is unknown how the Supreme Court will rule, although the current Court has historically ruled conservatively on social issues.

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GOP state officials are so mad that doctors support trans healthcare that they’re intimidating them

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Earlier this week, 20 Republican attorneys general banded together to send a letter to the leadership of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the national professional association for pediatricians, accusing them of breaking the law for supporting age-appropriate and life-saving gender-affirming care for trans youth. 

The letter accuses the organization of violating consumer legal protections for allegedly deceiving the public on the reversibility of puberty blockers while also seeking detailed information on their internal evidence assessments and communications.

The letter was sent by Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador. 

According to journalist Erin Reed, this letter holds no legal weight, and as such, the AAP is under no obligation to respond.

The letter claims that puberty blockers, a form of medication given to youth to temporarily delay puberty so that they can better understand their identities before the permanent effects of puberty set in, are unsafe and not reversible. In support of this, it cites the Cass Review, a review of the literature on puberty blockers in transgender youth that has been used to justify bans on puberty blockers in the United Kingdom.

However, the letter does not mention the numerous critiques of the Cass Review, all of which suggest that it got much of the science wrong, failed to consult with proper experts, and left out pertinent research that should have changed the conclusion.

A separate review by the Sax Institute, which was commissioned by the New South Wales, Australia, Ministry of Health, found that puberty blockers are safe, effective, and entirely reversible. It drew from established research on not only transgender youth but youth with precocious puberty, or early-onset puberty, who wanted their puberty delayed to be more in line with their peers.

Research on precocious puberty and puberty blockers has been happening for decades, and it all supports puberty blockers as safe and life-saving.

The letter also cited news articles, fringe journal pieces, and opinion pieces from anti-trans advocates in support of their claims. Among those cited is Leor Sapir, a non-expert who publishes on the conservative Manhattan Institute-backed outlet City Journal.

The letter’s citations also include news articles from New York Times’ Azeen Ghoryashi, who some have criticized for allegedly biased coverage of transgender issues, and psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Levine, who frequently provides expert testimony in court cases opposing gender-affirming care while often being dismissed due to judges finding he lacks professional experience with gender-affirming care.

The letter also claims that the widely regarded World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) is unreliable, citing in support of this a set of leaked documents from the organization’s internal communications called the “WPATH Files.” Reed found these leaks contained over 200 factual errors regarding gender-affirming care and judged them as containing irrelevant information regarding the professional merit of WPATH.

The letter concludes by demanding all internal communications held with WPATH in relation to their Standards of Care, detailed information regarding the AAP’s views on puberty blockers, and its views on the leaked WPATH Files.

LGBTQ Nation reached out to the American Academy of Pediatrics for comment. However, they did not respond before the publication of this article.

Other states that are represented here include Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia. There are also two signatures from the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives and the President of the Arizona Senate.

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HRC blames anti-LGBTQ+ politicians for national rise in hate crimes

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Anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes have been on the rise in the past year, standing in stark contrast to the overall downward trend of violent crime, according to the FBI’s most recent annual crime reports. The Human Rights Campaign says that anti-LGBTQ+ politicians are contributing to the violence.

In 2023, over 2,402 incidents of sexual orientation-based hate crimes were reported within the past year, a figure that is 500 higher than the amount reported in 2022.

In 2023, there were 401 reported gender identity-based hate crimes, with 146 targeting someone who was gender non-conforming. 

These figures stand in contrast to the overall trend of hate crimes. The data shows a smaller increase of around 2%, from 11,634 overall reports in 2022 to 11,862 reports in 2023. However, anti-violence advocates say that police departments significantly undercount the number of hate crimes due to bias or underreporting by queer people who may distrust law enforcement.

The report also references research from the Human Rights Campaign showing that these hate crimes have a disproportionate impact on Black trans women.

Not all of the reported hate crimes involved violent incidents, but rather a range of bias-motivated incidents that police report as hate crimes. The majority of hate crimes are those motivated by racism and xenophobia, particularly against immigrants and people of color, especially Black individuals.

The recent increase anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes is smaller than the the increase that occurred between 2021 and 2022. The year 2022 saw a 13.8% increase in reported crimes based on sexual orientation and a 32.9% increase in crimes based on gender identity compared to 2021.

“Every lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer person in this country should be free to live their lives without fear that we’ll be the target of a violent incident purely because of who we are and who we love,” Kelley Robinson, President of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement, 

“Unfortunately, the latest FBI hate crimes data shows that even as public acceptance of LGBTQ+ people continues to grow, and overall crime continues to decline, hate crimes against us are not yet showing signs of subsiding. Make no mistake, politicians who spread disinformation and demonize our lives are contributing to this violence.”

