The Supreme Court on Friday took up a new dispute on the tensions between LGBT rights and religious rights by agreeing to hear a claim by parents of elementary school students in Maryland who objected to books available in classrooms concerning gender transition and same-sex relationships.
The case concerns a policy enacted by the Montgomery County Board of Education in November 2022 requiring new story books covering LGBT issues that could potentially be read in class.
One book titled “Pride Puppy!” concerns a puppy that gets lost during a gay rights parade.
Initially, the board indicated parents could opt their children out of the curriculum, but the following March it changed course.
Parents in the demographically diverse county, including Muslims and Eastern Orthodox Christians, objected, and some ultimately sued, saying their right to exercise their religious beliefs under the Constitution’s First Amendment were being violated.
The lead plaintiffs in the case are Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat, Muslims who have a son in elementary school. Other plaintiffs are members of the Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox churches.
They are not challenging the curriculum itself, just the lack of an opt-out.
A federal judge and the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals both ruled in favor of the school board.
The appeals court ruling effectively finding that “parents essentially surrender their right to direct the religious upbringing of their children by sending them to public schools — contradicts centuries of our history and traditions,” lawyers for the parents wrote in court papers.
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case about whether public schools must give parents of elementary schoolchildren a chance to opt out of instruction on gender and sexuality that they say goes against their religious convictions.
The case stems from a challenge by a group of parents in Maryland’s largest school system, who objected to Montgomery County education officials prohibiting parents from taking their children out of lessons that used storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters and themes.
The parents said the policy violates their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion and sued in 2023. The policy put the school district at the center of a contentious national debate over how to teach gender and sexuality in schools.
The case was filed by the Catholic anti-LGBTQ hate group, the Becket Fund, whose senior counsel celebrates below.
The Becket Fund last appeared here in July 2024 when they sued to overturn Michigan’s ban on ex-gay torture.
In 2014, the Becket Fund joined with NOM, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, and Alliance Defending Freedom to form an anti-LGBTQ “supergroup” to battle same-sex marriage.
In 2013, the Becket Fund joined with major Catholic groups in sponsoring the so-called Manhattan Declaration, signers of which avow that they will “civilly disobey” laws that protect LGBTQ people from discrimination.
The Becket Fund was founded in 1994 by a former Reagan administration Justice Department lawyer who worked under future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
The group is named for Saint Thomas Becket, who was Archbishop of Canterbury under King Henry II until he was murdered by followers of the King in the year 1170.
Outside of LGBTQ issues, the Becket Fund is best known for winning cases on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby.
President Donald Trump on Monday plans to sign executive orders proclaiming that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and ending “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity and inclusion programs inside federal agencies, according to senior White House officials.
The officials grouped both orders under the Trump administration’s wider “restoring sanity” agenda. The orders were detailed by an incoming official on a phone call Monday ahead of Trump’s swearing-in.
The official presented the gender order as part of a policy “defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.”
The order aims to require that the federal government use the term “sex” instead of “gender,” and directs the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to “ensure that official government documents, including passports and visas, reflect sex accurately.”
In 2022, the Biden administration allowed U.S. citizens to be able to select the gender-neutral “X” as a marker on their passports.
The order will also prevent taxpayer funds from being used for gender-transition health care and add “privacy in intimate spaces” in facilities such as prisons, migrant shelters and rape shelters.
Trump campaigned on rolling back protections for transgender and nonbinary people and emphasized the issue in television advertisements, including a commercial that aired frequently in key swing states such as Pennsylvania. “Kamala is for them/them. President Trump is for you,” the most notable ad said.
The second order detailed by the White House official aims to end “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing” inside the federal government.
The official said the new administration will hold monthly meetings with the deputy secretaries of key agencies to “assess what type of DEI programs are still discriminating against Americans and figure out ways to end them.”
The official said the new administration intended to “dismantle the DEI bureaucracy,” singling out environmental justice programs and equity-related grants.
The official said it was “very fitting” that the order was announced on Martin Luther King Jr. Day because “this is order is meant to return to the promise and the hope, captured by civil rights champions, that one day all Americans can be treated on the basis of their character, not by the color of their skin.”
In recent years, Trump and conservatives have assailed DEI initiatives across American society, characterizing them as discriminatory.
Trump referenced the orders in his inaugural address Monday afternoon, saying in part that his administration would resist what he described as efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” He added that his administration would “forge a society that is color-blind and merit-based.”
