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LGBTQ Rights

Activists Outraged As Democrats Withdraw Trans Healthcare Bill

April 24, 2022 Morgan Artyukhina, Liberation News. , , , , ,
Democrats in Maryland recently withdrew their own bill to expand healthcare coverage for trans people, despite having a majority to pass it, leaving transgender Marylanders feeling betrayed by the party that’s long claimed to champion their rights. House Bill 746, the Trans Health Equity Act, would have forced Maryland’s Medicaid program to provide coverage for transgender people’s transition-related treatments, including hormone therapy, surgeries, and voice therapy. According to its sponsor, Delegate Anne Kaiser, some 2,000 transgender Marylanders use Medicaid. The bill easily passed Maryland’s Senate, but just as the House of Delegates’ legislative session was ending in early April, the bill mysteriously disappeared.

New Orleans: Hundreds Unite To March Against Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation

March 29, 2022 Quest Riggs, Fight Back News. , , ,
New Orleans, LA - Around 250 community members gathered at New Orleans City Hall, March 25, to forcefully voice their opposition to a string of legislation introduced by Louisiana Republicans in recent weeks. This includes bills that would restrict trans minors’ access to healthcare, their ability to participate in school sports, and could criminalize LGBTQ+ students and educators for being “out” in Louisiana schools. The demonstration was attended mostly by students from three New Orleans high schools who have taken the initiative in organizing bold actions both on and off their campuses. Earlier in the day students at Benjamin Franklin High School held a walkout where hundreds of their classmates marched to the front of the school chanting “We say gay!”

500 Students Walk Out Of Florida School In Protest Against ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill

March 16, 2022 Chris Walker, Truthout. , ,
On Monday, hundreds of students staged a walkout at a high school in Orange County, Florida, demonstrating against a bill that would limit discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools throughout the state. More than 500 students participated in a protest at Winter Park High School, organized to oppose legislation — colloquially known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — that was being debated in the state Senate at the time. The legislation would ban discussion of LGBTQ issues in primary school classrooms and severely curtail what can be discussed in older grades, and could have disastrous repercussions beyond lesson plans. On Tuesday, that legislation passed in the state Senate. The bill is now on its way to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) desk, who has signaled he will sign it into law.

Cubans Begin Collective Discussion Of New Family Code

February 2, 2022 Telesur English. , , ,
On Tuesday, almost 7 million Cubans will start attending around 78,000 meeting points to discuss the Family Code approved by the Cuban Parliament (ANPP) in December. They will carry out the discussions in 12,513 constituency electoral commissions, where the citizens will debate the contents of code's articles. These debates will be recorded in physical and electronic records that will be sent to the electoral authorities so that they can aggregate and count citizen opinions according to specific issues. Then the compilation made by the electoral authorities will be sent to Congress so that the lawmakers can submit a new version that will go to referendum before the end of 2022.

The War Against Us

July 14, 2021 Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News. , , ,
As some readers may have noticed, Antony Blinken has the State Department festooning its embassies around the world with “BLM” banners and the rainbow flag of the sexual identity movement known commonly as LGBTQI+. As our virtuous secretary of state explained in April, when he authorized these advertisements for America’s splendidly raised consciousness, the BLM pennant commemorates the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year; the familiar LGBTQI+ colors will fly on our flagpoles in foreign capitals “for the duration of the 2021 Pride season.” So our guitar-strumming chief diplomat put it when announcing this… this policy, I suppose we are to call it. Taking the very serious cause for equal rights and turning it into cover for an extremely aggressive foreign policy, it makes for a pretty weird sight, if you have seen any of the pictures. Then again, so does our Tony as he flits around the world on the wings of an angel.

Honoring The Movement To End Discrimination Against LGBTQ People

June 25, 2021 Scott McCoy, Southern Poverty Law Center. , , , ,
June is Pride Month – a time set aside to honor the Stonewall uprising, which launched the movement to end discriminatory laws against LGBTQ people – and to remember the many important cultural and legislative victories since that pivotal summer in 1969. This year, the celebration occurs under the cloud of more than 125 anti-LGBTQ bills that have been introduced in state legislatures, many targeting children who identify as transgender by denying them access to lifesaving medical treatment, banning them from participating in sports or using the restroom. This is up markedly from last year when more than 40 such bills were introduced. In fact, 2021 has set a record for the number of anti-trans legislative efforts.

Biden Administration Cynically Manipulates LGBTQ Rights Struggle To Advance Empire

March 12, 2021 Morgan Artyukhina, Liberation News. , , ,
Perhaps feeling wind in his sails after an executive order reversing Trump-era anti-LGBTQ policies, US President Joe Biden is now seeking to make defense of LGBTQ rights abroad a part of US imperialist foreign policy. The hypocrisy of his claim is all too apparent: LGBTQ people continue to lack basic rights here in the US, and many of Washington’s closest allies have abysmal records on the issue. “There will be no ambiguity,” a senior Biden administration official recently told the media. “This is not the word of one envoy or cabinet secretary. Biden wants this to be seen as the policy of the United States government. This administration prioritizes LGBTQ rights as human rights.” “We are lucky to have close allies in Europe who are forward-leaning and in the right place when in it comes to these issues, whether in Chechnya or Russia.

