Justin's Political Corner

Orion Rummler at 19th News: 

The Justice Department said last week that states seeking to block transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming care may be violating federal law — and signaled that it is prepared to pursue legal action or support existing litigation against states seeking such restrictions.

In a letter to all state attorneys general, sent on Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), the Department of Justice (DOJ) asserted that state laws preventing trans minors from accessing gender-affirming care — by blocking parents or guardians from following a medical professional’s advice, as states like Texas and Arkansas have attempted — may infringe on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses.

“It’s probably the most powerful and progressive step we’ve seen on transgender rights ever from the federal government, at least today,” said Ezra Ishmael Young, who teaches constitutional law at Cornell Law School. “But the attorney general did not sign it.”

He said that while the letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke — who heads the DOJ’s civil rights division — is powerful, it would send a stronger signal with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s signature. A DOJ spokesperson said over email that agency divisions sending letters at the AAG level is a fairly typical practice.

Experts say that the letter effectively warns states that the federal government is unlikely to stand by as bills that restrict transgender minors’ gender-affirming care are signed into law.

At least 16 states have attempted to pass legislation this year barring gender-affirming care for trans youth, according to the Equality Federation. While these efforts have often failed, Arizona last week became one of only a few states that has actually signed a bill into law to restrict gender-affirming care. Arizona’s bill, which goes into effect next year, only bans surgeries for minors — procedures that are not recommended or typically administered for patients under 18.

After Texas failed last year to pass legislation that would block gender-affirming care, the state’s executive branch has taken additional efforts to criminalize such treatments. State Attorney General Ken Paxton has asked the Texas Supreme Court to allow investigations into families seeking transition-related care for their children, after the governor instructed the state’s child welfare agency to investigate such cases as child abuse. At least two Texas clinics halted gender-affirming care in response to the state’s call for investigations.

[…]

In its letter, the DOJ cites Bostock v. Clayton County, the landmark 2020 Supreme Court case that found LGBTQ+ people are protected against work discrimination by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to justify its position that banning gender-affirming care opens states to higher legal scrutiny under the 14th Amendment.

The US DOJ is giving a firm warning to states that ban trans minors from receiving gender-affirming health care: expect to face lawsuits over violating Bostock and the 14th Amendment.

Marissa Higgins at Daily Kos: 

On Thursday, March 31, the Biden administration recognized this year’s International Transgender Day of Visibility (ITDOV) with a number of promises to protect trans Americans from discrimination and exclusion, as highlighted over at CNN. Trans folks have always faced systemic and structural oppression here in the United States, but trans rights and equality have especially been under fire in recent months thanks to the conservative desire to stir hysteria in the face of midterm elections.

“Transgender people are some of the bravest Americans I know,” Biden said in a presidential proclamation issued on Wednesday evening. “And our Nation and the world are stronger, more vibrant, and more prosperous because of them. To transgender Americans of all ages, I want you to know that you are so brave. You belong. I have your back.”

What does this look like in practice? While still not enough given the barrage of anti-trans legislation spewing from Republicans, the Biden administration is delivering some notable wins.

[…]

According to the Biden administration, they’re working with the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security to make sure their systems are also updated to accept the “X” gender marker. This means that folks who use this option on their passport will (hopefully) have a smooth process when actually at airports or exiting or entering the country. Thankfully, it should also mean an end to the infamous and uncomfortable gender-based pat-downs in security.

And that’s not all. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration are apparently set to release resources specific to helping trans youth who may need additional mental health and anti-harassment support while in school. This could be especially useful now given how many Republicans are pushing anti-trans and anti-queer legislation like the infamous Don’t Say Gay law, and all the efforts to keep trans girls out of girls’ sports.

FAFSA (the free application for federal student aid for college students) will finally let trans folks indicate their gender identity on applications, too, which is another great step. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is also moving to allow trans folks to update their gender identity without a doctor’s note.

Today on Trans Day of Visibility, President Biden and his Administration has announced numerous policies that will benefit trans people, including allowing trans folks to update their gender identity without a doctor’s notice, gender-affirming health resources for trans youth (esp. mental health resources), and protecting trans students (and LGBTQ+ students more broadly) from discrimination. 

Fact Sheet: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/03/31/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-advances-equality-and-visibility-for-transgender-americans/

Mackenzie Mays at LA Times:

SACRAMENTO —Transgender youth and their families living in states where legislatures are targeting gender-affirming healthcare would be protected from legal action if they come to California, under legislation introduced Thursday.

A bill by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) would render unenforceable in California any out-of-state court judgments seeking to remove children from their parents’ custody because they have received gender-affirming surgeries, hormone therapy and other transgender medical care.

Attempts by Texas and Idaho to criminalize healthcare for transgender minors have so far stalled amid national outcry, but dozens of similar bills have been introduced in red states across the country.