In contrast to hate crimes, violent crimes overall decreased by 3% from 2022 to 2023. Murder and non-negligent manslaughter saw a 11.6% decrease, rape saw a 9.4% decrease, aggravated assault decreased by 2.8%, and robbery decreased by 0.3%.

Violent crime as a whole has been on a downward trend since a peak during the pandemic. Levels are now back down to comparable rates from before the pandemic, where it has been steadily decreasing since the 1990s.

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Despite new protections, LGBTQ+ people face massive discrmination in the workplace

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LGBTQ+ people are more likely to experience discrimination at work in spite of laws against it, according to reporting from The 19th.

A study released by the Williams Institute last year shows that 17% of LGBTQ+ adults received harassment and discrimination on the job within the past year of reporting. 47% have experienced it at some point in their lives.

“You would hope things have gotten better,” said Brad Sears, the founding executive director of the Williams Institute and a co-author of the report

Many report having to stay in the closet at work out of fear of reprisal for their identities. Almost half of LGBTQ+ adults were not out to any of their coworkers, and this had protective effects in keeping them free from discrimination. Those who were out at work experienced three times the amount of discrimination.

“A lot of people, even if they are out, they’re kind of downplaying their identities in the workplace,” Sears said. “Maybe they use a different voice or different mannerisms at work, or they don’t dress exactly how they would otherwise dress when they’re not at work, or they use a bathroom that they would prefer not to be using at work.”

Nonbinary people, in particular, received disproportionate discrimination for their identities, with coworkers harassing them for not neatly fitting into either a masculine or feminine box. Many were passed over for promotions, were called slurs, and were isolated in their workplace. 

The data suggests that three in five nonbinary people have been discriminated against at work, which also includes things like being fired or passed over for a job. One in five report facing physical harassment, being “assaulted,” “attacked,” or “strangled.” One in four are currently experiencing such discrimination at their jobs and are often victims of multiple sources of discrimination.

“Oftentimes, I was passed up for a promotion because I wasn’t ‘manly’ enough, and they doubted my ability to lead a team,” a Latine nonbinary person said in the survey.

A Latine nonbinary participant from Colorado said in the survey: “A co-worker strangled me at a counter and said he was trying to ‘give a girl a massage.’”

And a Black nonbinary person from Connecticut said that they heard their manager talking “disparagingly” about them behind their back. 

The Williams Institute cites a lack of clear company policies that protect nonbinary individuals as a cause for much of this discrimination. Many company policies across the nation fail to explicitly outline nonbinary individuals as being included as a protected class, instead saying protections apply only to men and women. Some opponents of trans rights cite their interpretation of Title VII in justification, claiming that it does not extend to protections based on gender identity and only extends to sex.

Much of this discrimination is due to a lack of company policies that explicitly protect nonbinary individuals, with loopholes being present to allow for such discrimination, including in some legal interpretations.

Sears concluded, “LGBTQ+ people are not monolithic. They’re different, they have intersecting identities … and those are leading to differences that are important in the workplace.”

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Book bans have increased nearly 200%. Florida and Iowa are partly to blame

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Over 10,000 books have been banned across the entire United States over the past school year. The trend has seen a particularly strong increase in states with a strong Republican presence, according to the free-speech nonprofit PEN America. 

This is a major increase compared to the 2022-2023 year, which saw a total of 3,362 books banned across the country.

Florida and Iowa are leading in the total number of bans, with over 8,000 recorded between the two states. This number is largely due to the increasingly strict laws on book bans. 

The banned books include Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie; the famous work on anti-Black racism Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B. DuBois; Alex Haley’s book about the lived experience of slaves, Roots: The Saga of an American Family; and James Baldwin’s autobiography Go Tell It On the Mountain.

Iowa’s bans stem from Senate File 496, a law restricting LGBTQ+ books from grade seven and below along with total bans on books deemed to contain sexual content. Florida’s House Bill 1069, backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), resulted in a similar ban, albeit a much more strict one.

PEN America cites other laws from Utah, Tennessee, and South Carolina as contributing to these increase in banned books as well.

Individual school districts have also had a hand in banning many books. The Elkhorn Area School District in Wisconsin, for example, banned over 300 books over a several month period.

PEN America says that the types of books banned “includes books featuring romance, books about women’s sexual experiences, and books about rape or sexual abuse as well as continued attacks on books with LGBTQ+ characters or themes, or books about race or racism and featuring characters of color.”

The organization also emphasizes that these numbers are an undercount of the actual amount of banned books since many book bans go unreported. Additionally, the organization says schools have also implemented “soft” book bans, including policies that cause greater hesitancy to check out books from libraries, restrictions on who can check out restricted books out, book fair cancellations, and the removal of classroom collections.

Six major book publishers are currently suing the Floridian government after hundreds of their books were pulled from libraries, cutting severely into their profits and discriminating against their authors.