On Contact: Censorship And Criminalizing Love

December 20, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. , ,
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to author Naomi Wolf about the bitter legacy of the British and Western colonialism of rampant homophobia, so virulent that people to this day are murdered for being gay in countries such as Egypt or Uganda. Naomi Wolf in her new book, 'Outrages, Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love', examines through the life of the British poet and gay activist John Addington Symonds how imperial power used, and uses, rigid sexual stereotypes as tools for repression and social control.

NYPD Officers Arrest And Pepper Spray Queer Liberation March Protesters

June 30, 2020 Sydney Perriera and Aviva Stahl, The Gothamist. , , ,
NYPD officers arrested and pepper-sprayed protesters at the Queer Liberation March Sunday afternoon while attempting to arrest two people for graffiti, according to witnesses. Numerous videos shared on social media show a crowd of officers shoving outraged protesters where arrests were being made near Washington Square Park. As two were being arrested for graffiti, protesters intervened in an attempt to free them, at which point police responded with pepper spray, multiple witnesses told Gothamist. A legal observer said at least four people were arrested and 10 others pepper-sprayed—including someone running a fruit stand nearby protesters.

The Stonewall Riots Didn’t Start The Gay Rights Movement

June 28, 2020 Greggor Mattson, JStor Daily. , , ,
Despite what you may hear during this year’s fiftieth anniversary commemorations, Stonewall was not the spark that ignited the gay rights movement. The story is well known: A routine police raid of a mafia-owned gay bar in New York City sparked three nights of riots and, with them, the global gay rights movement. In fact it is conventional to date LGBTQ history into “before Stonewall” and “after Stonewall” periods—not just in the United States, but in Europe as well. British activists can join Stonewall UK, for example, while pride parades in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are called “Christopher Street Day,” after the street in New York City on which the Stonewall Inn still sits. But there were gay activists before that early morning of June 28, 1969, previous rebellions of LGBTQ people against police, earlier calls for “gay power,” and earlier riots.

The Stonewall Rebellion: Now Is The Time To Remember, Now Is The Time To Go Forward

June 28, 2020 Thomas Scott Tucker, Popular Resistance ,
We, the people means all of us. Including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and gender-free people. So we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion that took place in and around the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village in New York City. On June 28 in 1969, the police raided that bar and expected business as usual. Instead, they met open resistance. The bar patrons included working class people, drag queens, transgender rebels, and people of color. By the time police wagons arrived, people were shouting “Gay Power” and “We Shall Overcome.”

Why Stonewall?

June 27, 2020 Matthew Wills, JStor Daily. , , ,
The Stonewall riot/uprising/rebellion of June 1969 is generally remembered as the beginning of the “gay liberation movement.” On the night of June 27th, the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar known for its cliental of drag queens, butch lesbians, and the transgendered, in New York’s Greenwich Village. Back then, “Public Morals Squad” raids were not uncommon—especially if the police hadn’t gotten their cut from such mafia-owned and unlicensed-to-sell-liquor establishments—but this time the Inn crowd fought back. The uprising quickly escalated to the surrounding streets over the next few days. The neighborhood and the community had had it with being treated like second-class citizens.

Federal Appeals Courts Agree: Trans People Belong In Schools

February 24, 2020 Gabriel Arkles, Aclu.org , , ,
On Wednesday, yet another federal appeals court ruled that allowing a transgender boy to use the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms does not violate the rights of cisgender students or parents. The decision is a resounding victory for trans youth and all who care about gender justice in schools and beyond. At this point, two federal appeals courts have rejected the arguments from those who want to keep transgender people out of public life...

Wet’suwet’en Strong: Unceded And Unwavering + Mining The Deep Ocean

February 19, 2020 Eleanor Goldfield, Act Out! , , ,
Trans rights are human rights – because human rights are only valid if they include every person in their entirety. Next, mining on land is so 20th century – the new frontier of mining is just as deep and dark as it is terrifying and catastrophic. And finally, we hear from the Wet’suwet’en on their ongoing battle to preserve their ancestral homelands. http://unistoten.camp/

DC Transgender Community Fighting For Equality 50 Years After Stonewall

July 1, 2019 By John Zangas, Dcmediagroup.us , , , ,
Washington, DC – Members of the transgender community led a rally on Friday afternoon at Freedom Plaza, marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn uprising on Christopher Street in New York City. About a dozen transgender organizers and activists delivered a petition to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office and the City Council, demanding passage of the Community Safety and Health Amendment Act of 2019. The rally was led by advocacy group No Justice No Pride, HIPS (Sex Workers Advocates Coalition)...
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