Jeanne Hoff, a trailblazing transgender psychiatrist, died at her home in San Francisco at the age of 85 this past October.
Born to a working-class St. Louis family in 1938, Hoff received a master’s in science from Yale and a medical degree from Columbia University, the Advocatenotes. A doctorate in solid state chemistry at University College in London and training and residency as a psychiatrist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis followed, according to Gay City News.
Hoff had already begun her own transition in 1976 when she took over the New York practice of Dr. Harry Benjamin, the German-American endocrinologist and sexologist who coined the term “transvestite” in 1910 and later began referring to patients as “transsexuals.”
Hoff is considered the first openly transgender psychiatrist to treat trans patients—including punk rock singer Jayne County. She was a member of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, which later became the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
In 1978, she was the subject of an NBC documentary, Becoming Jeanne: A Search for Sexual Identity, which documented her own gender-confirmation surgery.
In a remembrance published by Gay City News earlier this month, Andy Humm, who knew Hoff personally, wrote that she “was a very serious person — though with a great sense of humor and warmth.”
Hoff, Humm wrote, was adamant that a person’s gender did not determine their sexuality and “took other psychiatrists to task when they would help a man transition to be a woman and then insist that as a woman, the patient had to form intimate relationships with men and not be ‘gay.’”
“Dr Hoff knew that erotic attraction was independent of gender identity and that there are, of course, trans women who are lesbians,” Humm wrote.
Humm knew Hoff through the Catholic LGBTQ+ group Dignity/New York. “Her fierce courage was unique at a time and in a Church institution that was and still can be so homophobic,” Rev. Bernárd Lynch, who also knew Hoff through the group, told Humm. “Yet she found warmth, companionship, and support from many. Jeanne inspired us by being herself — sparing no price and counting no cost in her integrity.”
In her 2018 book, Histories of the Transgender Child, historian Jules Gill-Peterson wrote that “Hoff cared deeply about the well-being of her clients.”
“Her work demonstrates a level of empathy entirely absent from transsexual medicine since its advent—not to mention its predecessors in the early twentieth century—an ethic of care that, although greatly constrained by the material circumstances and history of psychiatry and endocrinology, was also entangled with her situated perspective as a trans woman,” Peterson wrote. “It is important to underline that Hoff represents yet another trans person who took an active and complicated role in medicine, rather than being its object.”
During one poignant moment in Becoming Jeanne, Hoff was asked by Dr. Frank Field, who cohosted the film with Lynn Redgrave, how she wanted people to accept her.
“Well, it may not be necessary for you to go to a lot of trouble to learn about accepting transsexuals if you have a general principle, and that is: mind your own business, I suppose,” she responded. “If you are meddling in the life and freedom of someone else, you ought to do so very cautiously and make sure that you’re entitled to do so and that they’ll be better off for your having been there.”
“So if you take the position that people are all right until they have proved that they’re not, you’re not likely to harm them,” she added. “I’ll do my best to justify that confidence.”
Three LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in western North Carolina have fired an opening salvo in their effort to overturn the state’s discriminatory Don’t Say Gay law.
The Campaign for Southern Equality, Youth OUTright WNC, and PFLAG Asheville have joined forces to challenge the Buncombe County School District (near Asheville) over SB49, enacted in August after North Carolina Republicans overrode a veto by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.
The Don’t Say Gay legislation, also known as the Parent’s Bill of Rights, bans instruction on “gender identity, sexual activity, or sexuality” in kindergarten through fourth grade and requires parents to be notified “prior to any changes in the name or pronoun used for a student in school records or by school personnel,” with some discretion accorded to school administrators.
The law went into effect immediately with its passage, and in the months since, school districts across the state have been grappling with how to implement it.
In a complaint addressed to the Title IX Coordinator for Buncombe County Schools, the three groups allege SB49 violates the education provisions of Title IX.
“The policies passed by the Buncombe County Board of Education to comply with the state law SB49 (alternately called the ‘Don’t Say LGBTQ’ law and the ‘Parents’ Bill of Rights’) create a hostile educational environment for LGBTQIA+ students, families, staff and faculty,” the complainants write, “and in doing so violate Title IX and Buncombe County Schools’ obligation to provide every student with a safe and non-discriminatory school environment.”
The complaint cites Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding, which includes discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
In October, the Campaign for Southern Equality addressed their allegations over Title IX to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, which responded, “Absent a determination by USED Office of Civil Rights or a court order affirming your position, neither the State Board nor DPI can knowingly fail to comply with a duly enacted state law.”
The groups’ strategy then moved to obtain just such a determination from a local official entrusted with enforcing Title IX. In Buncombe County, that responsibility falls to Shanon Martin, Title IX Coordinator for Buncombe County Schools.