The proponents of DEI in American society have argued that such initiatives are essential to make companies, schools, government agencies and other institutions more racially and socially inclusive.
In the weeks leading up to Trump’s return to power, major corporations such as Meta, McDonald’s and Walmart have announced they are ending some or all of their diversity practices.
Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said there are big questions on what exact DEI programs will be ended on the basis of Trump’s order. But she said the group is ready to take any action to prevent discrimination, including challenging the order in court.
Lee said that a push to prohibit “anything dealing with efforts to address inequality” would be a “real setback in terms of racial justice advancement.”
She added that “any incoming president can set the policies for the federal administration” but that it would be disconcerting if it becomes permissible for employers or the government to “discriminate on the basis of race or sex.”
LGBTQ legal advocates react
Jennifer C. Pizer, the chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization that litigates on behalf of LGBTQ Americans, said she expects her organization and others to file lawsuits against the administration over the executive actions.
“The president can’t, with a wave of a pen, change the reality of who people are and the fact that we as a community of people exist,” Pizer said. “We have equal protection rights, just like anybody else does.”
Another lawyer and legal expert in the LGBTQ community said that even though Trump’s executive order on gender identity will surely be challenged in court, the administration can implement the order and, in some cases, make immediate changes.
The expert, who asked that their name not be published so they could speak candidly about the executive order, noted that prisons, migrant shelters and rape shelters could immediately begin moving transgender people into spaces that align with their birth sex as opposed to their gender identity. That means, for example, trans women serving time in women’s prisons could in short order be moved to male prisons.
The lawyer also said transgender Americans — especially those who have X as their gender marker on federal documents like passports — should exercise caution when leaving the country, as they could have challenges re-entering the United States and could even be held in detention by border agents.
If a Customs and Border agent can’t enter a person’s X gender marker into their system to allow the person back into the U.S., that could mean the person would remain in Custom and Border Protection custody “until they can work with the Department of State to get an alternate ID issued,” the lawyer said.
Still, some changes — such as the way agencies handle health care for transgender Americans or the way the Department of Housing and Urban Development protects trans tenants from being evicted by landlords — could take longer to implement because agencies will have to go through a process that takes months or even years to change the rules governing the agencies.
In some cases, the legal expert said, “it’ll take time for the agencies to issue Notices of Proposed Rulemaking, go through the comments, which is part of what they’re legally obligated to do, and respond to any deficiencies, and then publish a final rule.”
Once the anticipated legal challenges to the executive order are filed, courts could seek to block the implementation of the order by issuing injunctions. But courts could also decide to allow the order to be implemented as challenges work their way through the courts, including to the Supreme Court, which could side with the Trump administration.
In the week after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, Isla Lima submitted paperwork to change her gender from male to female in official documents, as some LGBTQ people worry their rights could be cut back.
Trump, who won the Nov. 5 vote and will be inaugurated on Monday, has stated his intention to rescind some LGBTQ rights during his second term in office.
In December, Trump said he will sign an executive order to end “child sexual mutilation,” an apparent reference to gender-affirming care, and “get transgender out of the military and out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools.”
Trump wants the law to recognize a person’s gender only at birth, as male or female. As for transgender athletes, he has told supporters that he will “keep men out of women’s sports.”
While the Biden administration advanced or protected LGBTQ rights at the federal level, several Republican-run states have curtailed access to gender-affirming care.
Many transgender people say their gender dysphoria began at an early age. The sense of discrepancy between their gender identity and assigned sex at birth can be so intense that it leads to depression, anxiety and for some, suicide.
Following Trump’s win, Lima, 26, a transgender woman in Los Angeles, decided to speed up submitting court papers to allow her to formally change her gender on documents.
“Even though it might be safe in California, going across state lines, I don’t know the safety net for that. I definitely feel safer knowing that I’m going to have my ID … and it will say my chosen name and gender marker,” she said.
“After Trump, it was like, OK, this is super urgent.”
As polls pointed to a close election, 76% of transgender and nonbinary people took, or planned to take, at least one protective measure, according to the findings of a survey of over 1,500 people published in August by FOLX, a health and wellness platform that has served over 50,000 LGBTQ people.
Respondents cited measures such as speeding up gender-affirming care, which can include medical, surgical and mental health services; stockpiling medication; updating gender markers on documents; and bringing forward marriage plans.
