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Gay workers not covered by civil rights law, Trump admin tells Supreme Court The Justice Department, in a brief submitted to the high court Friday, argued that Title VII “does not bar discrimination because of sexual orientation.”

By Brooke SopelsaThe Trump administration Friday filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that gay workers are not protected by federal civil rights law. The filing came exactly one week after the administration argued the same for transgender workers.
The brief was submitted in combined cases concerning Gerald Bostock, a gay man fired from his job as a child welfare services worker by Clayton County, Georgia, and the late Donald Zarda, a gay man fired from his job as a skydiving instructor by New York company Altitude Express. The Bostock and Zarda cases are two of three cases concerning LGBTQ workers’ rights that the Supreme Court is expected to hear this fall

Eugene Lee Yang 'I'm Gay'

Eugene Lee Yang of the internet comedy team The Try Guys has posted a powerful video online entitled, ‘I’m Gay.’
Accompanying the video on YouTube is a fundraiser for the Trevor Project. At the time of writing, it had already raised over $40,000 for the suicide-prevention LGBTQ non-profit organization.
The Try Guys – Keith Habersberger, Ned Fulmer, Zach Kornfeld, and Eugene Lee Yang – rose to prominence as a Buzzfeed video concept. However, the four parted with Buzzfeed in 2018 and have continued their success independently. Videos posted online find them trying out different endeavours for the first time.

‘I’m gay’: YouTuber Eugene Lee Yang of The Try Guys comes out‘I withheld because of fear and shame shaped by my background but I promise to give my full truth in the rest of my life's work,’ says Eugene Lee Yang

Eugene Lee Yang in the 'I'm Gay' video (Photo: YouTube)
16 June 2019 10:11 BST
David Hudson

Eugene Lee Yang of the internet comedy team The Try Guys has posted a powerful video online entitled, ‘I’m Gay.’
Accompanying the video on YouTube is a fundraiser for the Trevor Project. At the time of writing, it had already raised over $40,000 for the suicide-prevention LGBTQ non-profit organization.
The Try Guys – Keith Habersberger, Ned Fulmer, Zach Kornfeld, and Eugene Lee Yang – rose to prominence as a Buzzfeed video concept. However, the four parted with Buzzfeed in 2018 and have continued their success independently. Videos posted online find them trying out different endeavours for the first time.

What’s in Eugene Lee Yang’s video?In the choreographed dance video, Lee Yang is seen dancing within a family setting. At first happy, he then receives a slap around his head when he goes to put on lipstick. This is followed by an angst-ridden Eugene in a church congregation, looking on while a preacher rants and raves.
Later, we see him attracted to another male dancer, and then appear in drag, dancing happily in a club. That is until a man walks in, appearing to point his finger at the dancers in a gun-like fashion.
Later he is beaten and bloodied by a mob next to a dumpster.
The video ends with Lee Yang, in front of an arguing mob, staring defiantly at the camera.

The background music comes from ODESZA. Lee Yang wrote, directed and choreographed the video himself.‘I’m gay’: YouTuber Eugene Lee Yang of The Try Guys comes out‘I withheld because of fear and shame shaped by my background but I promise to give my full truth in the rest of my life's work,’ says Eugene Lee Yang

MAKE NO MISTAKE WE ARE A NATION IN SERIOUS CRISIS!

I Was A Gay Student At The Evangelical Christian School Where Karen Pence Now Teaches

Ian Cronkhite
Writer

Karen Pence recently started teaching art classes at Immanuel Christian School in Northern Virginia, which discriminates against LGBTQ people.

The news that Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, is teaching at D.C.-area school that openly bans LGBT+ faculty and students ― and any manner of pro-LGBT+ belief or affiliation ― seemed to generate a lot of surprise among my peers. Not a surprise that the nation’s second lady would work there, but that such a school would exist — right in liberal Northern Virginia!
I wasn’t surprised. I’d grown up attending such a school. I figured they were a dime-a-dozen.
At first, I wasn’t keen on reading any of the news stories, but something caught my eye. Immanuel Christian School, in Springfield? I didn’t go to a school like that; I went to that school. From 1989–1997. I’m also gay.
It’s bizarre reading about little ICS in the national media. A common description affixed to it, in this latest culture war dust-up, is “an anti-LGBT school.” It’s an odd label, as if being anti-gay were its raison d’etre. But it is, I must say, more than fair.
I’ve been following the reporting, the commentary, the vice president’s public diatribe in response to the backlash against his wife and the school and, given my own experience, I can’t say I’m sympathetic to his claims of persecution. Let’s be clear, nobody is arguing that private, religious schools can’t exist or can’t legally discriminate. It’s a clear First Amendment right. And what I was hearing was merely criticism, or in most cases matter-of-fact reporting, of the school’s policies.
That harsh light of visibility, the audacity to call hate, hate, seems to anger Mike Pence. And his angry response has only further offended those who were appalled by his wife’s choice to teach there in the first place. And ’round and ’round it goes.
What’s missing, I think, when people talk about a discrimination policy like this, is the practical experience of what that actually looks like. It certainly sounds unfair. But it’s so much more than that.