“We request that, should these allegations of a Title IX violation be confirmed, the Buncombe County Schools Title IX Coordinator instruct the Superintendent to delay all implementation of the SB49-related policies passed on December 7, 2023, until such time as the federal complaint against DPI and SBE has been resolved,” the complaint to Martin reads.
Craig White, supportive schools director at Campaign For Southern Equality, told Blue Ridge Public Radio that his team expects to file a federal complaint in January.
Rob Elliot, chairman of the policy committee for the Buncombe County Board of Education, said figuring out how to enforce SB49 has been “very stressful” and a “noisy, big, complex legal discussion.”
“We don’t exist just under the confines of this one new law, Elliot said. “This doesn’t define our entire world. We exist under a whole universe of federal law and state law, all of which we have to abide by as well.”
Kentucky’s version of a “don’t say gay” law is creating many problems for LGBTQ+ students — and the parents and teachers who want to support them.
In March, the state’s Republican-majority legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto to pass one of the nation’s farthest-reaching anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Senate Bill 150 includes a ban on all gender-affirming care for minors plus a prohibition on public school instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity at all grade levels. It also requires school districts to “at a minimum” bar trans students from using the restrooms comporting with their gender identity and mandates that school personnel tell parents about confidential discussions with students about sexual orientation or gender identity, essentially forcing the outing of these students. It further lets teachers ignore students’ chosen pronouns.
“What started out as really a bill focused on pronouns and bathroom use morphed into this very broad anti-LGBTQIA+ piece of legislation that outlawed discussions of gender and sexuality, through all grades and all subject matters,” Jason Glass, the former Kentucky commissioner of education, recently told the Kentucky Lantern. Glass left his post in September for a job at Western Michigan University amid Republicans’ criticism of his support for LGBTQ+ students, with some even calling for him to be fired.
Other supportive teachers and administrators are finding there’s no place for them in the state anymore. Willie Carver, a gay man who was Kentucky’s Teacher of the Year in 2022, has now left teaching because of the hostility he faced — something students still have to deal with, he said. “We’ve ripped all of the school support away from the students, so they’re consistently miserable and hopeless,” he told the Lantern.
The new law means it’s harder for gay-straight alliances, sometimes called gender and sexuality alliances, to operate in schools, even though they’re sorely needed now. In the small rural community of Owenton, the GSA, known as PRISM (People Respecting Individuality and Sexuality Meeting), has shut down because of students’ fears. Owen County High School Principal Renee Boots told the Lantern the club has simply broadened its focus, but parent Rachelle Ketron said students were afraid to continue meeting.
Ketron helped the club get started after her transgender daughter, Meryl, died by suicide in 2020. It first met at the local public library, then got approval as a school club in 2022. Ketron has been trying to revive the group outside of the school, but students are reluctant because many of them aren’t out to their parents, she said.
This year, Ketron lost another trans child, a foster daughter, to suicide. She and her wife, Marsha Newell, have made a major effort to foster LGBTQ+ kids. “Just because I’m uncomfortable or this is a foreign place for a queer kid to be doesn’t mean there aren’t queer kids born here every day,” she said. Ketron, who was married to a man when she moved to Owenton from Cincinnati in 2014, said her children have been bullied for their LGBTQ+ identity and for having two mothers.
Queer kids and GSAs are having trouble even in larger, more progressive communities, the Lantern reports. In Lexington, home to the University of Kentucky, a high school GSA has lowered its profile — for instance, no longer announcing its meetings over the school’s public address system, for fear that administrators would shut it down, a trans and nonbinary student told the publication.
“The school felt so much safer knowing that [a GSA] existed because there were students like you elsewhere,” said the student, identified only as Anna. “You could go in and say, ‘Hey, I’m trying out this set of pronouns. I’m trying to learn more about myself. Can you all, like, call me this for a couple of weeks?’ It just allowed for a place where students like me could go.”
Nationwide, the number of GSAs is the lowest it’s been in 20 years, according to GLSEN. That could be partly because students have found other resources and schools have become more accepting — or, conversely, because an anti-LGBTQ+ climate has made it harder for them to operate.
Ketron told the Lantern she intends to keep on fighting for GSAs and is also organizing a summit for queer young people. “At its core,” a GSA is “a protective factor and so very needed, especially in a rural community,” she said.
If you are having thoughts of suicide or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available to help. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 is for people of all ages and identities. Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations. The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678.
Equality California, the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, announced the endorsements of 16 pro-equality candidates, including three out LGBTQ+ candidates, running for election at the federal, state, and local level in 2024 — the organization’s latest round of endorsements in its largest electoral effort in history.
“We are thrilled to endorse these pro-equality candidates running for elected offices at all levels of government across California,” said Executive Director Tony Hoang. “The challenges we continue to face in creating a world that is just and fully equal for all LGBTQ+ people demand that we elect pro-equality lawmakers and leaders that will work to defend our community’s hard-fought gains, as well as continue to pave new ground in the ongoing fight for full, lived equality.”