Lima said she interns at ProjectQ, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, because she feels aligned with its goals of providing resources to queer youth, such as a safe space and haircuts.
ProjectQ founder and Executive Director Madin Lopez, 38, in an interview, cited LGBTQ friends who were speeding up formal adoption of children they had already been raising.
In 2023, ProjectQ Associate Director Manny Muñoz, who identifies as nonbinary, changed their gender marker from male to X. President Joe Biden’s administration introduced that option on a federal level.
That change was “really, really exciting because it was a long-time coming,” Muñoz, 36, said. “And there’s also just, you know, fear that it gets taken away, right?”
However, Lopez, who is also nonbinary, has not legally changed their gender.
“I’m not at a place yet where I’ve decided whether I’m going to make that legal change or not. I think that a lot of it has to do with what will come next.”
Culture wars
Transgender and nonbinary rights are a major flashpoint in U.S. culture wars.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill to essentially ban transgender girls and women from competing in school sports by withholding federal funds from schools that do not comply.
“Republicans have promised to protect women’s sports, and under President Trump’s leadership, we will fulfill this promise,” the bill’s author, Representative Greg Steube, has said.
Major pediatric, endocrinology and mental health associations endorse gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy when appropriate, some calling it life-saving for many transgender youths.
However, some conservatives characterize the treatments as dangerous and experimental, calling certain measures chemical castration or child abuse.
Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump campaigned on promises to end discussions about gender and sex in classrooms and stop taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for inmates in federal prisons.
“Clearly, the American people agree with President Trump and that’s why they voted for him,” she said.
In 2024, YouGov survey data showed 36% of Americans believed societal acceptance of transgender people had gone too far while 34% said it had not gone far enough.
One in three said it was morally wrong to identify with a gender different from one’s sex assigned at birth, 13% believe it is morally acceptable, and 41% say it is not a moral issue.
Elektra Aida, 24, who manages frontline services at ProjectQ, faced harassment in Utah, which restricts the bathrooms transgender people can use, before moving to California.
After Trump won, “I had a lot more people reaching out to me, being like, ‘I might move out there,’” Aida said.
“I think it just solidified to people, you know, that unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better anytime soon.”
With the holiday break over, a number of state legislatures are reconvening starting this week to hold their 2025 sessions, and LGBTQ-related bills and policies are already on the docket in many states.
Massachusetts, Montana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia are all states where legislators have already started meeting again to consider legislation for the new year. According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, there have been 115 trans-specific bills prefiled in 2025 as of early this week. The state-level bills are especially heavily concentrated in places like South Carolina, Texas, and Missouri and would affect transgender people in various aspects of their lives such as in health care, education, and access to restrooms. Should the trend of bills follow like those introduced last year, other attacks may affect censorship in schools around LGBTQ issues and our community’s freedom of speech and expression more broadly.
Ricardo Martinez of Equality Texas speaks out at the Texas statehouse against anti-LGBTQ legislation in the previous legislative session (Courtesy GLAAD)
In Texas, anti-equality lawmakers proposed 32 anti-transgender bills on the very first day of pre-filing for 2025. It’s important to remember that the influx of bills can be partly attributed to Texas’ legislative session only taking place once every other year. Lawmakers are hurrying to make up for lost time, but advocates are continuing the work to limit the pathway forward for harm.
In Georgia, where the legislature returns to session on Jan. 13, lawmakers are expected to again consider anti-LGBTQ legislation that failed to become law last year, including codifying in the legislature a ban on allowing transgender youth to participate in school sports. Opponents of transgender inclusion claim to support the legislation to protect cisgender girls – yet studies show that when transgender students play sports, levels of participation go up for all students, including cisgender girls.
In Indiana, some lawmakers are seeking to expand existing restrictions on transgender participation in sports. HB 1041 would ban transgender students from participating in college sports and require notification by any team outside of the state engaged in competition about inclusion of a transgender participant. The measure will likely be brought to its first committee next week.
Despite what seems like a distressing landscape on the state level, there’s a lot of promise for wins in the courts in ways that are wider ranging in scope and magnitude than before, and which can slow down or negate the impact of state-level restrictions that are already in place. Most recently in mid-December, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that blocked a state law prohibiting certain types of health care for transgender youth; and a state district court blocked enforcement of a ban on allowing transgender and nonbinary people to update their gender markets on drivers’ licenses and birth certificates.