No student was, to my knowledge, ever expelled for being gay. That would never happen, because no student would ever dare come out in the stifling environment of ICS. Growing up, we had no clue our school had the policy statements or hiring forms it does. No student was, to my knowledge, ever expelled for being gay. That would never happen, because no student would ever dare come out in the stifling environment of ICS. No openly gay or lesbian teacher was ever turned away, because it would have been clear from a mile away this wasn’t the place for them. The policies were there, I’m sure, in a file cabinet somewhere. They stated what would, to anyone attending the institution, go without saying. And they enforced something much more consequential, namely the curriculum.
It does have to be said that ICS was a good school. It was small, intimate, and — aside from a middle school biology course that seemed to focus 90 percent on debunking evolution, without actually teaching any of its underlying principles — the academic education I received there was stellar.
It was also a hotbed of right-wing fanaticism, shoved down the throats of impressionable children at every turn. The community of teachers, students and families was fiercely like-minded and almost exclusively Republican. In 1992, they held a school-wide vote for the presidential election. George H.W. Bush, seeking a second term that Bill Clinton would deny him, won by a staggering landslide.
The effect of this environment went beyond the official coursework. Teachers, especially in the later grades, where students started to converse about the topics of the day, would constantly editorialize and share their opinions about the world. They were encouraged to do so, I’m sure, and they presented their views as Gospel fact.
I learned at a very young age how our country was “lost” and had the blood of innocent babies on its hands. Gay marriage was an affront to the natural order. Nobody even brought that one up — our teacher came in one day, in 1996, fuming that a court in Hawaii had suggested otherwise.

The internet's best stories, and interviews with their authors.It was also, apparently, vital to the spiritual survival of our country to always, un waveringly support the state of Israel. Which, to us students, was a country far, far away where Jesus was from.
Basically, if James Dobson or Rush Limbaugh was saying it, we were hearing it. While many of the messages were probably typically the kind you’d hear in any Christian school, I think they had a particular intensity there. We weren’t in Oklahoma; we were inside the Beltway, in the lion’s den, and the world around us was an evil, corrupt, and frightening place. One day, when we graduated, we would have to go out into this world. We would have to be prepared.
Karen Pence is going to fit right in.
Eventually, in middle school, discussions would touch on sexuality. Obviously, homosexuality was evil. They didn’t talk about this a whole lot; it was best not to dwell on it, but the unfortunate topic had to be broached. What was shocking, even to me then, was the vitriol. These were Christians and generally very kind people. Evangelicals have a way of talking about sexual minorities in public. They use the word “love” a lot and talk softly of hating the sin. When they’re among themselves, they tend to be more candid. Needless to say, it was made very clear to me, and to all of us, that there was nothing worse than being gay. They were disgusting perverts who hated Christians and had a nefarious agenda to dismantle society.
As a boy on the cusp of puberty, only just beginning to realize I was different, this wasn’t a nurturing message, especially coming from a trusted teacher and echoed enthusiastically by everyone I had ever called a friend. I remember wanting to turn invisible, imagining they could tell that maybe, just maybe, I was one of those perverts.

They’re not trying to deny employment to gay people out of spite. They’re trying to keep gay and gay-friendly people from their students. That’s not beneficial to the students, and it certainly wasn’t great for me.They couldn’t tell though, and I wouldn’t have dared say it. I could barely admit it to myself back then. But time marches on, and I’m now happily married to my husband (despite what my 6th grade teacher would say about that). I made it out. Still, I carried that sense of fear and isolation well into public high school. I grew depressed there. I never attempted suicide, but I certainly thought about it a lot. I wonder sometimes about the other LGBT+ students who went through Immanuel Christian School, before and after me. Were they as resilient? Have any killed themselves?
What I do know is any school can be a rough place for a gay kid. There are always bullies. It doesn’t help when the teachers are in on it. Once, in my public high school, when some boys made a cruel, homophobic joke, the teacher cut them off. He then berated them to the point I thought they would cry. I had never seen an adult stand up for people like me before. I didn’t even know that was possible. ICS made sure of that.
That’s what their discrimination policy is all about. They’re not trying to deny employment to gay people out of spite. They’re trying to keep gay and gay-friendly people from their students. That’s not beneficial to the students, and it certainly wasn’t great for me.
While part of me would love to see the supposed liberal-fascist machine shut down schools like ICS, that won’t ever happen. Religious schools are part of this country. So, instead, I would like to see them change from within. And that won’t happen if we refuse to even talk about them. I’m glad we’re talking about this school, and I’m glad people are being critical. Now maybe the Pences are the ones who will have to learn some resilience.

‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration

By Erica L. Green, Katie Benner and Robert Pear

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a government wide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.
A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing gender largely as an individual’s choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth. The policy prompted fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed.
Now the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.
The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.
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“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the department proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
The new definition would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into.
“This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients — what people understand about themselves — is irrelevant because the government disagrees,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Obama administration and helped write transgender guidance that is being undone.
The move would be the most significant of a series of maneuvers, large and small, to exclude the population from civil rights protections and roll back the Obama administration’s more fluid recognition of gender identity. The Trump administration has sought to bar transgender people from serving in the military and has legally challenged civil rights protections for the group embedded in the nation’s health care law.
Several agencies have withdrawn Obama-era policies that recognized gender identity in schools, prisons and homeless shelters. The administration even tried to remove questions about gender identity from a 2020 census survey and a national survey of elderly citizens.
For the last year, the Department of Health and Human Services has privately argued that the term “sex” was never meant to include gender identity or even homosexuality, and that the lack of clarity allowed the Obama administration to wrongfully extend civil rights protections to people who should
But officials at the department confirmed that their push to limit the definition of sex for the purpose of federal civil rights laws resulted from their own reading of the laws and from a court decision.
Mr. Severino, while serving as the head of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, was among the conservatives who blanched at the Obama administration’s expansion of sex to include gender identity, which he called “radical gender ideology.”

Make no mistake,

WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!

Donald Trump is using the LGBT community for political gain and positioning!

Trump's Battle Over LGBT Discrimination Is Just Beginning
The Trump administration steps into an on-going legal battle over civil rights—and steps on another agency’s turf.
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters EMMA GREEN
JUL 28, 2017

LGBT issues have been all over the news this week. On Wednesday, President Trump announced a ban on transgender Americans serving in the military. That evening, the Department of Justice made another significant move in the fight over LGBT rights, albeit with less flash than a tweet storm: It filed an amicus brief in a major case, Zarda v. Altitude Express, arguing that it’s not illegal to fire an employee based on his or her sexual orientation under federal law.
LGBT advocates were quick to decry the DOJ’s position as bigotry. But there’s a deeper context here: The brief was a throw-down in nuanced fight about the nature of the administrative state. During the Obama years, federal agencies slowly began expanding their interpretation of sex discrimination, which is prohibited by a number of civil-rights laws. The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, the independent agency focused on workplace discrimination, arguably pushed the definition of sex discrimination further than any other regulatory body. In 2015, the EEOC ruled that Title VII, the civil-rights statute that protects workers, covers bias based on sexual orientation; it took a similar position in Zarda. Critics argued that this interpretation reads something into the law that isn’t there and accused the Obama administration of enforcing its political agenda through executive fiat. In effect, that’s exactly what Trump’s DOJ argued in its brief.