The full list of new endorsements can be found below:
U.S. House of Representatives:
Congressional District 3: Jessica Morse
Congressional District 12: Lateefah Simon
Congressional District 31: Susan Rubio
Congressional District 45: Kim Nguyen-Penaloza
California State Assembly:
Assembly District 5: Neva Parker
Assembly District 15: Monica Wilson
Assembly District 22: Jessica Self
Assembly District 34: Ricardo Ortega
Assembly District 47: Christy Holstege
Assembly District 59: Dave Obrand
Assembly District 74: Chris Duncan
Assembly District 75: Kevin Juza
California State Senate:
Senate District 9: Tim Grayson
Senate District 35: Michelle Chambers
Local Offices:
San Bernardino City Council, District 3: Christian Shaughnessy
San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, District 3: Graham Smith
Bold names indicate out LGBTQ+ candidates.
For a complete list of Equality California’s endorsements, please visit eqca.org/elections.
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Equality California is the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization. We bring the voices of LGBTQ people and allies to institutions of power in California and across the United States, striving to create a world that is healthy, just, and fully equal for all LGBTQ people. We advance civil rights and social justice by inspiring, advocating and mobilizing through an inclusive movement that works tirelessly on behalf of those we serve. www.eqca.org
Effective January 1, 2024, this move increases the Center’s physical space by approximately 30%, allowing for designated program areas for the food pantry, community support gatherings, case management, harm reduction, and mental health services.
Located in the heart of San Rafael’s Canal District, the new building positions the Center to better serve the priority population of LGBTQ+ Latinx youth and families. “The Spahr Center is prioritizing mental and behavioral health support for LGBTQ+ LatinX youth and families,” said Renato Talhadas (he/him), Chief Programs Officer. “Similarly, we are increasing our efforts around HIV prevention and education in the Canal District because the LatinX community has the greatest need for these services in Marin. We have a lot to accomplish, and moving to this new building in San Rafael will effectively increase the work we do for this community.”
The Center will be closed and all programs cancelled from December 25-January 1 in observance of Christmas and New Year’s. The Center will be physically closed from January 2-January 5 and the entire staff working online as they prepare the new space. The Center will open at the new space on January 8 with limited programs. The Center will be fully open at the new space and all programs on normal schedule beginning January 15. Community members can learn more about the schedule at TheSpahrCenter.org.
“This move is a part of our strategic plan,” said Joe Tuohy (he/him), Executive Director. “Our center is expanding and so we need more space and more staff. We are thrilled for this move and we look forward to sharing our new and improved space with our community.”
The Spahr Center’s new address effective January 1, 2024 is 1575 Francisco Blvd E, San Rafael, 94901.
The Spahr CenterThe Spahr Center is a 501c3 nonprofit organization in Marin County which celebrates and supports the LGBTQ+ and HIV communities of Marin. The center provides direct services for People Living With HIV, health and community programs, mental health services, harm reduction, trainings, and youth, family, and senior programs.
The LGBTQ+ population is the largest it has ever been in recorded United States history, and the community is only growing.
13.9 million adults in the U.S. identify as LGBTQ+, accounting for 5.5 percent of the country’s total population, a study from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, found. That’s up one whole percentage point — and over 2 million people — from their 2020 report, which found the LGBTQ+ population accounted for 4.5 percent of the population at 11.3 million adults.
While one may expect queer communities to flock to liberal states like New York or California, the report found that there are “more LGBT adults live in the South than in any other region.” 35.9 percent (5 million) of the country’s LGBTQ+ population live in the South, with 24.5 percent (3.4 million) living in the West. 21.1 percent (2.9 million) reside in the Midwest, and just 18.5 percent (2.6 million) call the Northeast their home.
When going by raw population, the states with the largest number of LGBTQ+ adults are also the states with the largest overall populations. When going by percentage, the top states with the most LGBTQ+ people tend to fall in New England, though some of the highest slots came as a surprise.
Oregon, Delaware, and Vermont are the states with the highest percentage of LGBTQ+ people. West Virginia, Mississippi, and North Carolina are the states with the lowest. When comparing population to legislation, the states with the smallest queer communities are also some the ones pushing the most anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
The study also found that 18-24-year-olds are the group with the most queer people, with one in every six identifying as LGBTQ+. In other age groups, one in ten (9.1 percent) of those 25 to 34 years old, less than 5 percent of those ages 35 to 49, and less than 3 percent of those ages 50 and older identify as LGBTQ+.
When accounting for those who did not feel safe coming out, there are likely even more LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. The data demonstrates that no matter where you live, or no matter how old you are, you’re not alone.