These lower court decisions follow a pattern: In almost every case on transgender health care that has considered the benefits of health care for transgender people, federal courts have affirmed the importance of health care for transgender people — even among Republican- and Trump-appointed judges in conservative states.
ACLU attorney Chase Strangio with Peppermint outside the U.S. Supreme Court, December 4, 2024/Courtesy Getty Images
In just early December, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in U.S. v. Skrmetti, which challenges the constitutionality of a ban on health care for transgender youth in Tennessee while cisgender youth continue to enjoy access to the same care. According to Media Matters, the day of the oral argument led to a slew of major TV networks featuring transgender Americans that haven’t previously done so, increasing visibility and understanding about the community. The justices are expected to issue a ruling in June 2025 which could affect the status of bans in almost half the country.
In other good news, out LGBTQ state lawmakers who made history this past election are also beginning their terms in the upcoming weeks. These include Molly Cook, the first out LGBTQ member of the Texas State Senate; Kristin Alfheim, the first LGBTQ+ person to represent the Fox Valley in the Wisconsin State Senate; Rashaun Kemp, the first out gay Black man elected to the Georgia state legislature; and others who will proudly represent and build visibility for our community.
GLAAD is monitoring and will be raising awareness and actions in response to high-priority bill movement that affects our community. To keep track of when your state goes into session, check out the full calendar from the National Council of State Legislatures here; and sign up for GLAAD’s email list and social media channels to ensure you don’t miss any important updates.
The first Grand Slam event on the 2025 tennis calendar, the Australian Open, got underway in Melbourne on Sunday (12 January), and there are several gay tennis players offering some vital rainbow LGBTQ+ representation.
Since the days of trailblazing gay Grand Slam champions Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, women’s tennis has long provided some of the biggest LGBTQ+ names in sport – and there are currently several players Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tour carrying that torch for a new generation.
The men’s Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tour continues to lag way behind the women’s game: Until last year, there were no out gay male players on tour, nor had there been since the Open era began in 1968.
Brazil’s João Lucas Reis da Silva came out publicly in December 2024. (Getty)
Prior to that, American former world number 57 Brian Vahaly had come out publicly as gay in 2017, a decade after retiring from the sport, and shed light on some of the barriers faced by gay male players.
“I heard homophobic comments all the time in the locker room – to my face, behind my back. That was just a part of the culture”, he told The Telegraph in 2018.
American former world number 57 Brian Vahaly came out publicly as gay in 2017, a decade after retiring from tennis. (Matthew Stockman/Getty)
While João Lucas Reis da Silva is not currently ranked high enough to qualify for direct entry to Grand Slam tournaments, here are the out gay female tennis players to keep an eye out for in the Australian Open 2025 main draw.
Out gay tennis players playing at the Australian Open 2025
Daria Kasatkina
Russia’s Daria Kasatkina says she’s unable to return home as a gay person who opposes the invasion of Ukraine. (Robert Prange/Getty Images)
Daria Kasatkina became the highest-profile out gay tennis star on the WTA tour when she came out publicly in July 2022.
The Russian, who has a career-high ranking of number eight and reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon in 2018, confirmed her relationship with Olympic figure skater Natalia Zabiiako via Instagram.
In the years since, Kasatkina has been an outspoken critic of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and anti-gay political culture – even if it’s come at great personal cost.
“It’s unsafe for me now, with the regime we have. As a gay person who opposes the war, it’s not possible to go back,” she told The Times in July 2023. “But I don’t regret it even 1 per cent.”
She went on: “When the war started and everything turned to hell, I felt very overwhelmed and I just decided, “F*** it all”. I couldn’t hide any more. I wanted to say my position on the war and my [sexuality], which was tough, coming from a country where being gay is not accepted, but it felt like I had a backpack of stones on my shoulders and I just had to throw it off.
“Afterwards, I faced a few consequences, but the only thing that worried me was my parents, and they were fine. They are proud of me.”
Nadia Podoroska
Former French Open semi-finalist Nadia Podoroska came out publicly in October 2022. (Tim Clayton/Getty)
Argentinian tennis player Nadia Podoroska came out publicly in October 2022.
In an Instagram post, the former French Open semi-finalist – who has been ranked as high as number 36 in the world – confirmed her relationship with fellow Argentinian tennis player Guillermina Naya.
Shared on Naya’s 26th birthday, Podoroska’s post consisted of images of the couple hugging and kissing, with the caption: “Today I celebrate you from afar, but I feel you by my side every day of my life.”
