On Oct. 26, the United States marked Intersex Awareness Day. In a press release, the U.S. State Department said, “We are dedicated to pursuing an end to violence and discrimination due to sex characteristics and to advancing inclusion, respect, and equality for intersex persons worldwide so they can lead full, healthy lives free from stigma.” The department added, “Throughout the world, intersex persons are regularly subjected to medically unnecessary, harmful procedures that alter their bodies—often at a young age. Intolerance places intersex persons under enormous scrutiny and disregards their bodily autonomy and dignity.” The release concluded with the department saying, “The United States will continue to seek diplomatic opportunities to advance the human rights of intersex persons and to stand with the activists, organizations, and governments who work daily to champion inclusion and respect for intersex persons. Today and every day, intersex persons deserve to live with dignity, equal protection, and recognition before the law.”
Washington deputies said a dad put a noose around the neck of his 13-year-old son’s friend and was arrested after the boy disclosed his sexual orientation, per The News Tribune. On Oct. 21, the adult, identified by KIRO 7 as Joseph Arnim Sweeney, heard his son and his 14-year-old friend talking when he decided to approach them, according to a Facebook post by the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. When Sweeney asked the teen if he was gay, the boy replied, “Yes. Is it a crime to be gay in this house?” Then, Sweeney put the noose around his neck, authorities said, who added that the boy managed to escape, with Sweeney then lassoing his own son, who also got away. The 14-year-old went home and told his mom what happened, prompting her to call authorities.
GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law) presented its 2024 Spirit of Justice Award to Shannon Minter and Jennifer Levi—two of the foremost LGBTQ+-rights attorneys and experts on transgender rights litigation in the country, per a press release. Minter and Levi received the award at the annual Spirit of Justice Award Dinner on Oct. 25 in Boston. Minter is legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) while Levi is senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders. Over legal careers spanning more than three decades, Minter and Levi have (both individually and in partnership) contributed to the development of legal strategies regarding LGBTQ+ jurisprudence.
After 10 LGBTQ+ advocacy groups expressed concerns about the lack of trans people’s involvement in planning, Minneapolis city leaders postponed its annual Trans Equity Summit scheduled for Oct. 30, per The Minnesota Star Tribune. The city announced the summit was being postponed “after engaging with a broad coalition of Twin Cities area LGBTQ+ leaders, particularly those in the trans and gender nonconforming community.”The city has hosted the free, all-day event for trans and gender nonconforming people since 2014—but the leaders of almost a dozen groups emailed city officials on Oct. 18 to express “serious concerns” about the summit and urged that it be canceled. Minneapolis City Council Member Andrea Jenkins, who’s openly trans, said two trans employees in the city’s Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging department “no longer work there” and two trans event planners did not have their contracts renewed.
In Georgia, Devin Barrington-Ward is the only LGBTQ+ candidates (out of five people) running to succeed Atlanta City Council member Keisha Sean Waites, who is resigning from her position a year before the end of the term to launch a bid for Fulton County Superior Court clerk, The Georgia Voice noted. Barrington-Ward has almost two decades of community organizing experience, starting his work in 2006 with Stacey Abrams as a canvasser on his first campaign for the state House of Representatives. Now, he’s running for city council on a platform of housing as a human right, workers’ rights and living wages, green infrastructure, combating climate change and public safety for everyone.
Mel Manuel—a trans nonbinary Louisiana candidate for the U.S. House—released a campaign video that showed themself injecting testosterone to defend bodily autonomy, according to Them. Manuel, who’s running to unseat far-right House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, released the video on social-media platforms, and Manuel called on voters to “take a stand” while performing a routine testosterone injection. Manuel—who is running on a platform of abortion rights, universal healthcare and gun control—mentioned a recent analysis that found Republicans had spent more than $65 million in anti-trans advertisements since the start of August. Manuel is the director of operations for the Louisiana Abortion Fund and the co-director of Queer Northshore, according to their campaign website.