Becky Hormuth and her transgender son, Levi, thought they were protected after a Missouri law banning transition-related care for minors took effect in August.
The law grandfathered in those who had already been receiving puberty blockers or hormone therapy prior to Aug. 28, meaning they, in theory, would be able to continue their treatment. Levi, 16, began receiving testosterone in November of last year.
However, Missouri’s new law also allows providers of transition-related care for minors to be sued by their patients until they turn 36. As a result, the hospital where Levi had been receiving care for more than a year informed patients in September that it would no longer be providing such care, citing the “unsustainable liability” the law creates for health care professionals.
“We both just sat and cried together on the floor of his bedroom,” Becky said of the reaction she and Levi had upon hearing the news. “He connected with those doctors, and they’re like family to us — they know him personally. His big worry was, ‘Who’s going to help me now?’”
The Missouri law that affected Levi’s care is part of a national effort by Republican state lawmakers to restrict LGBTQ rights. More than 500 state bills targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people have been introduced in 2023, according to a tally by the American Civil Liberties Union. Of those bills, 75 became law, according to an NBC News analysis of the ACLU’s data.
The plurality of those laws — 21, including Missouri’s — are restrictions on transition-related care for minors, while 11 of them bar transgender student-athletes from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities. Ten of the laws limit classroom instruction on LGBTQ issues and/or the use of pronounswithin school that don’t align with a person’s birth sex, and eight restrict which restrooms trans people can use in schools or other publicly owned buildings. The remaining laws restrict drag performances in front of minors, define a person’s sex in state law as that which was assigned at birth, and create additional barriers for trans people to change the sex on their birth certificates, among other measures.
Though 2023 was a record year for legislation targeting LGBTQ people, some advocates and experts say those who support LGBTQ rights are still coming out ahead, since just 75 of the approximately 500 bills proposed have become law, or about 15%.
Becky said she has been planning for Missouri’s trans health care restrictions since the spring, when state officials started trying to limit minors’ access to transition-related care. At the time, she said, she didn’t know whether Levi would be grandfathered in. She hasn’t missed a refill for Levi’s testosterone and has rationed it so they have enough for next year.
Becky and Levi Hormuth will have to travel nearly five hours to Chicago to access transition-related care.Courtesy Becky Hormuth
Sitting in his mom’s car outside of his therapist’s office one day last month after school, Levi said he was worn out from the back-and-forth over whether he will have access to his health care.
“I’ve been hit with multiple waves of depression recently, and I’ve been lacking in my schoolwork because of all this,” he said.
In the spring, in addition to ensuring she has plenty of testosterone for Levi, Becky said she also reached out to the gender development program at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago — a nearly five-hour drive from their home — to get on its waitlist in anticipation of Missouri passing the ban. She said she hopes Levi will have his first appointment there early next year.
The Hormuths and others affected by laws targeting LGBTQ people have been waiting for judges to rule on lawsuits filed against the measures.
So far, judges have issued temporary blocks, either partial or full, against gender-affirming care restrictions passed this year in Florida, Georgia, Montana and Indiana. Judges have upheld restrictions on gender-affirming care passed this year in Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas.
The plaintiffs in the Tennessee case appealed to the Supreme Court last month. If the court decides to take the case, it would be the first time it has considered a restriction on puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery for minors.
In the meantime, Levi said, the climate at his school has become more hostile. In one case, he said kids threw things at him on the bus and called him slurs. The incident was caught on camera, Becky said, and Francis Howell School District, where Becky is also a teacher, found that two students violated a district policy against harassment based on race, gender, sexuality and other protected categories when they made derogatory comments about Levi’s gender identity and threw objects at him, according to a letter provided to NBC News that the district sent to the Hormuths.
Jennifer Jolis, a spokesperson for the district, said it cannot comment on matters involving specific students due to privacy laws.
Restrictions on school instruction, sports participation
Educational institutions — from public elementary schools to private colleges that receive state funding — have become ground zero for the conservative-led effort to limit LGBTQ rights and access to information about the community. State bills signed into law this year have affected classroom instruction, extracurricular participation and access to sex-segregated school facilities, among other things.
Eleven states now have laws affecting what teachers can say about LGBTQ issues and how they can show up at work, with all but one of these measures having been passed this year.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis holds the signed Parental Rights in Education act flanked by elementary school students at Classical Preparatory school in Spring Hill, Fla., on March 28, 2022.Douglas R. Clifford / Tampa Bay Times via AP
When the law was initially signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March 2022, it prohibited “classroom instruction” on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” The measure was then expanded in May to prohibit such classroom instruction from prekindergarten through eighth grade, restrict health education in sixth through 12th grade, and restrict what pronouns teachers and students can use.
