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With clock ticking, all eyes on Congress

Inaction on LGBT bills likely to trigger ‘anger in the community’

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President Obama joined families on the White House lawn for this week’s Easter egg roll. LGBT rights supporters are calling on him to be more vocal in his support for several key bills still pending in Congress, including repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ (DC Agenda photo by Michael Key)

Supporters of LGBT rights are turning up the heat on Congress in their efforts to pass several key bills after lawmakers return from recess next week.

Allison Herwitt, legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign, alluded to potential political consequences if the bills don’t advance in this Congress.

“I do think that there will be many LGBT Americans frustrated and disappointed if any of these [bills] don’t move,” she said. “Even though we don’t have a pro-LGBT majority in the House and the Senate — this is our highest majority that we have and we need to obviously capitalize on the members that we have in the House and the Senate to pass legislation. So, in short, I do think that there will be anger in the community.”

Herwitt said this anger would likely manifest itself in LGBT voters feeling disconnected from Congress and from the Obama administration.

This disconnect, Herwitt said, could affect political donations or discourage people from getting involved in re-election campaigns as well as “not door knocking, literature dropping, all that kind of stuff.”

Herwitt also urged a stronger voice from the White House in advocating for legislation like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Domestic Partner Benefits & Obligations Act, as well as repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

“I do think that it is important that the president and the administration do strongly indicate to the House and the Senate their support and their desire to move on ENDA, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and DPBO,” she said.

Michael Mitchell, executive director of the National Stonewall Democrats, voiced similar views.

“I think that we’re seeing some — donors are starting to put their money elsewhere or holding off,” he said. “I think that there are rank-and-file folks who are getting frustrated.”

Mitchell said he thinks “we need to remember” that Obama has been in the White House for fewer than 18 months.

“On the other hand, a lot of people have been working on these issues for decades, and people don’t want to wait any longer, and we’ve been laying a lot of groundwork for a very long time and we see this as our window to get this stuff through,” he said.

The November elections are weighing heavily on the minds of LGBT rights advocates. Mitchell said the passage of LGBT bills this Congress is important because of the strong possibility of reduced Democratic majorities.

“The landscape could certainly be more difficult for us, especially if it gets closer in the House,” he said. “I said recently somewhere that [you] only need to look back about 18 months or two years to see how hard it was to pass our agenda when we didn’t have control, and I think it will, again, be like that.”

Key pieces of pro-LGBT legislation in Congress have encountered roadblocks.

Advocates are urging for the inclusion of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal as part of the upcoming defense authorization bill, but whether the votes exist in the Senate Armed Services Committee to attach the provision to the legislation remains to be seen.

President Obama hasn’t spoken publicly in favor of repealing the ban since his mention of the issue in his State of the Union address, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters in response to a DC Agenda question last month that he doesn’t recommend legislative action this year before the Pentagon working group completes it study of the issue.

For ENDA, a House committee markup of the legislation has been pushed back since late last year and still has yet to be scheduled, although advocates are saying activity could happen in April or May. Multiple sources have told DC Agenda that the Senate lacks the 60 votes needed to overcome any attempted filibuster of ENDA.

Problems also plague legislation that would provide benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees. Supporters of the bill in the Senate have said they won’t move the bill to a floor vote until the U.S. Office of Personnel Management provides information on how it will offset the bill’s costs.

Months have passed since House and Senate committees marked up the bills late last year and sent them to the floors of their respective chambers, but OPM hasn’t yet made the offset information public. The agency didn’t immediately respond to DC Agenda’s request for an update on the situation.

During a panel discussion last week on the U.S. Census, Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, took time from her remarks to urge advocates on Capitol Hill to redouble their efforts.

“The LGBT community is very, very serious about getting all these three things done and it does not yet appear that Congress is serious about it,” she said.

Keisling later clarified for DC Agenda that her comments were “just me saying, ‘Hey pass these things.’ It wasn’t me saying, ‘You guys aren’t passing them.’”

“The clock is running down, but there is still time to do it and we have to demand they do it,” she said. “It gets harder and harder for them the longer they put it off. Health care is out of the way — start getting stuff done.”

