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Top 10 international stories of 2016

Obama visits Cuba; Trudeau marches for LGBT rights

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Human Rights Day, gay news, Washington Blade
international LGBT news stories, gay news, Washington Blade

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Truedau marches in Montreal Pride; Bangladeshi activist Xulhaz Mannan murdered; President Barack Obama meets with LGBT activists in Cuba are among the top international stories in LGBT news in 2016. (Trudeau photo courtesy Trudeau’s office; Mannan photo courtesy Facebook; Washington Blade photo of Cuban activist Juana Mora by Michael K. Lavers)

Here’s a look back at the top 10 international LGBT news stories, as ranked by the Washington Blade’s editorial staff.

#10: Belize Supreme Court strikes down sodomy law

high_court_building_belize_insert_public_domain

Belize Supreme Court (Photo public domain)

Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin of the Belize Supreme Court in August ruled his country’s colonial-era sodomy law is unconstitutional.

Caleb Orozco, a prominent LGBT rights advocate, and his group, the United Belize Advocacy Movement, challenged the law in 2010.

The Belizean government in September announced it plans to appeal a portion of Benjamin’s ruling. Orozco told the Blade that his case would have an impact throughout the English-speaking Caribbean.

“People are beginning to realize that it is possible to advance LGBT issues in the region,” he said.

#9: Prominent activist murdered in Bangladesh

Xulhaz Mannan, gay news, Washington Blade

Xulhaz Mannan, a prominent Bangladeshi LGBT activist, was hacked to death in April. (Photo courtesy of Facebook)

The murder of a prominent LGBT activist in Bangladesh in April sparked outrage around the world.

A group of men hacked Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy to death inside an apartment building in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka on April 25.

Mannan launched Bangladesh’s first LGBT magazine in 2014. He worked for the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka for eight years before joining the U.S. Agency for International Development last September.

President Obama expressed his condolences to Mannan’s family. USAID and the State Department also paid tribute to him.

Ansar-al-Islam, the Bangladeshi branch of al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the murders. Islamists have killed several secular academics, writers, bloggers and members of religious minority groups in the predominantly Muslim country since early 2015.

#8: Brexit vote could impact LGBT rights

A referendum on whether the U.K. should leave the European Union passed in June.

The results of the so-called Brexit referendum sparked concern among activists who said it could adversely impact LGBT asylum seekers.

“Many LGBT refugee and asylum seekers talking to me are worried about how they will be treated with this outcome,” Davis Mac-Iyalla, a gay Nigerian man who received asylum in the U.K., told the Blade from London after the vote.

The European Court of Justice, which is the European Union’s highest court, in 2013 ruled those who face incarceration in their countries of origin because of their sexual orientation could receive asylum in the U.K. and the bloc’s 27 other member states. The European Court of Justice in 2014 said countries within the European Union cannot require gay asylum seekers to prove their homosexuality.

The Brexit vote took place against the backdrop of an influx of refugees and migrants from Syria and other countries into Europe.

Then-Prime Minister David Cameron resigned in the wake of the vote.

#7: Colombia, FARC reach peace deal

Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia, gay news, Washington Blade

Colombian voters on Oct. 2, 2016, narrowly rejected a peace agreement between Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos‘s government and the FARC. (Photo by Antonio Cruz of Abr; courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The Colombian government and a rebel group in September signed an LGBT-inclusive peace deal that sought to end Latin America’s longest-running war.

President Juan Manuel Santos and Rodrigo “Timochenko” Londoño, commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, signed the accord during a ceremony in the Colombian city of Cartagena. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were among the foreign dignitaries who attended the ceremony.

Representatives of two Colombian LGBT advocacy groups participated in the peace talks that began in Havana in 2012.

Colombian voters in October narrowly rejected the peace deal.

Santos and Londoño in November signed a revised agreement. The Colombian Congress ratified it on Nov. 30.

Lawmakers ratified the peace deal less than eight months after Colombia’s highest court ruled in favor of marriage rights for gays and lesbians. Two men from the city of Cali on May 24 became the first same-sex couple to legally marry in the country.

#6: UN calls on countries to decriminalize homosexuality

Human Rights Day, gay news, Washington Blade

A U.N. report urges countries to decriminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations. (Photo by sanjitbakshi; courtesy Flickr)

A report the U.N. released in October calls upon countries to decriminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein notes in the 2015 report to the U.N. Human Rights Council that countries “that criminalize consensual homosexual acts are in breach of international human rights law.”