After signing the first iteration of the bill, DeSantis said it ensures children will get “an education, not an indoctrination.” The expanded version, he said earlier this year, ensures teachers and students won’t be “forced to declare pronouns in school or be forced to use pronouns not based on biological sex.”
One of the three teachers who sued the state, AV Schwandes, who also goes by AV Vary, was fired in October for using the gender-neutral honorific “Mx.” instead of “Ms.” or “Mr.” in emails and other school communications.
Schwandes began using “Mx.” at the start of the school year, and a few weeks later the principal at Florida Virtual School, where Schwandes taught high school science, requested that Schwandes use a traditional honorific. When Schwandes refused, they received a directive, which they provided to NBC News, that said they had to change their courtesy title to comply with the law.
In mid-September, when Schwandes initially refused to change their honorific to “Ms.” or “Mr.,” they were suspended. They said they then suggested other gender-neutral titles they could use such as “professor,” “teacher” or “coach,” but Schwandes said staffers in the human resources department told them professor was a title used in college environments and not K-12 schools. Schwandes was terminated six weeks later, on Oct. 24, because they would not change their title.
The Florida Virtual School said in an emailed statement: “As a Florida public school, FLVS is obligated to follow Florida laws and regulations pertaining to public education. This includes laws … pertaining to the use of Personal Titles and Pronouns within Florida’s public school system.”
In addition to their lawsuit, Schwandes filed a complaint last month with the Florida Commission on Human Relations and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging the school discriminated against them based on their gender identity and violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the largest education workers union in the state, said he has heard from many LGBTQ teachers who are afraid of displaying photos of their families on their desks. He said what he hears from teachers the most is that the parental rights law and others restricting education in the state make it harder for them to do their jobs.
“The biggest question we get from teachers is if a student raises an issue that’s relevant to the class discussion, but it’s talking about gender or gender identity or sexual orientation,” Spar said. “Do we have to stop that conversation? And that’s where a lot of the confusion comes in.”
Currently, 23 states have laws on the books restricting which school sports teams transgender athletes can join, with about half of those laws being passed this year. Proponents of these measures say they help ensure fairness in women’s sports, while critics say they lack scientific evidence to prove trans women have an unfair advantage and that they marginalize trans students.
A Florida high school made national headlines last month when hundreds of its students staged a walkout after their principal and several other school officials were reportedly reassigned due to a trans student’s participation on the girls volleyball team. Earlier this week, the school was fined and put on probation, while the student has been barred from participating in any school sports for 11 months.
Students at at Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, Fla., staged a walkout after school officials were reportedly reassigned due to a trans student’s participation on the girls volleyball team. NBC South Florida
The laws specific to education have also trickled down to affect schools’ internal policies and school boards.
Last month, a Texas high school removed a trans student from his lead role in the school’s production of “Oklahoma!,” citing a new school policy that said students must play theater roles that match the sex on their birth certificates. After backlash from the largely conservative local community, the Sherman Independent School District reversed that decision and reinstated the student, Max Hightower, and other students who weren’t trans but had lost their roles playing characters that didn’t match their birth sex.
The rise and fall of drag bans
This year was the first to see state lawmakers file bills restricting drag performances in front of minors and/or in public spaces, which supporters of the legislation argue are necessary to protect children from inappropriate entertainment.
Lawmakers in at least 16 states introduced restrictions targeting drag in 2023, according to an NBC News analysis. Just six became law, and so far, they have been the least likely to hold up to judicial scrutiny.
Trans rights activists march past the state Capitol during a protest of anti-drag laws in Nashville, Tenn., on Feb. 14, 2023.John Amis / AP Images for Human Rights Campaign file
Judges struck down two laws in Tennessee and Texas and temporarily blocked a restriction in Florida and another in Montana that specifically regulates events at public libraries where drag performers read to children.
Laws in Arkansas and North Dakota were so watered down during state legislative debates that advocates no longer consider them to be targeting drag.
Bracing for 2024
As Becky and Levi continue to grapple with the effects of Missouri’s trans care ban, they are anxiously looking ahead to the next legislative session in January. Becky said she fears 2024 could usher in more legislation targeting Levi and other LGBTQ people in the state. She cited recent reporting by independent journalist and advocate Erin Reed, who found that Missouri lawmakers have prefiled at least 21 bills targeting LGBTQ people.
“Some days when I wake up, I have that constant worry, because today is another day that’s gone by or going by, and it’s another day that’s closer to January,” Becky said.
It’s not just state laws that have her anxious about the new year: The school board for Levi’s district is also considering a policy to ban trans students from using the bathrooms that align with their gender identities. This led Levi, a senior, to decide that he won’t return to school for his last semester and will instead take his final credit either over the summer at his high school or at the local community college. As a result, he will miss homecoming, prom and graduation. Becky said she and her husband plan to sue if the bathroom policy is passed. The Francis Howell School District Board of Education did not return a request for comment.