The window of opportunity for Congress to act on these bills before lawmakers break to run their re-election campaigns is steadily becoming smaller.

After lawmakers return this month, Herwitt said they’ll work through July before they break again for August recess and then do more work in September and October before leaving to focus on re-election.

Herwitt said she’s heard talk about a lame duck session following the November election, but said she doesn’t “know if that will play itself out or not.”

While concerned about the passage of these bills before the end of the year, advocates are anticipating some activity in the coming weeks when lawmakers return from spring break.

Herwitt said she’s expecting the House Education & Labor Committee to take up ENDA and send it to the floor sometime in April or May.

That timetable would square with remarks Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) made to Karen Ocamb, a lesbian Los Angeles-based journalist, that ENDA would pass committee by the end of April and reach the floor a week or two later.

Herwitt said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass), the House sponsor of ENDA, has said he’s ready to move forward with the legislation and to have a floor vote.

“This is not new — you even wrote a story about it — the Senate is much more of a challenge for us on ENDA, but I think, at least from HRC’s perspective, getting a strong vote in the House will help us push the Senate forward,” Herwitt said.

Regarding “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal, advocates are working to include the language as part of the Senate version of the defense authorization bill when the Senate Armed Services Committee takes up the legislation in May.

“Either it’s in the chairman’s mark or we do it as an amendment, and that’s why we’re focusing very strategically in some of our key states that coincide with many of the members that sit on the Armed Services Committee,” she said.

In the House, Herwitt said gay rights supporters are pushing for an amendment on the floor to include “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal as part of the defense authorization bill after the Senate committee takes it up.

Herwitt said advocates are looking at a floor vote in the House as opposed to a committee vote because they “are challenged” with the number of conservative Democrats on the panel and the virtually non-existent support from Republicans.

Supporters of repeal, Herwitt said, are “in a very good place to move forward with a vote” in the House. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), the sponsor of the House bill, has said he has the votes to pass repeal on the House floor.

“We are always, I think, in a better, or I should say, a stronger position, when both bodies act on whatever provision it is that we’re trying to move forward,” she said. “So I think that we’re in a stronger place if we have the language repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ in the Senate bill and we have a House floor vote.”

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U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court declines to hear case over drag show at Texas university

Students argue First Amendment protects performance

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The U.S. Supreme Court justices on June 30, 2022. ((Photo by Fred Schilling of the U.S. Supreme Court)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear a First Amendment case over a public university president’s refusal to allow an LGBTQ student group to host a drag show on campus.

The group’s application was denied without the justices providing their reasoning or issuing dissenting opinions, as is custom for such requests for emergency review.

When plaintiffs sought to organize the drag performance to raise money for suicide prevention in March 2023, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler cancelled the event, citing the Bible and other religious texts.

The students sued, arguing the move constituted prior restraint and viewpoint-based discrimination, in violation of the First Amendment. Wendler had called drag shows “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny,” adding that “a harmless drag show” was “not possible.”

The notoriously conservative Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who former President Donald Trump appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, ruled against the plaintiffs in September, writing that “it is not clearly established that all drag shows are inherently expressive.”

Kacsmaryk further argued that the High Court’s precedent-setting opinions protecting stage performances and establishing that “speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend” was inconsistent with constitutional interpretation based on “text, history and tradition.”

Plaintiffs appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is by far the most conservative of the nation’s 12 appellate circuit courts. They sought emergency review by the Supreme Court because the 5th Circuit refused to fast-track their case, so arguments were scheduled to begin after the date of their drag show.

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Federal Government

EXCLUSIVE: USAID LGBTQ coordinator visits Uganda

Jay Gilliam met with activists, community members from Feb. 19-27

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U.S. Agency for International Development Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam (Photo courtesy of USAID)

U.S. Agency for International Development Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam last month traveled to Uganda.

Gilliam was in the country from Feb. 19-27. He visited Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and the nearby city of Jinja.

Gilliam met with LGBTQ activists who discussed the impact of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, a law with a death penalty provision for “aggravated homosexuality” that President Yoweri Museveni signed last May. Gilliam also sat down with USAID staffers.