While this case will ultimately be decided by the courts, it’s a sign of conflict ahead in the long-brewing battle over LGBT rights and the meaning of sex discrimination. It also shows the limits of executive action in contested areas of law. The Obama administration may have believed gay people should be protected by federal civil-rights statutes, but it may prove challenging to make that interpretation stick now that a new party controls Washington.
In 2010, a skydiving instructor named Donald Zarda lost his job with Altitude Express, Inc., after he told a client about his sexual orientation. As a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit noted in its ruling on the case this spring, “Zarda often informed female clients of his sexual orientation—especially when they were accompanied by a husband or boyfriend—in order to mitigate any awkwardness that might arise from the fact that he was strapped tightly to the woman.” Zarda sued, arguing in part that Altitude Express violated Title VII by firing Zarda based on his sexual orientation. He lost in district court and on initial appeal. Now, the case is being heard by the full Second Circuit.
Enter the battling briefs. In June, the EEOC weighed in supporting Zarda, arguing that sexual-orientation-based discrimination is by definition based on sex and involves sex stereotyping, which has long been prohibited by the Supreme Court. A month later, the DOJ filed a brief making the exact opposite argument. “The sole question here is whether, as a matter of law, Title VII reaches sexual-orientation discrimination,” the department wrote. “It does not, as has been settled for decades. Any efforts to amend Title VII’s scope should be directed to Congress rather than the courts.”
In other words, the government has two opposing opinions on one case, and two opposite interpretations of how the same law should be applied. “It is super wacky, yes,” said Justin Levitt, an associate dean and professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angles. “It is very unusual. The federal government usually makes great efforts to be on the same page of this sort of thing.”
Neither the DOJ nor the EEOC is a party in the case—both agencies were essentially offering advice to the court on what to do. That’s part of what makes the battling briefs significant: The DOJ chose to take up this fight when it didn’t have to.
“This Justice Department felt strongly enough that they took the affirmative step to weigh in to undercut the EEOC’s position,” said Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “That likely required a high degree of vetting at a very high level in the Justice Department.” Gupta led the Justice Department’s civil-rights division during the final years of the Obama administration.
The sex-discrimination provision of federal civil-rights laws has always been controversial, but it has become even more charged in recent years. Cases on this topic regularly bubble up through the court system, and some have made it to the top: This spring, the Supreme Court planned to take up a high-profile case concerning a transgender student in Virginia, but punted when the Trump administration back-pedaled the Obama administration’s previous guidance on how to deal with this kind of issue in schools. Court battles over how to interpret “sex discrimination” have become a proxy war over LGBT rights.
“There are limits ... to what the executive can do without Congress.”
“Unfortunately, there is not a high wall between law and politics sometimes. That’s the case on both sides here,” said Michael Harper, a professor of law at Boston University. “This is a question of statutory interpretation. … Whether the statute should [prohibit LGBT discrimination] and whether the statute does are two different questions.”
LGBT-rights advocates argue that DOJ-style reasoning is straightforwardly incorrect and fundamentally grounded in prejudice. When the Zarda brief came out, the Human Rights Campaign called it “a shameful retrenchment of an outmoded interpretation that forfeits faithful interpretation of current law to achieve a politically driven and legally specious result.” Former Attorney General Eric Holder weighed in on Twitter:
Trump team within 24 hours reverses Obama DOJ positions for gays seeking employment and trans people seeking to serve. This is 2017 not 1617
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) July 27, 2017 But according to Harper, the law is not so settled. This “is a fine legal brief,” he said. “It makes good legal arguments.” When lawmakers passed Title VII in 1964, they weren’t thinking of sexual orientation, the DOJ brief argues. Until very recently, courts of appeal and the EEOC agreed. Efforts to pass explicit protections for gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers have also always failed in Congress, effectively ratifying legislators’ intent to keep the law the way it is. “One can take this position … without being bigoted or prejudiced,” Harper said.
While politics might have motivated the arguments in the Trump administration’s brief—they “play to the political beliefs, and I would say prejudice, of their base,” Harper said—“that doesn’t make them bad legal arguments.”
Levitt, who previously led the Department of Justice’s efforts on workplace discrimination as a deputy-assistant attorney general in its civil-rights division, disagreed.
“It is not a crazy liberal [argument] … to say that what the words of the statute mean aren’t bound to what was in the heads of the legislature that passed it,” he said. While the sex-discrimination issue is part of an important debate about administrative law, it’s not an option to put off interpreting and enforcing statutes while waiting on Congress to pass clearer legislation, he said: “You have to interpret statutes somehow.”
The downside of that approach is that elections regularly boot parties out of power. If one administration has taken an aggressive stance on a controversial issue, it’s inevitable that their opponents will reverse course when they get in office. “There are limits, when the administration changes, to what the executive can do without Congress,” said Harper. “To have secure change, you have to have congressional passed legislation.” Even though the circumstances of the DOJ’s brief were unusual, the context was unsurprising. “I can’t say that I’m altogether shocked,” said Gupta. “I’m disappointed, obviously.”
In this particular case, the Second Circuit will decide who’s right, but there’s drama ahead. “This isn’t a good look for the federal government. It is unusual and conflict-seeking,” said Levitt. “The decision to independently file does not reflect a lot of respect for another federal agency with a whole lot of enforcement power.”
The EEOC isn’t obliged to change how it does business just because the DOJ has weighed in, Levitt said: It has binding authority in disputes raised by federal-government employees, and it can continue offering advice based on its current interpretation of Title VII in other cases. What’s more likely to happen is a war of attrition. The two agencies “will stand fuming at each other” until the Second Circuit decides Zarda, Levitt said, and after that, the “fuming will continue.”
It’s impossible to know how this legal throw-down will affect the relationship between the Department of Justice and the EEOC, Levitt said, but the commission surely can’t be happy that another agency stepped on its turf. There will be “a lot of frostier emails,” he said. “I’m sure about that.”