Jolis, the district spokesperson, said the district does not comment on threatened or pending litigation, though she did confirm that a policy addressing restroom and locker room access had been proposed.
Gabriele Magni, an assistant professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and director of the school’s LGBTQ Politics Research Initiative, said the country likely hasn’t seen the end of legislation targeting LGBTQ people because it’s heading into an election year.
Early tracking of next year’s bills shows Magni could be right. Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist for the ACLU, said the nonprofit is tracking 212 bills targeting LGBTQ people that have either been prefiled for the 2024 session or carried over from the 2023 session.
Magni said many of the bills that have become law in the last several years have succeeded in part because their supporters frame them as protecting children. He said the reason the majority of the bills did not pass is likely because they were not intended to pass in the first place. He said many Republican officials use them to drum up media attention, fundraise and drive voters to polls.
At the same time, he said, the fact that 2023 is still a record year for the proposal and passage of anti-LGBTQ laws shows that the tactic is spreading across states because Republicans now believe such legislation is necessary to be accepted by and supported within their party. In 2022, conservative lawmakers introduced more than 300 bills targeting LGBTQ people, and just 29 became law (less than 10%), according to the Human Rights Campaign. In 2021, lawmakers introduced more than 250 such bills, and 17 became law (about 7%), according to the HRC.
“This became a sort of vicious cycle in which no one wanted to be left behind,” Magni said. “They don’t want to be seen as less conservative or less active on these, and so in some cases in some states, we see the introduction of bills just more to not fall behind in these conservative ranking credentials rather than hoping that it will become legislation.”
Phillip, Amy and Max Hightower fought for Max to be reinstated to his lead role in a Texas high school production of “Oklahoma!”Courtesy Phillip Hightower
Phillip Hightower, whose trans son, Max, was removed and then reinstated in his school’s production of “Oklahoma!,” said he and his family won their fight for Max because more parents spoke out once they realized they had support, both within their mostly conservative community and across the country.
“Once it started to gain traction nationally, they felt safer,” he said.
Quoting 2019’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” Hightower said, “We’ve got friends out there. They’ll come if they know there’s hope.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate and extremist groups, has unveiled a new report exposing the intricate network of far-right entities propagating anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience.
The comprehensive study, “Combating Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Through Accessible Informative Narratives,” or Project CAPTAIN, revealed during a press conference on Tuesday, details the concerted efforts of these groups to undermine LGBTQ+ rights through the manipulation of scientific realities, particularly when it comes to gender-affirming care and the health care needs for transgender people.
R.G. Cravens, lead editor and author of the report, highlighted the alarming trend of using pseudoscience to target these groups.
“The gender-affirming care model… represents a global medical consensus. But the attempts to undermine it that we detail in this report are manufactured,” Cravens explained. “If the pseudoscience goes unchallenged… it has real life and often life-threatening consequences for trans and nonbinary people.”
The report identifies over 60 groups, including familiar names like the Alliance Defending Freedom and lesser-known entities such as the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine. It uncovers the connections between these groups and their strategies to influence public policy and opinion.
“This report is pretty groundbreaking in how we’re able to look at these connections and help expose all of the groups that are at the center of this moral panic that we’re seeing,” Emerson Hodges, a research analyst at SPLC, said. “This report was ultimately designed to help provide details on pseudoscience and has become a tool to help us map out the far-right and their attempts to manipulate public opinion and advance anti-LGBT policies.”
One notable group, the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine, emerged as a significant player, according to the report. Formed in 2020, SEGM has become a central hub, connecting preexisting researchers and newer online entities. Their influence extends to various legislative efforts across states, underlining their strategic role in shaping anti-trans policies.
Another critical organization highlighted in the report is the American College of Pediatricians. Despite its official-sounding name, ACPeds is recognized as a fringe group that stands in stark contrast to mainstream medical opinion. Their tactics, as detailed in the report, include masquerading under the guise of medical legitimacy to propagate anti-LGBTQ+ narratives. This deceptive approach underscores these groups’ sophisticated methods to influence public opinion and policy. Major medical associations in the U.S. actually support gender-affirming care.
The involvement of organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom in high-profile legal cases, including efforts that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, demonstrates the far-reaching impact of these organizations. Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research reporting and analysis at SPLC’s Intelligence Project, underscored the importance of understanding the legal dynamics at play.
“The legal machine behind this is very real, and it’s very much impacting policy, and it’s up the courts, and it’s causing real harm,” Carroll Rivas said.
The report raises concerns about the future implications of these movements as well, particularly with initiatives like Project 2025. Spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, this project aims for a potential far-right shift in political power in 2025. The SPLC researchers warn that the success of such initiatives could lead to the entrenchment of anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience in federal policy, posing a significant threat to LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms in the coming years. It calls for a comprehensive approach to combat those possibilities and that misinformation. As emphasized by Carroll Rivas, “Prevention in part means education.”