Gilliam on Wednesday during an exclusive interview with the Washington Blade did not identify the specific activists and organizations with whom he met “out of protection.” 

“I really wanted to meet with community members and understand the impacts on them,” he said.

Consensual same-sex sexual relations in Uganda were already criminalized before Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act. Gilliam told the Blade he spoke with a person who said authorities arrested them at a community meeting for mental health and psychosocial support “under false pretenses of engaging in same-sex relations and caught in a video that purportedly showed him.” 

The person, according to Gilliam, said authorities outed them and drove them around the town in which they were arrested in order to humiliate them. Gilliam told the Blade that prisoners and guards beat them, subjected them to so-called anal exams and denied them access to antiretroviral drugs.

“They were told that you are not even a human being. From here on you are no longer living, just dead,” recalled Gilliam.

“I just can’t imagine how difficult it is for someone to be able to live through something like that and being released and having ongoing needs for personal security, having to be relocated and getting support for that and lots of other personal issues and trauma,” added Gilliam.

Gilliam said activists shared stories of landlords and hotel owners evicting LGBTQ people and advocacy groups from their properties. Gilliam told the Blade they “purport that they don’t want to run afoul of” the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

“These evictions really exacerbate the needs from the community in terms of relocation and temporary shelter and just the trauma of being kicked out of your home, being kicked out of your village and having to find a place to stay at a moment’s notice, knowing that you’re also trying to escape harm and harassment from neighbors and community members,” he said.

Gilliam also noted the Anti-Homosexuality Act has impacted community members in different ways.

Reported cases of violence and eviction, for example, are higher among gay men and transgender women. Gilliam noted lesbian, bisexual and queer women and trans men face intimate partner violence, are forced into marriages, endure corrective rape and lose custody of their children when they are outed. He said these community members are also unable to inherit land, cannot control their own finances and face employment discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.  

US sanctioned Ugandan officials over Anti-Homosexuality Act

The U.S imposed visa restrictions on Ugandan officials shortly after Museveni signed the law. The World Bank Group later announced the suspension of new loans to Uganda.

The Biden-Harris administration last October issued a business advisory that said the Anti-Homosexuality Act “further increases restrictions on human rights, to include restrictions on freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly and exacerbates issues regarding the respect for leases and employment contracts.” The White House has also removed Uganda from a program that allows sub-Saharan African countries to trade duty-free with the U.S. and has issued a business advisory for the country over the Anti-Homosexuality Act. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Dec. 4, 2023, announced sanctions against current and former Ugandan officials who committed human rights abuses against LGBTQ people and other groups. Media reports this week indicate the U.S. denied MP Sarah Achieng Opendi a visa that would have allowed her to travel to New York in order to attend the annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.

Museveni, for his part, has criticized the U.S. and other Western countries’ response to the Anti-Homosexuality Act. 

Gilliam noted authorities have arrested and charged Ugandans under the law. 

Two men on motorcycles on Jan. 3 stabbed Steven Kabuye, co-executive director of Coloured Voice Truth to LGBTQ Uganda, outside his home while he was going to work. The incident took place months after Museveni attended Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast at which U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) spoke and defended the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

The State Department condemned the attack that Kabuye blamed on politicians and religious leaders who are stoking anti-LGBTQ sentiments in Uganda. Gilliam did not meet with Ugandan government officials while he was in the country.

“We in the U.S. government have already made it clear our stance with government officials on how we feel about the AHA, as well as broader human rights concerns in country,” said Gilliam. “That’s been communicated from the very highest levels.”

The Uganda’s Constitutional Court last Dec. 18 heard arguments in a lawsuit that challenges the Anti-Homosexuality Act. It is unclear when a ruling in the case will take place, but Gilliam said LGBTQ Ugandans with whom he met described the law “as just one moment.” 

“Obviously there is lots of work that has been done, that continues to be done to respond to this moment,” he told the Blade. “They know that there’s going to be a lot of work that needs to continue to really address a lot of the root causes and to really back humanity to the community.” 

Gilliam further noted it will “take some years to recover from the damage of 2023 and the AHA (Anti-Homosexuality Act) there.” He added activists are “already laying down the groundwork for what that work looks like” in terms of finding MPs, religious leaders, human rights activists and family members who may become allies.