Wiener’s bill, backed by Democratic leadership, would block out-of-state court judgments related to such care from being recognized by California courts.

The bill would void any subpoena seeking information about people traveling to California to receive gender-affirming care related to “efforts to criminalize individuals or remove children from their homes” for having received any such medical treatments.

The American Medical Assn. opposes legislation that prohibits gender transition-related care for minors, calling such efforts “a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine.”

Wiener’s bill would also flag warrants related to someone from out of state receiving gender-affirming care “the lowest priority for law enforcement” in California.

“What states like Texas and Idaho are doing to trans kids and their parents is unconscionable, and we must send a clear signal that California is a place of refuge for LGBTQ people,” Wiener said in a statement. “The history of the LGBTQ community is a history of criminalization and violence: society trying to erase us and then punishing us if we refuse to be erased, whether by death, incarceration, beatings, lobotomies, electric shock therapy, conversion therapy or other forms of violence. California will not be a party to this new phase of deadly LGBTQ criminalization.”

California counters the deadly anti-trans kids crusades that are going on in Alabama, Texas, Idaho, and other red states by proposing a law protecting trans kids who come from other states. Cheers to State Sen. Scott Wiener (D) for proposing this.

April Siese at Daily Kos:

Riding high off delivering a tepid response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union earlier this week, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds decided to use her opportunity in the national spotlight to push transphobia. Reynolds signed into law on Thursday HF 2416, which bars transgender female athletes from competing in women’s and girl’s sports in schools, from K-12 all the way up to universities, including those affiliated with the NCAA, NAIA, and community colleges. Reynolds, whose penmanship hews closer to a child’s than her actual understanding of protecting her state’s youth, gloated about signing the act into law, which takes effect immediately.

“This is a victory for girls’ sports in Iowa,” Reynolds said in a press release, adding that “no amount of talent, training or effort can make up for the natural physical advantages males have over females.” “It’s simply a reality of human biology,” Reynolds said, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Students can only participate in sports that match the gender assigned to their birth certificate at birth, which effectively shuts the door to transgender athlete participation. Iowa is the second state to enact such disturbingly discriminatory legislation, with South Dakota adopting a similar law last month. There are now 11 states with anti-trans athlete legislation signed into law across the country—including Texas, a state that is now being advised by Gov. Greg Abbott to investigate parents of trans children for child abuse. Luckily, a judge blocked such investigations from going into effect.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds ®, who gave the SOTU rebuttal earlier this week, signed into law HF2416 banning trans women and girls from playing in women’s sports based on the transphobic myth that such measures “protect women’s sports.”

Texas’s transphobic “Governor” Greg Abbott ® and his toady “Attorney General” Ken Paxton ®, facing pressure from right-wing media outlets and far-right politicians as they face primaries in today’s primary election in the Lone Star State, issued a nonbinding directive last week that the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services launch bogus “child abuse” investigations into parents of trans children who provide them gender-affirming health care.

Now, the ACLU of Texas is suing Abbott and Paxton for harming the lives of trans Texas kids based on the transphobic lie that raising trans kids is “child abuse.”

A parent of a trans child who works for the Texas DFPS was one of the first to be investigated by the agency in the Abbott/Paxton transphobic witchhunt of trans kids and their parents, per a report from the New York Times today.

Texas’s Department of Family and Protective Services begins investigating parents of trans children based on bogus transphobia-motivated “child abuse” claims perpetrated by Gov. Greg Abbott and AG Ken Paxton. 

Full story at Daily Kos.

Maya Yang at The Guardian: 

The percentage of adults in the US who identify as LGBTQ+ has doubled over the past 10 years, a Gallup study has found.

According to poll results released Thursday, a record 7.1% of American adults identify as LGBTQ+, jumping from 3.5% in 2012.

“The increase in LGBT identification in recent years largely reflects the higher prevalence of such identities among the youngest US adults compared with the older generations they are replacing in the US adult population,” Gallup noted of the poll, which was conducted in 2021 on 12,416 American adults.

The poll also found that 21% of Generation-Z Americans – those born between 1997 and 2003 – who have reached adulthood identify as LGBTQ, more than double the proportion of millennial adults who do so.

Among millennials – those born between 1981 and 1996 – 10.5% identify as LGBTQ+. This marks a modest 4.7% increase from 2012, when some members of the generation had not yet turned 18.

The percentages are even smaller among Generation X, baby boomers and “traditionalists” – all below 10%. Only 4.2% of Generation X adults, who are between 42 and 57, identify as LGBTQ. 2.6% of baby boomers, who are between 58 and 76, identify as LGBTQ. Lastly, among traditionalist adults – those born before 1946 – only 0.8% identify as LGBTQ+.

Those percentages have more or less remained unchanged since Gallup started measuring LGBTQ+ identification in 2012.