“These laws, by their mere existence, violate the rights to privacy and nondiscrimination,” it reads. “Arrests and the detention of individuals on charges relating to sexual orientation and gender identity — including offenses not directly related to sexual conduct, such as those pertaining to physical appearance or so-called ‘public scandal’ — are discriminatory and arbitrary.”

The report was released two months after the chief justice of the Belize Supreme Court ruled the country’s anti-sodomy law is unconstitutional.

Consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in more than 70 countries.

#5: USAID bans anti-LGBT discrimination among contractors

The U.S. Agency for International Development in 2016 formally banned contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The rule formally took effect on Oct. 25. National Security Advisor Susan Rice made the announcement the following day at American University in Northwest D.C.

“It’s a major step toward ensuring that American assistance is provided in a fair and equitable manner,” said Rice.

USAID Administrator Gayle Smith described the new policy as an “important step forward for USAID and our partners, and ensures our inclusive approach to development will continue into the future.”

The new policy does not require contractors to extend nondiscrimination protections to employees of organizations abroad that receive U.S. funding. It also does not include USAID grantees.

#4: Justin Trudeau emerges as LGBT rights champ

Justin Trudeau, gay news, Washington Blade

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau emerged as a leading LGBT rights supporter in 2016, marching in several Pride parades. (Photo courtesy of Trudeau’s office)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016 emerged as one of the world’s most prominent LGBT rights champions.

Trudeau this summer became the first Canadian prime minister to march in Pride parades in Montreal and Toronto. A gay man from Syria who received refugee status in Canada in 2014 was the grand marshal of Vancouver’s annual Pride parade in which Trudeau and members of his family participated in July.

Reports emerged in August that the Canadian government plans to apologize to those who were convicted of “gross indecency” before the government of Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations in 1969. Justin Trudeau in November announced he had named MP Randy Boissonnault as his special advisor on LGBT issues.

“We have made great strides in securing legal rights for the LGBTQ2 community in Canada — from enshrining equality rights in the Charter to the passage of the Civil Marriage Act,” said Justin Trudeau in a statement.

Transgender Canadians remain vulnerable to discrimination and hate crimes in spite of Justin Trudeau’s support of LGBT-specific issues.

#3: Pope Francis sends mixed signals on LGBT issues

earthquakes, gay news, Washington Blade

Pope Francis (Photo by Jeffrey Bruno; courtesy Wikimedia)

Pope Francis in 2016 continued to send mixed signals in terms of LGBT issues.

The pontiff in June said the Roman Catholic Church should “ask forgiveness” from gay people over the way it has treated them.

A Vatican official in November criticized a priest who said civil unions and other “human sins” caused the two earthquakes that killed nearly 300 people in central Italy earlier this year. Francis earlier this year accepted the resignation of a cardinal who repeatedly used homophobic slurs to describe gay U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic James “Wally” Brewster.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy in December released a statement in which the church reaffirmed its ban on gay men in the priesthood. LGBT rights groups in 2016 also criticized Francis over his comments on marriage and gender.

#2: ISIS continues persecution of gay Syrians and Iraqis

The so-called Islamic State continued to persecute gay Syrians and Iraqis in 2016.

ISIS militants in January reportedly threw a teenage boy who they accused of engaging in homosexuality from a roof in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor. They also reportedly executed another Syrian teenager in May by publicly stoning him.

Ayaz Shalal, a human rights activist from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, told the Blade in August during an interview in D.C. that he was “terrified” when he read a New York Times article about ISIS executing people who were accused of sodomy.

Iraqi forces with the backing of the U.S. and other countries in October launched an offensive to retake the ISIS stronghold of Mosul. The militant group in 2016 lost territory it once held, but it nevertheless continued to pose a threat.

The gunman who killed 49 people inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., earlier this year pledged his allegiance to ISIS, even though there is no evidence it ordered him to carry out the massacre. Three suspected ISIS members in June reportedly planned to attack a transgender rights march in Istanbul.

#1 Obama meets Cuban LGBT activists in Havana

Juana Mora Cedeño, Havana, Cuba, gay news, Washington Blade

Juana Mora met with President Obama in Havana earlier this year. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

President Obama in March met with two Cuban LGBT rights advocates during his historic trip to the Communist island.

Juana Mora and Nelson Álvarez were among the members of Cuban civil society who met with Obama in Havana. Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and U.S. Chief of Mission Jeffrey DeLaurentis also attended the meeting.

Mora is a vocal critic of Cuban President Raúl Castro and his daughter, Mariela Castro, who promotes LGBT-specific issues on the island as director of the National Center for Sexual Education.

Mora and other independent Cuban LGBT rights advocates maintain they face harassment and even arrest. Maykel González Vivero, an independent journalist and LGBT activist, was detained for several days in October while covering the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew in the city of Baracoa.