“Those types of allyships are going to be key to building back the community and to continue the resiliency of the movement,” said Gilliam.

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Texas

Pornhub blocks Texas accessing site over age verification law

Court battle forced statute to take effect

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Washingtonporn Blade graphic

Aylo (formerly MindGeek) the largest global adult online entertainment conglomerate, owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners, has restricted access to its platforms including its flagship Pornhub in Texas after a court battle forces the state’s age verification law to take effect.

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton had appealed a U.S. District Court decision that enjoined him from enforcing House Bill 1181. Paxton and others argued that purveyors of obscene materials online needed to institute reasonable age-verification measures to safeguard children from pornography. 

A week ago the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partially vacated the original injunction, ruling that the age verification requirements are constitutional. 

“Applying rational-basis review, the age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography,” the three judge panel of the 5th Circuit explained. “Therefore, the age-verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment.”

While the court vacated the injunction against the age-verification requirement of the statute, it upheld the lower court’s injunction against a separate section of the law that would require pornography websites to display a health warning on their landing page and all advertisements. 

Texas users are greeted with this notice.

The Houston Chronicle reported people who go to the site are now greeted with a long message from the company railing against the legal change as “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.” The company calls for age verification by the makers of devices that let people on the internet, instead of individual websites.

Age verification legislation was enacted in several states in 2023 in addition to Texas, including North Carolina, Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Utah and Virginia.

The new laws require users to provide digital confirmation via a certified approved third party vendor like London-based digital identity company Yoti. The other possibility would be a state approved digital ID such as the California DMV’s Wallet app, which contains a mobile driver’s license.

Users accessing Pornhub from within Louisiana are presented with a different webpage that directs them to verify their age with the state’s digital ID system, known as LA Wallet. The law passed in 2022 subjects adult websites to damage lawsuits and state civil penalties as high as $5,000 a day if they fail to verify that users are at least 18 years old by requiring the use of digitized, state-issued driver’s licenses or other methods.

The Associated Press reported this past October that an adult entertainment group’s lawsuit against a Louisiana law requiring sexually explicit websites to verify the ages of their viewers was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan in New Orleans.

Texas users are greeted with this notice.

Potential or existing Pornhub users in North Carolina and Montana are directed to a video that features adult film star Cherie DeVille, who recites a message also written under the video.

“As you may know, your elected officials in your state are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”

“Mandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply,” the statement continues. “As we’ve seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place.”

“Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in [the aforementioned locales]” the message ends with.

The company previously blocked Utah on May 7, 2023. CNN reported at the time:

Affected users are shown a message expressing opposition to Senate Bill 287, the Utah law signed by Gov. Spencer Cox in March that creates liability for porn sites that make their content available to people below the age of 18.

“As you may know, your elected officials in Utah are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” the message said. “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”

Courthouse News reported that after Virginia’s bill was passed in June, state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, a Democrat, criticized the state for not creating a system for age verification, and instead leaving it up to websites to manage the process, citing security risks.  

“We passed a bill during this session to protect children from online porn. However the executive branch had an obligation to create a system for age verification,” Lucas said on X, formerly Twitter. “We will continue our work to keep pornography out of the hands of minors … but we will also work to ensure that this Governor’s error does not put the privacy of Virginians at further risk.”

Beyond the U.S. in the European Union, Pornhub and two more of the world’s biggest porn websites face new requirements in the European Union that include verifying the ages of users, under the EU’s Digital Services Act.

According to a December 20 report from the Associated Press, Pornhub, XVideos and Stripchat have now been classed as “very large online platforms” subject to more stringent controls under the Digital Services Act because they each have 45 million average monthly users, according to the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch.

They are the first porn sites to be targeted by the sweeping Digital Services Act, which imposes tough obligations to keep users safe from illegal content and dodgy products, the Associated Press reported last month.

In addition to the adult entertainment websites, any violations are punishable by fines of up to 6% of global revenue or even a ban on operating in the EU. Some 19 online platforms and search engines have already been identified for stricter scrutiny under the DSA, including TikTok, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Google and more.

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