In addition, the poll found that more than half of LGBTQ+ Americans, 57%, identify as bisexual, making up 4% of the total US adult population. Twenty-one per cent of LGBTQ+ Americans identify as gay, 14% lesbian, 10% transgender and 4% something else.

Nearly one in six Gen Z adults, or 15%, identify as bisexual. Meanwhile, 6% of millennials and 2% of Gen Xers say they are bisexual. The percentages of those who identify as bisexual among Generation X, baby boomers and traditionalists fall below 2%.

Casey Quinlan at The American Independent: 

Several groups outside of mainstream professional health organizations are utilizing their image as legitimate health resources to attack transgender-affirming care and promote anti-LGBTQ “conversion therapy.”

“Conversion therapy” is a practice that wrongly asserts LGBTQ people’s sexual orientation or gender can be changed through a variety of harmful methods. It has been discredited by leading health experts as dangerous, ineffective, and based in falsehoods about human sexuality and gender.

In recent years, a number of anti-LGBTQ groups have attempted to push “conversion therapy,” regardless of its dangers, by passing themselves off as mainstream health care associations, advocating against gender-affirming care and any political progress on transgender rights.

Among those groups is the American College of Pediatricians.

The group, whose name is markedly similar to the American Academy of Pediatrics, a distinguished professional association founded in 1930, is frequently referred to as ACPeds. It is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “a fringe anti-LGBTQ hate group.”

ACPeds, which was founded in 2002, has filed court briefs against marriage equality and LGBTQ adoption in the past. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism notes that ACPeds is made up of a number of conservative medical professionals who left the American Academy of Pediatrics over its support for LGBTQ couples adopting children.

According to Raven Hodges, a research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American College of Pediatricians “has been able to blur lines and make it sound more official and back concepts or beliefs that are no longer commonplace for most pediatricians and most health care providers in our country.”

The organization promotes “conversion therapy” and in 2016 released a statement opposing the acceptance of transgender children.

“The American College of Pediatricians urges educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex,” the group said. “Facts — not ideology — determine reality.”

Anti-LGBTQ+ organizations such as the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) are foisting a harmful agenda for LGBTQ+ minors by attacking trans-affirming health care and pushing the medically-discredited practice of “conversion therapy.”

De Elizabeth at Teen Vogue:

Five years after the mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub, President Joe Biden has pledged to sign a bill that will name the LGBTQ+ establishment as a national memorial.

In a White House statement on Saturday, June 12, Biden reported staying in touch with the many families of victims and survivors. “In the coming days, I will sign a bill designating Pulse Nightclub as a national memorial, enshrining in law what has been true since that terrible day five years ago: Pulse Nightclub is hallowed ground,” the president said.

Pulse Nightclub was the site of the deadliest attack on LGBTQ+ people in the country’s history, with 49 people killed and an additional 53 others wounded during the mass shooting on June 12, 2016. A memorial has been in the works for some time, and the design for the tribute was unveiled after a contest in 2019. In a statement at the time, Pulse co-founder and onePulse Foundation CEO Barbara Poma told People that she hoped the memorial would “honor the 49 lives taken and all those affected while also educating visitors and future generations on the profound impact the tragedy had on Orlando, the U.S., and the world.”

When announcing the bill on Saturday, Biden emphasized the ongoing work that needs to be done when it comes to reducing gun violence in the United States, including closing loopholes surrounding background checks, banning assault weapons, and establishing extreme risk or “red flag” laws. The president also acknowledged the ways in which gun violence disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ people, adding, “We must drive out hate and inequities that contribute to the epidemic of violence and murder against transgender women – especially transgender women of color. We must create a world in which our LGBTQ+ young people are loved, accepted, and feel safe in living their truth.”

President Joe Biden will sign a bill making the Pulse Nightclub shooting site a national memorial just over 5 years after the shooting in Orlando, FL that killed 49 people (the majority of which were Latinx and/or LGBTQ+).  

Euronews: 

Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party has proposed banning the “promotion” of sexuality of young people under a new law.

The bill would also outlaw promoting sex change among minors, including in schools, films or books.

The legal amendments were proposed by the conservative party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Thursday, according to the parliament’s website.

Five NGOs, including Amnesty International and Budapest Pride, immediately denounced the “new proposal” by Fidesz.

“Freedom of expression and children’s rights would also be severely restricted,” Amnesty Hungary said in a statement.

“This move endangers the mental health of LGBT+ youth and prevents them from accessing information and affirmative support in a timely, preventive manner.”

“Such legislation only reinforces prejudice and homophobia, which is incompatible with the values ​​of democratic societies,” the organisation added.

The new law could see Hungary outlaw any advertisements by large groups or companies which stand in solidarity with the LGBT+ community.

Hungary’s far-right government led by Viktor Orbán proposes a ban on promoting LGBTQ+-affirming content to minors under 18, in many ways similar to Russia’s draconian anti-LGBTQ+ laws enacted in the 2010s.