A new clinic run by students attending the Indiana University School of Medicine in Bloomington hopes to provide accessible healthcare to uninsured and underinsured people with a focus on “LGBTQ+-competent” care, The Herald-Times noted. The Gender Diverse and Queer Clinic (GDQC) aims to serve the healthcare needs in south central Indiana and provide medical school students with hands-on training for serving diverse populations. “We want to provide an LGBTQ+-competent care home, as well as earlier education for our medical students to take in a population in a great teaching setting,” fourth-year chair Marissa Vander Missen said.
The Bethesda, Maryland-based the U.S. National Library of Medicine—a national repository for historic medical information—has added the website of a San Francisco health clinic focused on transgender patients to its collection, Lavender Magazine noted (with The Bay Area Reporter contributing). The Gender Confirmation Center actually learned during Pride Month about the inclusion—which shocked the health clinic’s staff and its founder, Dr. Scott Mosser, who happens to be a straight ally. The National Library of Medicine launched its Sexual and Gender Minority Health web archive on June 27 in order to preserve LGBTQ+ health info from federal websites, nonprofit and advocacy websites; resources from sexual and gender minority (SGM) health clinics throughout the country; blogs; and other digital formats.
In Tennessee, the Davidson County Health Department said that patients at Vanderbilt University Medical Center receiving endoscopy care may have been exposed to HIV as well as hepatitis B and C, The Tennessean reported. Davidson County Health Department spokesperson Matthew Peters said the health department received messages of “inappropriate practice” by the medical center that led to the potential transmission of the blood-borne pathogens. Spokesperson John Howser said the hospital is notifying the patients it believes have been exposed, adding that the exposure has impacted less than 4% of endoscopy patients over the past six months.
A Maryland school district pulled two books with LGBTQ+ characters from its curriculum amid an ongoing legal battle from parents vying for the right to opt their children out of classroom lessons they say conflict with their religious faith, per the Catholic News Agency. The Washington Post reported that it had discovered two books—Pride Puppy and My Rainbow—had been pulled from the Montgomery County Public Schools’ curriculum after school officials determined that the use of the texts “could require teachers to explicitly teach vocabulary terms outside the context of the lesson.” Both books remain in school libraries.
In New York state, a teacher who claimed he was fired from a Catholic school in Nassau County for being gay has agreed to settle his federal lawsuit, ABC 7 NY reported. Michael Califano said he was fired from his third-grade teaching job at Maria Regina School in 2021; the firing came after pictures of him kissing his longtime boyfriend were shared with church officials. The lawsuit targeted the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Settlement terms were not publicized.
GLAAD announced the call for submissions for the 36th Annual GLAAD Media Awards, which will remain open now, through Friday, Nov. 22, per a press release. All submitters will be required to submit via GLAAD’s official digital submission form on the GLAAD website, and the submission fee is $250 per entry (with an additional late fee of $150 if sent between Nov. 22-Dec. 20). To be eligible for the 36th Annual GLAAD Media Awards, projects must have been published, released or broadcast in the United States between Jan 1, 2024 and Dec. 31, 2024. Potential nominees may be submitted in both the English and Spanish-language media categories. GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis is executive producer of the 36th GLAAD Media Awards, alongside GLAAD’s Rich Ferraro and Anthony Allen Ramos.
A Texas man has been indicted on several felonies and federal hate-crime charges after being identified in a 2022 string of attacks on transgender women in Houston, according to The Advocate. Salih Ali Mohammed Alhemoud was indicted on six felony charges related to the kidnapping and assault of two trans women he met through Grindr during a crime spree during the summer of 2022, according to an FBI complaint filed in the Southern District of Texas via the Houston Chronicle. Hate crimes against trans people have dramatically increased in Texas, according to a report from LGBTQ+ groups in the state earlier this year; they found that the number of cases doubled between 2019 and 2023, when Texas Republican lawmakers filed a record 141 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in 2023 alone.