Welcome to Trump's Parasitic Presidency

Trump’s refusal to officially count LGBT Americans is more dangerous than it appears

How can we fix problems that never officially existed?
On May 11, a group of 49 US House members called on the Department of Health & Health Services to “restore questions allowing responders to identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual to a federal survey for elders,” according to the Washington Blade. The move is an important if largely symbolic push for LGBT visibility even as the Trump administration seems less interested than ever in making sure queer problems are acknowledged in the US.
Although a minority of Americans attempted to argue that US president Donald Trump was a supporter of LGBT rights, it’s already abundantly clear this is not the case. As The New York Times’ editorial board recently noted, Trump’s claim that he would be a “champion of gay and transgender people” as president has proven to be a “fallacy.” Adding insult to injury was the announcement by the Census Bureau this spring that it would not be including questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in its 2020 survey.
A draft of the topics under consideration for the 2020 questionnaire—including questions about LGBT identity—was leaked in late March. The Census Bureau, though, claimed that sexual orientation and gender identity were included “inadvertently.”
Whether or not there was ever a plan to add sexual orientation queries is less important than the reality. Advocates tell Quartz that counting the LGBT community in federal surveys is more important now than ever. Crucially, collecting data on marginalized populations helps the government better understand the challenges and myriad forms of discrimination they face. This in turn helps guide public policy and laws fighting systemic injustice and tells agencies where to allocate funding.
It has been an infuriating few months for the LGBT community. In late February, the Trump administration announced that it would be rescinding the federal guidance on transgender students passed by the Obama administration. The White House also rescinded a 2014 executive order in March regarding the oversight of nondiscrimination protections for federal contractors. Although Trump has said that he will keep in place policies that prevent government employees from being explicitly fired on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, removing federal supervision guidelines makes those rules more difficult to enforce.
Lastly, the questions on gender identity and sexual orientation were removed from two surveys on LGBT seniors conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The federal government first began including LGBT seniors in the National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants in 2014. The move allowed agencies to assess the high levels of “economic insecurity, social isolation, and discrimination” faced by this needy population. Research shows that nearly two-thirds of LGBT older adults are concerned about being discriminated against by service providers, nursing homes, or their caregivers.
Removing LGBT older adults from this survey makes it “impossible to assess whether key programs for seniors and people with disabilities are meeting the needs of LGBT Americans,” according to Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington D.C.
“This isn’t just about data,” says Laura Durso, the vice president of the LGBT Research and Communications Project at CAP. “It’s about people.”
Durso pointed to recent surveys from groups like UCLA’s The Williams Institute on the issue of LGBT youth homelessness, which have helped highlight the severity of the issue. “As a researcher and advocate,” Durso said, being able to point to specific statistics is “invaluable.” “You can’t ignore that,” she notes. “Without that kind of information, we’re not able to move the needle on any of these types of policies.”
Organizations like Gallup and the Public Religious Research Institute (PRRI) have helped fill in some of the informational gaps in recent years by including questions related to sexual orientation and gender identity. In 2012, Gallup released its first report on the size of America’s LGBT population — which at the time measured 3.4% of the public. The PRRI’s American Values Atlas, a yearly report on the attitudes of US citizens on issues like immigration and abortion, included LGBT people for the first time in 2016. This year’s edition will survey over 100,000 people, the largest representative sample in its history.
“It was our estimation that this was becoming a politically important group of Americans,” said Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor-in-chief, of the group’s decision to include LGBT people. “The LGBT community is more politically active and in the forefront of policy and legislation. It makes sense for us to be able to isolate this population, where it would have not have made as much sense 30 or 40 years ago.”
While Gallup conducts 1,000 interviews every night, Dan Cox of the PRRI said that there’s simply no substitute for Census statistics, which he called the “gold standard” for data collection.
“The government is the largest resource for demographic data in the US,” said Cox, who serves as the organization’s research director. “It’s an essential source for monitoring the welfare and of the American economy and the American public. By doing this type of work, you can provide people a window into the perspectives of people who are very different than their own and maybe gain some appreciation and empathy for people you might disagree with.”
She added that without collecting data on the LGBT community, the White House would “never have to be accountable to any discrimination that this data might uncover.”
The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that over 200 anti-LGBT bills will be considered at the state level this year; Trump has also endorsed the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), a national version of state “religious freedom” bills. That legislation, if passed, would allow businesses and other entities to deny service to LGBT people based on their “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
But not everyone wants their sexual orientation information being tracked. Given the anti-LGBT track record of the current administration, some are concerned that surveying sexual orientation or gender identity could be used to further target the community.
“Imagine a scenario in which the Trump administration called for all Americans to register their sexual preferences with the government,” argues Kyle Sammin, a conservative writer for The Federalist. “The government would know precisely what is going on in your bedroom, and in the bedrooms of your fellow citizens across the nation. That sounds like a lefty fever dream, a dystopian vision of Trumpian persecution.”
Sammin compared it to concerns among progressives over a “Muslim registry” under Trump.
Even so, the potential benefits of tracking orientation outweigh the risks for most LGBT advocates who understand the importance of visibility. Meghan Maury, the senior policy counsel for the National LGBTQ Task Force, says that advocates have been working with the Bureau “for decades” to survey the LGBT community. In 2010, they started Queer the Census, an effort to ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity were counted in the prior survey. That effort wasn’t successful either, but Maury said advocates will keep lobbying Congress.
“It’s always hard to know what someone’s final decision will be, but it seemed as if the Bureau was moving in the direction of including these questions,” Maury notes. “When the decision came out we were definitely very surprised and disappointed, but we’re going to keep plugging away.”
The next opportunity for LGBT inclusion is the American Community Survey (ACS), an annual index run by the Census Bureau that augments decennial collection. Maury said that questions on sexual orientation and gender identity could be included in the ACS as soon as the next couple years. The Census often offers test versions of the survey, in which it invites public comment. She promised that the LGBT people’s “voices will be heard” during that beta testing, claiming that recognition of the community is long overdue from a department that should have made this change a decade ago.
“We are made invisible in a million ways all the time,” she said. “This decision to not include us in the 2020 Census feels like that to a lot of us. It’s like we don’t count.”