A Florida school district recently agreed to re-shelve 36 books to settle a lawsuit concerning multiple banned books, including And Tango Makes Three, an often banned children’s book about a gay penguin couple raising a chick.

Iowa’s book ban was recently brought back into law when a permanent injunction against the ban was overturned by an appeals court.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.

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HRC criticizes companies for ending DEI programs under right-wing pressure

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The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has criticized companies like Molson Coors, Ford, and others for “abandoning their values and backtracking from commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)” following right-wing pressure campaigns.

The HRC concurrently released new survey data showing that rollbacks on DEI from large corporations in recent years are wildly unpopular with LGBTQ+ individuals and alienating many consumers. This data comes in response to far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Robby Starbuck allegedly causing numerous prominent companies — including Ford, Lowe’s, and Harley-Davidson— to significantly scale back their DEI efforts via public pressure campaigns. Starbuck, who reportedly believes that chemicals in tap water are turning kids gay, has over half a million followers on X. 

“The LGBTQ+ community is an economic powerhouse, and we want to work for and support companies who support us. Attacks on DEI initiatives are shortsighted and make our workplaces less safe and less inclusive for hard-working Americans of all demographics and backgrounds,” Orlando Gonzales, Senior Vice President of Programs, Research, and Training at the HRC, wrote in an emailed statement. “This new data confirms that companies like Molson Coors, Ford, and others that abandon their values and backtrack from commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion risk losing both top employee talent and consumer dollars.”

According to the data, 80.1% of LGBTQ+ adults said that they would boycott a company that rolled back DEI measures, with 75.7% of LGBTQ+ adults having a less favorable view of such a company. Additionally, over half (52.5%) said they would try to get others to join the boycott, and similar numbers (51.7%) would remove any profile, credit card, or app they had with the company. Nearly 28% of respondents said they would join a protest or sign a petition against the company too.

Additionally, 72.4% of LGBTQ+ adults said they’d feel less supported by their company if their workplace rolled back inclusion efforts for the community, 66.6% said they’d feel less safe, and 54% said they’d experience a decline in their mental health. A third of participants said they’d be less productive, and 19.6% said they’d look for a different job entirely.

Meanwhile, over 95% of LGBTQ+ adults said that their company scoring high on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI) — a measure of LGBTQ+-inclusive company policies — would mean they feel their company supports the community. Half said that a CEI score of 100% would mean there’s strong support for the community.

The data similarly reflected that LGBTQ+ community members feel supported by companies that sponsor Pride parades, hire out leadership, donate to LGBTQ+ nonprofits, make community outreach efforts, and feature queer representation in their marketing and product development.

The President of the Human Rights Campaign, Kelley Robinson, said that Starbuck is a “MAGA bully and Republican-reject” whose “only business experience is hawking vitamins marketed by people profiting off of COVID disinformation.”

The HRC also referenced data from a Washington Post-Ipsos poll that found that most Americans support DEI measures and feel that these measures better support marginalized people while helping guarantee significant outreach to the public.

The survey was done in collaboration with Community Marketing & Insights (CMI) between August 8-18. Respondents were gathered from their broader LGBTQ+ Research Panel, a representative dataset of over 50,000 LGBTQ+ individuals. 2,490 individuals from all 50 states, as well as Washington, D.C., were surveyed, with 2,432 being eligible for participation in the data. 

The data was weighted by the HRC to represent the total United States population based on age, race/ethnicity, gender identity, educational attainment, and geographic region in comparison to data from the Census, and political affiliation from the PRRI 2023 American Values Atlas. Weighting was done with a Stata program and was verified with hand calculations. The survey has a margin of error of  +/- 4.6%.

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Criminals are targeting gay Brazilians in a string of murders & robberies

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Gay Brazilians have become targeted as a slew of murderers have been using dating apps to target gay men, Reuters reports.

One victim, Leo Nunes, was murdered on Lover’s Day in Brazil after he met someone on Hornet, a gay dating app. He was killed in a middle-class neighborhood in Sao Paulo.

One suspect has been arrested, however the string of crimes has yet to stop. People report being robbed and attacked after meeting up with assailants using fake profiles.

Straight men may be at risk, too, of “love cons,” where straight men are lured to a remote location to meet with a woman and are instead kidnapped and robbed.

Criminal groups are targeting LGBTQ+ people because of their known reluctance to interact with law enforcement.

“Because of structural homophobia, criminals know that LGBT people are vulnerable. They know they will be more easily intimidated,” said Wanderley Montanholi, a lawyer for the family of Heleno Veggi Dumba, a gay doctor who was murdered in April in Sao Paulo after an attempted robbery.

Three suspects have been arrested for Dumba’s killing, however none are charged as of yet.