Fort Lauderdale-based Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library (SNMAL) is a recipient of the “40 for 40 Spread the Love” grant, per a press release. Awarded by the Community Foundation of Broward, this grant will allow the museum to call attention to 40 pivotal events and key individuals in Broward County’s LGBTQ+ history. Executive Director Robert Kesten said, “With the Community Foundation of Broward’s support, we will present both the highs and lows of LGBTQ+ life in the county and a view of its leaders over time. We hope it sparks engagement, and greater curiosity, and a deeper appreciation of our community’s historic and cultural contributions to the county.”
The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper deals with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’ decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president, NPR reported. More than 200,000 people had reportedly canceled their digital subscriptions by midday on Oct. 28—representing about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. “It’s a colossal number,” former Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli told NPR. “The problem is, people don’t know why the decision was made. We basically know the decision was made but we don’t know what led to it.” Robert Kagan said he left the Post because “we are in fact bending the knee to Donald Trump because we’re afraid of what he will do,” adding that officials from Bezos’ Blue Origin aerospace company met with Trump a few hours after the decision became public.
On a related note, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is among the more high-profile readers of The Washington Post to voice disappointment about the paper’s decision days before the presidential election not to endorse a candidate, according to the Politico Illinois Playbook. The move was reportedly made at the urging of owner Jeff Bezos, who also owns Amazon; according to the paper, he quashed an endorsement of Kamala Harris. “Former @washingtonpost executive editor @PostBaron said the paper’s failure to endorse in the presidential [election] is ‘cowardice’ and democracy is its ‘casualty.’ I agree. Rather than hurt the Post journalists, I canceled my @amazonprimenow membership,” Lightfoot posted on X.
Some Iowa State University students say they are nervously awaiting a November board decision that will decide the fate of programs across campus, KCCI noted. A new law banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from Iowa’s three public universities required the Board of Regents to “conduct a comprehensive study and review of the [DEI] programs and efforts of each institution of higher learning under [its] control.” Students involved with programming for the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success at Iowa state say they’re only allowed to plan through the end of the semester; after that, the office’s fate is uncertain.
The CEO of an LGBTQ+ organization in Palm Springs, California, has been charged with stealing $940,000 from the city, county and other entities, per The Advocate. A Riverside County grand jury indicted Queer Works CEO Jacob Rostovsky on 53 felony counts, including grand theft, misappropriation of public funds, insurance fraud and more, the Desert Sun reported. Queer Works was established to provide mental health services to transgender and nonbinary people in Palm Springs and the surrounding area. The Palm Springs city government said in a statement, “While the City recognizes that all criminal defendants are presumed innocent until proven otherwise, we are deeply concerned by these charges, particularly the misuse of taxpayer dollars, and will cooperate fully with the investigation to ensure accountability.”
A fifth women’s volleyball team chose to forfeit instead of play against San Jose State University (SJSU), because of rumors that one of its players is a transgender woman, according to the Los Angeles Blade. The University of Nevada-Reno officially announced that it would forfeit a game against the SJSU Spartans. This followed an announcement by Wolf Pack players who said they “refuse to participate in any match that advances injustice against female athletes,” without providing more details. Nevada followed Southern Utah, Boise State, Wyoming and Utah State in canceling games against the Spartans.
The gay bar Loafers has opened in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Paper noted. The bar takes its name from a midcentury insult lodged against gay men—“light in the loafers”—and flipped it on its head. “Let’s get a gay bar that has a nod to the 1940s, that is kind of vibrant, comfortable, a little bit intimate … and a nod to a period of time before McCarthyism in the late ‘50s, [when] it kind of was a little bit more footloose and free to be queer,” owner Brendan Donohoe said. Drinks include a spicy pepperoncini martini and a strawberry tequila mocktail, among other concoctions.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a bid by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who ended his independent presidential campaign and was seeking his removal from the ballot in the key swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan—where voting is already underway, NBC News noted. Kennedy has endorsed Trump and is seeking to have his name dropped from the ballots in states where it could be a boost to his new ally. The court did not explain its reasoning although Justice Neil Gorsuch said he would have granted Kennedy’s application in the Michigan case.