Mississippi can enforce LGBT religious objections law: court

JACKSON, Miss. – A federal appeals court said Thursday that Mississippi can enforce a law that allows merchants and government employees cite religious beliefs to deny services to same-sex couples, but opponents of the law immediately pledged to appeal.
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a judge’s decision that had blocked the law.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves had ruled that the law unconstitutionally establishes preferred beliefs and creates unequal treatment for LGBT people. His ruling prevented the law from taking effect last July.
The law does not take effect immediately. Plaintiffs are allowed time to appeal.
The 5th Circuit panel did not rule on whether the law is constitutional. It said plaintiffs failed to prove they would be harmed by the law, “but the federal courts must withhold judgment unless and until that plaintiff comes forward.”
Legal experts said the law, which started as House Bill 1523 , is the broadest religious-objections measure enacted by any state.
Championed and signed in 2016 by Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, it aims to protect three beliefs: marriage is only between a man and a woman; sex should only take place in such a marriage; and a person’s gender is determined at birth and cannot be altered. It would allow clerks to cite religious objections to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and would protect merchants who refuse services to LGBT people. It could affect adoptions and foster care, business practices and school bathroom policies.
Robert McDuff, an attorney for some of the people who sued to try to block the law, criticized the appeals court for saying plaintiffs had failed to show they would be harmed.
“People should not have to live through discrimination in order to challenge this obviously unconstitutional bill,” McDuff said.
Roberta Kaplan, an attorney who represented some of the other plaintiffs, said her clients have been harmed.
“The state communicated a message loudly and clearly with the passage of HB 1523: Only certain anti-LGBT beliefs will get the protection and endorsement of the state,” Kaplan said. “Under the logic of this opinion, it would be constitutional for the state of Mississippi to pass a law establishing Southern Baptist as the official state religion.”
Kaplan and McDuff said they will appeal the decision by the 5th Circuit panel. Kaplan said she will ask the entire 5th Circuit to reconsider the arguments; McDuff said he will either do that or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
McDuff said that when — or whether — the law will take effect depends on the outcome of the appeal.
Gay and straight plaintiffs who sued the state say the law gives “special protections to one side” in a religious debate.
Supporters say the law protects Mississippians’ rights to live out their faith.
“As I have said all along, the legislation is not meant to discriminate against anyone, but simply prevents government interference with the constitutional right to exercise sincerely held religious beliefs,” Bryant said Thursday.
Kevin Theriot (TAIR-ee-oh) is an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based Christian group that helped to write the Mississippi law. He praised the appeals court decision.
“The sole purpose of this law is to ensure that Mississippians don’t live in fear of losing their careers or their businesses simply for affirming marriage as a husband-wife union,” Theriot said Thursday. “Those who filed suit have not and will not be harmed but want to restrict freedom and impose their beliefs on others by ensuring dissenters are left open to the government discrimination that has already occurred in states without protective laws like this one.”
Douglas NeJaime, a UCLA law professor, is faculty director of the Williams Institute, which researches issues dealing with sexual orientation, law and public policy. He testified in June 2016 on behalf of plaintiffs who sued to block the Mississippi religious objections law. NeJaime said Mississippi was the only state to enact a law that lists specific religious beliefs to be protected in reaction to the 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage.

Trump's reversal on transgender bathroom directive: How we got here

The Trump administration's reversal of Obama-era protections that allowed transgender students in public schools to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity has angered civil rights groups.