Five gay men have been killed through these apps since March of 2024, although the number may be higher as deaths go unreported to police.

Brazilian police declined to comment to Reuters about murders linked to gay dating apps, mentioning only the “love cons.”

Gabriel, a gay man who did not give his surname to Reuters, was robbed by the same profile on the same street as Nunes. “One man put a gun to my stomach and asked me the password of my phone,” he said, which led to his bank accounts being accessed and his money and credit cards stolen.

According to Gabriel, the profile remained on Hornet for weeks after it was flagged, in spite of multiple people flagging it as well. Law enforcement declined to comment on the cases of Gabriel and other individuals who had been attacked.

Gerry Monaghan, head of operations at Hornet, said to Reuters that “all reports are looked at and reviewed by Hornet.” He also said that the company added additional staff to handle reporting and that they changed their reporting system to prioritize issues based on severity. He did not elaborate on this.

A spokesperson for Grindr said that they are “aware that in Brazil, digital platforms such as ours are occasionally abused to target LGBTQ+ people.” He referenced security features in the app and referenced their participation with law enforcement.

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Over 1000 trans people show up for historic “Trans Folks for Harris” call

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Over 1,000 people, primarily trans folk, showed up in a “Trans Folks for Harris” Zoom call to express support for Kamala Harris, The 19th reports.

“A lot of times, elected officials have not really taken our issues seriously, in part because they think that we’re too small of a community to matter,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of Advocates for Trans Equality. “Now we’ve been able to prove that that is not true at all.”


The call featured a who’s who of well-known trans people, particularly trans politicians. Co-organized by activist Charlotte Clymer, the meeting also put a spotlight on elected officials like the soon-to-be Congresswoman and current Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride (D) and Hawaii’s first trans lawmaker, Kim Coco Iwamoto.

“We have so much power,” Clymer said. “We have way more power than they think, that’s for damn sure. And when we use that power, when we organize together and have each other’s backs, we can do great things.”

Over 2,600 more people have been screened for the fundraiser, with organizers still waiting to see just how much money has been raised.

Some LGBTQ+ individuals still remain skeptical of Harris, however, based on her having denied a trans woman gender-affirming care while in prison. Harris, however, has since apologized for this and disavowed her previous position.

In an attempt to garner more support, she picked Minnesota’s pro-LGBTQ+ governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate. He passed several policies that helped trans people during his time as governor, including helping to make the state a refuge for trans folks.

Activists at the event show that a sizable portion of LGBTQ+ people support Harris, in large part because she has a record of opposing policies that former President Donald Trump has enacted.

“It’s a step forward to ensure that trans people, especially Black and Brown trans women, have the representation and the resources they need to live with dignity and pride,” said Zahara Bassett, CEO of Chicago-based trans advocacy organization Life is Work. “We need to make sure that our future is one of equity, justice, and liberation for us all.”

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Trans teens sue New Hampshire to stop sports ban

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Last Friday, two New Hampshire teenagers – soccer players who have been living as girls since a young age – have sued the state of New Hampshire for instituting a transgender sports ban. The lawsuit was filed with help from the ACLU.

The lawsuit claims that the ban on trans inclusion in girls’ sports violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX, a 1972 amendment that further guarantees equal treatment in education on the basis of sex.

The lawsuit also reveals that the plaintiffs are aiming to file a restraining order against the defendants alongside their attempt to issue a temporary injunction on the bill to allow the girls to go back to playing sports.

Chris Erchull, senior staff attorney with GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), said in a statement, “Sports are a pillar of education in New Hampshire public schools because of the countless benefits of physical activity in a team environment, including physical and mental health, leadership skills, and social development. New Hampshire cannot justify singling out transgender girls to deny them essential educational benefits available to other students.”

H.B. 1205 was signed into law last month by Gov. Chris Sununu (R). The bill bans any transgender girl from participating on girls’ sports teams throughout high school. It was signed with two other anti-trans bills on the same day. A fourth bill, which would have overturned the state’s anti-discrimination measures for trans people, was vetoed by the governor.

The complaint names the Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education, members of the New Hampshire Board of Education, as well as members of the girls’ high school school board, as defendants in the suit. The plaintiffs are represented by Chris Erchull and Ben Klein at GLAD, Henry Klementowicz and Gilles Bissonnette at the ACLU of New Hampshire, and Louis Lobel, Kevin DeJong, and Elaine Blais at Goodwin.

Henry Klementowicz, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, said in a statement, “H.B. 1205 stigmatizes and discriminates against transgender girls and tells them they aren’t deserving of the same educational opportunities to other girls in public schools. All students do better in school when they have access to resources that improve their mental, emotional, and physical health and [the girls] deserve that same access.”

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