The SPLC’s report comes at a critical juncture as anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and policies gain traction in various states. Multiple organizations have reported on the hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills that have been introduced by Republican-led legislatures, mostly targeting transgender youth.
“There’s still some out there that we have the opportunity to challenge, and we have the opportunity to intervene before the harm can be caused,” Cravens said.
Sonoma County queer musician Anne Carol Mitchell, also known by the artist name Brightdarkdawn, is producing a two-hour immersive music concert that uses songs, video, audience participation, and storytelling to raise awareness about the preservation of Sonoma County night skies in an age of artificial light. I’ll Show You the Night ispresented by the Arlene Francis Center for Spirit, Art, and Politics in Santa Rosa on Saturday, January 27 at 6:30pm. The concert is a celebration of the natural darkness, queer identities at the intersection of art and ecology, and a new album by Brightdarkdawn. The concert brings into focus questions of collective belonging to the natural world through the lenses of music, audience-participatory poetry, and actual telescopes courtesy of the Robert Ferguson Observatory (RFO). RFO will also provide opportunities for the audience to further engage with the Sonoma County night skies by taking classes or attending star parties. The event comes at an important moment in Sonoma County conservation work where the voices of artists are needed to make the emotional connections in engaging people when data and statistics fall short.
“This concert is a collaboration with local and Bay Area based queer artists/allies and Robert Ferguson Observatory exploring our belonging to and relationship with the night,” said Mitchell. “We look at the concert as a gift to the community–a space to feel our relatedness to the cosmos and an intimacy with the cycles of nature. As an artist who engages in both music and ecological work, this concert is a moment when the environmental and artistic circles I work in can inform and inspire one another.”
Mitchell has been writing music about the natural world as an inquiry into connection to nature since 2014 with polished lyrics and well-crafted acoustic guitar work in the vein of Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell. Anne Carol Mitchell brings a nature-based storytelling approach to her songwriting and occupies a space on the fringes as a queer artist giving voice to the more-than-human world as a call for justice. In I’ll Show You the Night, Mitchell is celebrating the release of her fourth solo album of original music (the first under the name Brightdarkdawn).
Music artists Sindhu Natarajan, a South Indian classically trained singer from Livermore, and Maya McNeil, Scottish-American singer and songwriter who works in both Scottish Gaelic music and original folk songwriting, will share music and stories about the night and darkness from their traditions and perspectives offering striking lenses through which to view the night sky. The event hosts, SJ Cook and Jason Wyman, will invite and engage the audience into poetic-play, queering, blurring and reveling in the spaces where the lines between darkness and light commune.
Sindhu Natarajan is an accomplished vocalist, composer, and Bharatanatyam dancer. She began her Carnatic vocal training under her aunt, Smt. Vasanthi Kannan, and grandfather, the late Sri P.V. Natarajan. She is currently under the guidance of her other aunt, Smt. Raji Gopalakrishnan. Sindhu has given many Carnatic concerts, as well as provided vocal support for numerous South Asian dance performances across the United States. In addition to performing, Sindhu is a passionate composer who creates music that blends her Carnatic roots with other genres. She has also studied Bharatanatyam under Smt. Mythili Kumar, Artistic Director of Abhinaya Dance Company in San Jose.
I am Jason Michael Wyman, also known as Queerly Complex, born upon the Land of 10,000 Lakes on what I am coming to know as Turtle Island, who has settled on Yelamu, which is also called San Francisco. My name means healer, or so I’ve been told since a young child, and I did not believe it until my father and I mended ourselves and one other as he died of mantle cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma across a screen and a country over all of 2020. What I’ve come to understand as the significance of my name is that healer does not mean healed or (even) healing. Rather, it is a positionality within the cosmos that allows one’s self to change and be changed by all that unfolds. It is to be curious and listen and then create.
Maya McNeil’s music echo locates story and melody from the ethers round the heart.McNeil performs original and traditional (Gaelic) songs from a well of times past and writes songs for the shape of the future. They are a recording artist and healing arts practitioner currently orbiting through life, work, and curious mischief around the San Francisco Bay Area.
SJ Cook aka Frankie Velvet they /them/she /her: Frankie is an artist, writer, holistic practitioner, and lover of life among other things. They tell stories and channel feelings through movement, music, and poetry. Their art is one of bending, blending, and expanding gender through evoking sensuality, passion, play, ceremony, connection and fun. They also foster events for other lgbtqia folx to come forward in their brilliance and shine, be heard and seen, such as annual autumn variety shows and is an organizer of Petaluma’s annual Pride festival.