The change in position Wednesday reignited the debate on whether guidance on transgender students' use of bathroom and locker room facilities is a state or federal rights issue.
Here are a few questions and answers to help explain how we got here:What was the Obama administration's position?
Last year, the Education and Justice departments issued joint guidance directing schools to let transgender students use facilities that correspond with their gender identity. The letter to school districts and colleges that receive federal funding was based on the Obama administration's interpretation of Title IX, the federal law that bans sex discrimination in schools.
But whether Title IX protections extend to a person's gender identity depends on whom you ask. Though many states have laws consistent with the guidance, lawmakers and educators criticized the directive, saying it was federal overreach that threatened the safety and privacy of non-transgender students.
The United States has 150,000 transgender youth between ages 13 and 17, according to UCLA's Williams Institute.
Why did the Trump administration revoke the directive?
In a two-page letter to public schools, the Trump administration said the Obama-era directive did not provide "extensive legal analysis" of how its position was consistent with Title IX. The letter cited "significant litigation" caused by the guidance, showing the need for "due regard" of the role of states and local school districts in shaping education policy.
"As President Trump has clearly stated, he believes policy regarding transgender bathrooms should be decided at the state level," the White House said in a statement. "The joint decision made today by the Department of Justice and the Department of Education ... paves the way for an open and inclusive process to take place at the local level with input from parents, students, teachers and administrators."

Here’s how President Trump could undermine LGBT rights

The stunning result of the presidential election stands as a chilling reminder of the work ahead. After eight years of President Obama’s fierce advocacy, we grew complacent. We assumed that since a bare majority of straight Supreme Court justices voted our way on marriage that the fight was over. We were wrong.
The United States remains a deeply sexist, racist, homophobic culture and undoing and overcoming those prejudices will take more than filing a few well-timed lawsuits. Realizing those cultural changes takes generations and most of us won’t see the end of that road in our lifetimes. For those of us who remember when gay people were hated and persecuted during the onset of the AIDS epidemic — or those older still who remember the height of the Civil Rights Movement — Tuesday’s result hurts but also serves as a reminder that social change movements take time and are marked by setbacks.
It was only a few years ago that marriage equality was a dream; George W. Bush was president and cynically used our rights as a wedge issue to win swing states; and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was the law of the land. Obama brought change to the bully pulpit, but one person alone can’t change the culture.
Now the LGBT community is back on defense; the campaign is over and it’s time to dust ourselves off and prepare for the myriad fights ahead. They will include preserving President Obama’s executive actions related to LGBT rights, especially his 2014 executive order prohibiting federal contractors from engaging in anti-LGBT workplace discrimination. Also at risk is a rule prohibiting anti-LGBT discrimination in health care and insurance and a Department of Housing & Urban Development regulation prohibiting anti-LGBT bias in government-sponsored housing. Trump has said he’d appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of the anti-LGBT Antonin Scalia, potentially putting the marriage equality ruling in jeopardy. Trump has said he would sign the First Amendment Defense Act, a “religious freedom” bill that would enable anti-LGBT discrimination across the country. In an interview in May, he said he would rescind the joint guidance from the Departments of Justice and Education prohibiting schools from discriminating against transgender students and guaranteeing them access to the restroom consistent with their gender identity.
There’s more. Advocates have said they fear Trump could roll back administrative changes, such as those benefiting LGBT veterans or status of forces agreements allowing service members to bring a same-sex spouse with them overseas, or halting movement on lifting the ban on openly transgender service.
As painful as this result is for LGBT Americans, it’s worse for our allies among people of color, immigrants, Muslims and others so cruelly demonized and attacked by Trump during the campaign. There is real anxiety among immigrants who fear Trump’s oft-repeated threats of deportation forces and walls. The hopes of Syrian and other refugees fleeing civil war and ISIS attacks for a chance at freedom in America are dashed today. It’s my hope that LGBT movement leaders will stand in solidarity with other underrepresented groups in Trump’s crosshairs.
And as we mourn this outcome from the comfort of our homes and offices, the Blade is reporting on yet another murder of a transgender woman of color, this time in Richmond, Va. Noony Norwood was shot and killed on Sunday, marking the 23rd reported killing of a transgender or gender non-conforming person in the United States that the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs has responded to in 2016. Yes, Trump is awful, but some in our community are fighting more urgent battles just to live and work free from violence.
So, yes, we are shocked and disheartened. But the road to equality is long. This is a detour, not a dead end. Take a day to mourn, then take comfort in how far the LGBT movement has come in eight quick years and get back to work.