Podoroska was congratulated on her announcement by former women’s world number one and LGBTQ+ trailblazer Billie Jean King, who tweeted: “Living authentically takes such courage, but is always worth it.”
Greet Minnen
Belgium’s Greet Minnen was in a high-profile relationship with fellow player Alison Van Uytvanck until 2021. (Benoit Doppagne/Getty )
Greet Minnen, who has a career-high ranking of 59, was in a high-profile relationship with fellow Belgian tennis star Alison Van Uytvanck until late 2021.
In 2019, Minnen and Van Uytvanck became the first same-sex couple in history to play doubles together at Wimbledon, reaching the second round.
Minnen’s public coming out took place at the tournament the year before, when Van Uytvanck rushed over to kiss her in the stands after defeating then-defending champion Garbiñe Muguruza in the second round.
Minnen and Van Uytvanck announced their engagement in December 2020 before going their separate ways the following year.
Demi Schuurs
Dutch player Demi Schuurs is a doubles specialist and out gay woman. (Matthew Stockman/Getty)
Dutch doubles specialist Demi Schuurs previously reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open as well as the quarter-finals of Wimbledon and the US Open in doubles.
Schuurs came out as gay as a teenager and has stated her desire to be a role model for young LGBTQ+ people.
She told the WTA in 2020: “I think that’s really nice to be able to support younger fans who may be going through the same things I did. I remember the feelings I had when I came out, so I want to help younger people understand that they should be how they want to be, and show what they want to show.
“You only live once, so you have to be happy and don’t need to stress about being gay or not.
Other gay tennis players on the WTA tour
Guillermina Naya
Argentina’s Guillermina Naya achieved a career-high ranking of 533 in 2020 and has won two titles on the ITF Cicuit – the tier of tournaments below the WTA tour.
Naya’s relationship with Argentinian player Nadia Podoroska was confirmed by Podoroska in October 2022.
Emina Bektas
American Emina Bektas is currently in a relationship with British player Tara Moore.
Bektas only broke into the world’s top 100 for the first time in 2023, becoming the fourth oldest top 100 debutant in WTA history.
Tara Moore
Out gay British player Tara Moore is a former world 145 player in singles and former top 100 player in doubles.
Moore is currently in a relationship with American player and former doubles partner Emina Bektas. She was previously engaged to Swiss player Conny Perrin.
Conny Perrin
Switzerland’s Conny Perrin has a career-high ranking of 134. (Justin Setterfield/Getty)
Swiss player Conny Perrin has been ranked as high as 134 in the world and was previously engaged to British player Tara Moore.
In 2017, Perrin told the New York Times that dating a fellow tennis player had benefits, saying: “It’s different when you date someone else who doesn’t really understand tennis and all the traveling and stuff like that.
“We understand that of course we need to travel sometimes apart.”
Police in Kannapolis, North Carolina, killed 36-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch, the so-called “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist who carried a gun into a gay-owned Washington, D.C., pizzeria in 2016 under the belief that the business’ nonexistent basement was a venue for a child-molestation ring that involved high-ranking Democrats.
On January 4, two Kannapolis police officers lethally shot Welch during a traffic stop. One officer pulled Welch over to arrest him for an outstanding warrant for a probation violation. But when the officer opened Welch’s car door to apprehend him, Welch allegedly pulled out a handgun from his jacket and pointed it at the officer. When a second officer told Welch to drop his weapon, Welch reportedly didn’t comply and was fired upon by both officers. He was hospitalized and died from his wounds two days later, The Guardian reported.
The officers — Brooks Jones and Caleb Tate — have been placed on administrative leave while the state’s bureau of investigation looks into the incident.
Welch gained infamy on December 4, 2016, when the then 28-year-old conspiracy theorist entered the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria, a D.C. restaurant owned by gay entrepreneur James Alefantis, to “self-investigate” unfounded rumors that the pizzeria was part of a ring of U.S. restaurants involved in alleged human trafficking and a child sex ring that involved high-ranking Democrats like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Welch entered the restaurant with an assault rifle and customers fled, terrified for their lives. Welch then fired at least one shot to break into a storage closet, looking for a basement where the child sex abuse allegedly took place — the restaurant has no basement.
After finding no evidence of the child sex trafficking ring, he exited the restaurant and surrendered himself to police waiting outside. He was subsequently sentenced to four years in prison for a federal charge of interstate transport of firearms and was required to pay $5,744.33 for damages to the restaurant.