Brightdarkdawn is a project of songwriter/composer Anne Carol Mitchell, a queer woman living in Sebastopol, California, cultivating food and community with her partner and ornery orange tuxedo tabby. Anne is a graduate of the UC Climate Stewards certification course and is currently enrolled in the California Naturalist program at Pepperwood Preserve.
Anne Carol Mitchell is a composer and songwriter who crafts music with the aim of awakening care and healing for the living earth. Her music is reminiscent of folk traditions in the vein of Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. Anne’s songwriting reveals and celebrates the storied existence of the Earth in all its beauty, vulnerability, resiliency, and ferocity. Anne has toured throughout the western states and shared the stage and studio with notable artists including Ani DiFranco, Jimmy Horn (Mr. December), Judy Grahn (a woman is talking to death), Peter Jaques (Brass Menažeri), as well as others. https://brightdarkdawn.com/
Events in recent months have raised fear among Ghana’s human rights activists, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and allies.
In October, police stopped a 30-year-old who was carrying sex toys at a checkpoint, detained and threatened them with jailtime. The police demanded a bribe of 500 cedis (40 USD) for the person to be released, an unlawful and cruel expense, particularly in a context of severe economic hardship.
In September, school authorities dismissed a 17-year-old student over allegations that he was gay from a boys’ boarding school in Accra, activists told Human Rights Watch. According to one activist, their investigations revealed other forms of homophobic acts against the child, including a death threat, because he appeared effeminate. A petition organized by local activists was sent to the district and regional education offices, and the student was allowed to return to register for the senior school certificate examination.
A bill before parliament proposes heavier criminal penalties for same sex activities, increasing the maximum penalty from three years in prison to five and expanding criminalization for anyone who identifies as LGBT, or as queer, as pansexual, an ally, or any other non-conventional gender identity. It would also punish anyone providing support or funding or publicly advocating for sexual and gender minorities rights.
In my former capacity as a lecturer in political science, I used to cite Ghana as a stable country in West Africa where the rule of law prevailed. However, challenges such as the current discrimination against LGBT people, alongside other obstacles including the underrepresentation of women in politics and the shrinking of civic space, are compromising Ghana’s success story. Today, there is a deepened trepidation among human rights defenders and civil societyorganizations working on social justice and sexual and gender diversity.
In February 2021, police raided and closed down an LGBT resource center which, among other things, provided community-based interventions services and information about HIV/AIDS. It has since been increasingly difficult to provide health services to marginalized groups disproportionately affected by HIV and related infections. As Nasser, a community leader, told Human Rights Watch,“Even spaces that were opened before are now closing doors for us because of what is happening. It is extremely difficult to operate properly.”
Since the bill was presented in June 2021, Rightify Ghana, an organization that advocates for sexual ad gender minorities in Ghana has documented multiple accounts of people who have been arbitrarily evicted from their homes. According to activists, landlords say that they are protecting themselves and their families or use the bill as a pretext to unfairly raise LGBT people’s rent.
Some parliament members have been actively provoking anti–LGBT sentiment and practices. Sam George, who presents himself as a “charismatic Christian,” and eight other Members of Parliament from the National Democratic Congress party and the New Patriotic Party are pushing to get the anti-LGBT bill passed before the year’s end. Statements, by George and allies, claiming that sexual and gender equality are incompatible with African culture attract the support of religious and traditional leaders, and many Ghanaians.
But they conveniently ignore Ghana’s secular status and African principles such as ubuntu, dignity, equality, non-discrimination, empathy, protection from violence and care for each other. These African principles have shaped Ghana’s independence struggles and continue to contribute to the consolidation of a democratic state.
These same principles have led other African countries like Mozambique (2015), Botswana (2019), Angola (2021), Gabon and Mauritius (2022) to overturn colonial-era laws criminalizing same-sex relations. Some countries go further to imbed human rights standards and not only adopt anti-discrimination laws, but recognize same sex marriage, like South Africa in 2006.
Ghana’s parliament should consider the disastrous social, political, and economic consequences that the anti-LGBT bill will have on journalists, human rights defenders, women, families, and on other minorities in the country. If passed into law, the bill will not only imperil fundamental human rights enshrined in Ghana’s 1992 Constitution, but also violate regional and international human rights obligations, such as the principles of nondiscrimination and equality enshrined in the African Charter of Human and People’s Rights.
There are also serious economic risks. If the bill is passed, it could represent a risk to Ghana’s negotiating power in debt restructuring negotiations for example, lending ability from international investment institutions like the World Bank or IMF, and trade and circulation, a not insignificant concern given the country’s economic challenges.
Parliament should immediately withdraw the bill. Not only is it inconsistent with the Ghana’s human rights obligations, including in the constitution, and incites fear, hatred, and violence against fellow Ghanaian citizens, but its passage would be an anti-democratic and authoritarian turn for Ghana.