Be Optimistic! Boy was I Wrong!
by R. Uehara Mistrot

Originally I wrote...
"This election has been a roller coaster of emotions for so many people, lets hope that Mr Trump will take a deep breath and do whats right for ALL Americans."
I admit it, I was WRONG!

This self serving, racist, sociopath needs to be impeached, we have lost the respect of the rest of the world, and his never ending attacks on the press parallels the movements of Adolph Hitler, Stalin and Vladimir Putin.
His constant distractions and misdirection is only to cover up what we already know, he is a dictator in the making. His next steps will be to remove social security and medicare, a right you paid for NOT an entitlement!

Now more than ever this is the time for all of us to roll up our sleeves and work extra hard to make sure our freedoms are not taken from us. We need strong community leaders that will stand up for our rights. Remember, our Presidency is not a dictatorship, its a democracy, and no one person has the right to decide the fate of this nation. We encourage everyone to take a deep breath and ask yourself how you can help to ensure our rights are not taken from us, tweeting and comments on Facebook are just not enough, you need to get out and talk with your friends and family about how this presidency could affect you and your life, find out who your community leaders are and ask what you can do.
So many "arm chair activists" who, with their 500 "friends" think they are doing their part by re-posting things others have said or created, I can tell you with a firm conviction, it's not enough. In my youth, I made it a point to go out to see what I could do to make sure the next generation will not have to endure what mine had to. We all worked hard to ensure the next generation could proudly walk down the street knowing that they could be who they are and with the person they deserved to be with.

"There are still too many places where lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans are targeted for harassment and violence. There are still too many young people out there feeling hopeless and alone.
Hillary, October 3, 2015

As president, Hillary will:

Fight for full federal equality for LGBT Americans. Hillary will work with Congress to pass the Equality Act, continue President Obama’s LGBT equality executive actions, and support efforts underway in the courts to protect people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in every aspect of public life.
Support LGBT youth, parents, and elders. Hillary will end so-called “conversion therapy” for minors, combat youth homelessness by ensuring adequate funding for safe and welcoming shelters, and take on bullying and harassment in schools. She’ll end discriminatory treatment of LGBT families in adoptions, and protect LGBT elders against discrimination.
Honor the military service of LGBT people. Hillary applauds the Pentagon’s decision to allow transgender personnel to serve openly, and as Commander-in-Chief, she will upgrade service records of LGBT veterans dismissed due to their sexual orientation.
Fight for an AIDS-free generation. Read the fact sheet here.
Protect transgender rights. Hillary will work to protect transgender individuals from violence, make it easier for transgender Americans to change their gender marker on identification documents, and invest in law enforcement training focused on fair and impartial policing, including in interactions with LGBT people.
Promote human rights of LGBT people around the world. Hillary will promote LGBT human rights and ensure America’s foreign policy is inclusive of LGBT people, including increasing our investment in the Global Equality Fund to advance human rights.

Hillary has been a vocal advocate for LGBT rights throughout her career.

In the U.S. Senate, Hillary championed legislation to address hate crimes, fought for federal non-discrimination legislation to protect LGBT Americans in the workplace, and advocated for an end to restrictions that blocked LGBT Americans from adopting children.
As secretary of state, Hillary advanced LGBT rights abroad and enforced stronger anti-discrimination regulations within the State Department, declaring on the global stage that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” She led the effort to pass the first-ever U.N. Resolution on LGBT Human Rights, launched the Global Equality Fund, ended State Department regulations that denied same-sex couples and their families equal rights, helped implement LGBT-friendly workplace policies, and updated the State Department’s policy so that transgender individuals’ passports reflect their true gender.

Trending News

California's gay and lesbian lawmakers condemn Trump's action on transgender students

Our fight is long from over.

Did You Know It's Legal In Most States To Discriminate Against LGBT People?

Randy Uehara Mistrot
Gay Suffrage

In many states, a person could marry someone of the same gender and then get fired for being gay.
"Most states have no nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people, with limited or no federal protections, an LGBT person can get legally married, but then be evicted from an apartment and denied a home loan."
What does this mean to you?
We need to expand the laws to include housing and employment.
We need to urge our state lawmakers to change anti-discrimination laws — which already include things such as race, age, religion and disability — to include LGBT people.

Religious groups opposed to gay marriage argue that the public accommodation element would unfairly require business owners to serve same-sex couples, even if they have a moral or religious objection.
Notes
– Massachusetts law does not protect gender expression/identity from discrimination in public accommodations.
– Utah law does not protect sexual orientation or gender identity/expression from discrimination in public accommodations.
– New Hampshire, New York and Wisconsin law do not protect gender identity/expression from discrimination in employment, housing or public accommodations.
– Delaware law does not protect gender identity from discrimination in private sector employment.

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