Three days before the attack, Welch had tried to convince some of his friends to join in his escapade and break up the “pedo ring,” showing them a video about the conspiracy theory on YouTube.
He reportedly texted one of the friends, “I’m sorry bro, but I’m tired of turning the channel and hoping someone does something and being thankful it’s not my family. One day it will be our families. The world is too afraid to act and I’m too stubborn not to.”
During his trial, Welch told the court he had acted in a “foolish and reckless” way, but he maintained that he still believed in other aspects of Pizzagate.
Pizzagate, which is a precursor to the QAnon conspiracy theory and other right-wing theories of LGBTQ+ people and their allies “grooming” and “sexualizing” children through abuse, began on X (then-Twitter) and right-wing fake news websites, alleging that emails from former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and Clinton’s then-campaign chair John Podesta. The conspiracy theorists claimed the emails used code words referring to pedophilia and human trafficking.
In November 2016, a now-deleted post on Reddit claimed that “everyone” associated with Comet Ping Pong “[was] making semi-overt, semi-tongue-in-cheek, and semi-sarcastic inferences towards sex with minors,” adding, “The artists that work for and with the business also generate nothing but cultish [and Satanic] imagery of disembodiment, blood, beheadings, sex, and of course pizza.”
The story circulated on anti-LGBTQ+ right-wing websites like Alex Jones’ InfoWars and was promoted by anti-LGBTQ+ alt-right influencers like Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec. It has since been promoted by transphobic billionaire and X-owner Elon Musk.
In November 2016, Alefantis told The New York Times that his pizzeria and its associated employees had come “under constant assault” due to the conspiracy theory. Its owners, employees, mural painters, and musicians who had previously played at the restaurant received threats of violence and death. Other conspiracy theorists claimed that children who had been photographed eating at Comet Ping Pong were themselves child sex trafficking victims. Several other nearby pizzerias and businesses also received threats. Pictures of Comet Ping Pong’s non-existent basement were, in actuality, just images of other business’ basements.
The business was attacked again on January 25, 2019, when a white man deliberately set a fire in one of its backrooms. However, employees quickly put out the fire, ensuring that no one sustained any injuries. Police arrested the arsonist days later.
Pizzagate has been disproven and debunked by numerous fact-checking and news organizations including Snopes, Fox News, and CNN, as well as investigators at the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia.
Alefantis called Pizzagate “an insanely complicated, made-up, fictional lie-based story” and a “coordinated political attack.” Days after Welch’s shooting at the business, Clinton told NPR, “The epidemic of malicious fake news and fake propaganda that flooded social media … can have real-world consequences.”
The United Kingdom has announced its plans to build a memorial for LGBTQ+ veterans who were persecuted and discharged under the country’s ban on queer military members, which remained in place from 1967 to 2000. The bronze memorial will resemble a crumpled sheet of paper and contain phrases from LGBTQ+ people affected by the ban. The announcement of the monument follows a government pledge to give £70,000 ($85,159) to military members harmed by the ban.
The memorial — whose design was chosen from 38 submissions and five finalists — will be constructed at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, a county about 145 miles northwest of London, just north of Birmingham. It will include phrases collected from LGBTQ+ soldiers during a recent investigation into the policy spearheaded by Terence Etherton, a member of Britain’s House of Lords.
The phrases include ones like “A battle for love,” “a place to belong,” and “together we stand.” Though most of the letters will be gray in color, some individual words — like “respect,” “strength,” and “pride” — will be highlighted in gold.
The memorial received a £350,000 grant from the Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) Office for Veterans’ Affairs. Its construction is being overseen by the LGBTQ+ military charity Fighting With Pride, The Hereford Times reported.
“The trustees are delighted that we have such a strong winner for the LGBT+ armed forces community memorial,” said Ed Hall, chairman of Fighting With Pride. “It’s been incredibly important to all of us at Fighting With Pride that we held a rigorous creative process to find the right design that will provide a place of peace and reflection for the LGBT+ armed forces family.”
The lasting harm of the UK’s anti-LGBTQ+ military ban
While the U.K. decriminalized same-sex encounters in 1967, it erected a ban on military members under the pretense that queer service members harmed morale and threatened preparedness.
The ban, which affected hundreds of thousands of military members, resulted in military members facing intimidation, blackmail, discrimination and harassment, the seizure of personal letters and photos, intense psychological interrogations, invasive medical examinations that sometimes involved sexual assault, forced resignations and outings to family members, dishonorable discharges, prison time, alienation from military supports and benefits, and even suicides over the shame, isolation and poverty that resulted from all of the above.
Several military members discharged under the ban told researchers that the policy, “Made me [feel] embarrassed of my own sexuality. Made me feel a lesser person, one who was open to abuse and ridicule.” Some LGBTQ+ military members told the BBC that staying closeted felt like a “self-betrayal” and that they hid their same-sex relationships, often censoring themselves in private letters and referring to their partners in public by names often used by members of the opposite sex.
Another said the policy made them feel “lonely, dirty, outcast,” and left them “severely gay bashed … threatened, robbed, deprived, imprisoned, mind games, loss of confidence, removed the joy of sex, self-hate, made to feel ashamed of being me, nervous.”
“It took away my career, it took away my pension, it took away my future,” yet another said. “It just, it just utterly destroyed it, and it took away a job I know I was good at… it just took away my home, my livelihood, my future, career, pension. It doesn’t really get much worse than that, does it?”
Finally, some justice nearly 25 years after the ban’s repeal
A group of ousted LGBTQ+ veterans and allies eventually formed an activist group called the Rank Outsiders. Together, along with other U.K. LGBTQ+ groups like Stonewall, successfully raised public awareness about the ban’s inherent unfairness and pressured the MoD to repeal the ban in 2000.
In July 2023, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, apologized on behalf of the nation for the ban. In December 2024, the government said that veterans who were discharged and “negatively affected” by the ban could receive up to £70,000 ($85,159) as compensation. Veterans can also apply to have their rank restored and discharge reasons amended.
Lt. Cdr. Duncan Lustig-Prean, who was blackmailed for his homosexuality and discharged under the ban, told the BBC that seeing the monument will be “an intensely emotional experience – not just because we never expected to get this far, but also because for anyone who serves, remembrance of those who gave their lives is profoundly important to us.”
“That’s one of the reasons why I really want to go and see that memorial and contemplate the LGBTQ people who died for this country, as well as those who gave their careers because of this policy,” he added.
Decades after investigators unearthed thousands of human bones and bone fragments on a suspected Indiana serial killer’s property, a renewed quest is playing out in laboratories to solve a long-running mystery: Who were they?
A new team working to identify the unknown dead says the key to their success will be getting relatives of men who vanished between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s to provide samples of their own DNA.
Those samples can then be screened against DNA profiles scientists are extracting from the remains, which were found starting in 1996 on Herbert Baumeister’s sprawling suburban Indianapolis property.
The original investigators believed that at least 25 people were buried at Baumeister’s 18-acre Fox Hollow Farm estate in Westfield, based on evidence that included 10,000 bones and bone fragments, as well as handcuffs and shotgun shells.
Baumeister, a 49-year-old thrift store owner and married father of three, killed himself in Canada in July 1996 before police could question him, taking with him many secrets, including the names of his presumed victims.
Investigators believed that while his family was away on trips, Baumeister, who frequented gay bars in Indianapolis, lured men to his home, where he killed and buried them.
By the late 1990s, authorities had identified eight men using dental records and available DNA technologies. But then those efforts stopped, although the remains of at least 17 people may have still been unidentified.
Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison said the renewed identification effort revealed that county officials at the time decided not to fund additional DNA testing, which “essentially halted further efforts to identify the victims and placed the cost of a homicide investigation on family members of missing people.”
“I can’t speak for those investigators, but it was just game over,” Jellison said.
An unfinished job
As decades slipped by, the bones and fragments sat in boxes at the University of Indianapolis’ Human Identification Center, whose staff helped excavate the remains.
That changed after Eric Pranger sent Jellison a Facebook message in late 2022. The Indianapolis man’s family had long believed his older cousin, Allen Livingston, was among Baumeister’s victims.
Livingston was 27 when he vanished in August 1993 after getting into someone else’s car in downtown Indianapolis. After hearing about Baumeister three years later, his mother, Sharon Livingston, and other relatives began suspecting that Allen, who was bisexual, was among the dead.
Jellison was about to take office when Pranger asked if he could help get some answers for his aunt, who had serious health problems.
“How do you say to no to that? That’s our job as coroners by statute, to identify the deceased,” Jellison said.
In late 2022, police took DNA samples from Sharon Livingston and one of her daughters. Jellison began working with a team that includes the Indiana State Police, the FBI, the Human Identification Center, local law enforcement and a private company that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy.
A family finds some closure
Staff at the Human Identification Center, where the remains are stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled space, selected some of the most promising bones for DNA analysis.
At the Indiana State Police Laboratory, scientists cut out sections of bone, froze them with liquid nitrogen and pulverized them into a fine powder. They then used heat and chemicals to break open bone cells in the first step toward extracting a full DNA profile.
Nearly a year after hearing from Pranger, Jellison announced in October 2023 that a ninth Baumeister victim had been identified: Allen Livingston.
Sharon Livingston finally received some form of closure. She died in November 2024.
“It made me happy to be able to do this for my aunt,” Pranger, 34, said. “I’m the one who got the ball rolling to bring her son home after 30 years and I felt privileged.”
“After Allen was identified I was so excited and then after the fact I asked myself, `Now what? I got answers, but what about all the other families?’” Pranger added.
The other victims
Jellison said about 40 DNA samples have been submitted by people who believe a missing male relative may have been killed by Baumeister. He said those are entered into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, but are used solely for identifying missing people.
The coroner and his partners hope to get more DNA samples from relatives of men from across the U.S. who vanished between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. They noted the men may have been traveling and stopped in Indianapolis to visit friends or sample its nightlife.
Dr. Krista Latham in Indianapolis on Aug. 1. Rick Callahan / AP file
To date, scientists have extracted eight unique DNA profiles — all male — from more than 70 of the 100 bones that were sent to the Indiana State Police Laboratory by Dr. Krista Latham, the Human Identification Center’s director.
One matched DNA samples provided by Livingston’s mother and sister. Four matched four of the eight men first identified in the 1990s: Jeffrey Jones, Manuel Resendez, Johnny Bayer and Richard Hamilton.
The three other DNA profiles remain unidentified and two are still undergoing testing. Those three have boosted Baumeister’s presumed victims to 12.
What’s next?
Jellison and his partners say their identification effort could take several more years to complete.
Most of the bones were crushed and burned, reducing their potential to yield usable DNA. Latham, a professor of biology and anthropology, said bone fragments deemed in poor shape are being held back from the destructive testing process in hope that future DNA technologies can unlock their secrets.
Jeff Jellison in his office in Noblesville, Ind., on July 11.Rick Callahan / AP file
She noted some of the men may have been estranged from relatives or ostracized because of their sexuality. No one may have noticed when they vanished.
“These are individuals who were marginalized in life. And we just need to make sure that that’s not continuing in death as well,” Latham said.
For the ongoing work, Jellison has obtained DNA reference samples from relatives of seven of the eight men originally identified in the 1990s. The eighth man, Steven Hale, was adopted and efforts to locate biological relatives have thus far failed, the coroner said.
Relatives of missing men who want to provide family DNA reference samples for the effort to identify remains can contact the Indiana State Police missing persons hotline at 833-466-2653 or the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office at 317-770-4415.
Honoring the victims
As remains are identified, piece by piece, families can opt to have them cremated and interred at a memorial dedicated in August in Westfield. It includes a plaque with the names of the nine identified victims, with room for more names.
Linda Znachko, whose nonprofit Indianapolis-based ministry He Knows Your Name, paid for the monument, said at the memorial’s dedication that the identification campaign “will bring honor to those who lost their lives at the Fox Hollow tragedy.” Remains belonging to Livingston and Jeffrey Jones were added to the memorial’s ossuary and white doves were released during the dedication.
Livingston’s younger sister, Shannon Doughty, attended with several relatives, including Pranger. She said it was a relief finally knowing what happened to her brother, despite his tragic end.
“At least you know,” said Doughty, 46. “The fear of the unknown is the worst right? So just knowing, it’s a multitude of emotions. You wanted to know but you didn’t want to know. But you needed to know.”
Meta deleted nonbinary and trans themes for its Messenger app this week, around the same time that the company announced it would change its rules to allow users to declare that LGBTQ+ people are “mentally ill,” 404 Media has learned.
Meta’s Messenger app allows users to change the color scheme and design of their chat windows with different themes. For example, there is currently a “Squid Game” theme, a “Minecraft” theme, a “Basketball” theme, and a “Love” theme, among many others.
These themes regularly change, but for the last few years they have featured a “trans” theme and a “nonbinary” theme, which had color schemes that matched the trans pride flag and the non-binary pride flag.