Obama in December 2014 announced the U.S. would begin the process of normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba. He is the first sitting American president to visit the Communist island since 1928.

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Honoring the legacy of New Orleans’ 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire

Why the arson attack that killed 32 gay men still resonates 50 years later

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Fifty years ago this week, 32 gay men were killed in an arson attack on the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans. (Photo by G.E. Arnold/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

On June 23 of last year, I held the microphone as a gay man in the New Orleans City Council Chamber and related a lost piece of queer history to the seven council members. I told this story to disabuse all New Orleanians of the notion that silence and accommodation, in the face of institutional and official failures, are a path to healing.  

The story I related to them began on a typical Sunday night at a second-story bar on the fringe of New Orleans’ French Quarter in 1973, where working-class men would gather around a white baby grand piano and belt out the lyrics to a song that was the anthem of their hidden community, “United We Stand” by the Brotherhood of Man. 

“United we stand,” the men would sing together, “divided we fall” — the words epitomizing the ethos of their beloved UpStairs Lounge bar, an egalitarian free space that served as a forerunner to today’s queer safe havens. 

Around that piano in the 1970s Deep South, gays and lesbians, white and Black queens, Christians and non-Christians, and even early gender minorities could cast aside the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the times to find acceptance and companionship for a moment. 

For regulars, the UpStairs Lounge was a miracle, a small pocket of acceptance in a broader world where their very identities were illegal. 

On the Sunday night of June 24, 1973, their voices were silenced in a murderous act of arson that claimed 32 lives and still stands as the deadliest fire in New Orleans history — and the worst mass killing of gays in 20th century America. 

As 13 fire companies struggled to douse the inferno, police refused to question the chief suspect, even though gay witnesses identified and brought the soot-covered man to officers idly standing by. This suspect, an internally conflicted gay-for-pay sex worker named Rodger Dale Nunez, had been ejected from the UpStairs Lounge screaming the word “burn” minutes before, but New Orleans police rebuffed the testimony of fire survivors on the street and allowed Nunez to disappear.

As the fire raged, police denigrated the deceased to reporters on the street: “Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.” 

For days afterward, the carnage met with official silence. With no local gay political leaders willing to step forward, national Gay Liberation-era figures like Rev. Troy Perry of the Metropolitan Community Church flew in to “help our bereaved brothers and sisters” — and shatter officialdom’s code of silence. 

Perry broke local taboos by holding a press conference as an openly gay man. “It’s high time that you people, in New Orleans, Louisiana, got the message and joined the rest of the Union,” Perry said. 

Two days later, on June 26, 1973, as families hesitated to step forward to identify their kin in the morgue, UpStairs Lounge owner Phil Esteve stood in his badly charred bar, the air still foul with death. He rebuffed attempts by Perry to turn the fire into a call for visibility and progress for homosexuals. 

“This fire had very little to do with the gay movement or with anything gay,” Esteve told a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I do not want my bar or this tragedy to be used to further any of their causes.” 

Conspicuously, no photos of Esteve appeared in coverage of the UpStairs Lounge fire or its aftermath — and the bar owner also remained silent as he witnessed police looting the ashes of his business. 

“Phil said the cash register, juke box, cigarette machine and some wallets had money removed,” recounted Esteve’s friend Bob McAnear, a former U.S. Customs officer. “Phil wouldn’t report it because, if he did, police would never allow him to operate a bar in New Orleans again.” 

The next day, gay bar owners, incensed at declining gay bar traffic amid an atmosphere of anxiety, confronted Perry at a clandestine meeting. “How dare you hold your damn news conferences!” one business owner shouted. 

Ignoring calls for gay self-censorship, Perry held a 250-person memorial for the fire victims the following Sunday, July 1, culminating in mourners defiantly marching out the front door of a French Quarter church into waiting news cameras. “Reverend Troy Perry awoke several sleeping giants, me being one of them,” recalled Charlene Schneider, a lesbian activist who walked out of that front door with Perry.

(Photo by G.E. Arnold/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

Esteve doubted the UpStairs Lounge story’s capacity to rouse gay political fervor. As the coroner buried four of his former patrons anonymously on the edge of town, Esteve quietly collected at least $25,000 in fire insurance proceeds. Less than a year later, he used the money to open another gay bar called the Post Office, where patrons of the UpStairs Lounge — some with visible burn scars — gathered but were discouraged from singing “United We Stand.” 

New Orleans cops neglected to question the chief arson suspect and closed the investigation without answers in late August 1973. Gay elites in the city’s power structure began gaslighting the mourners who marched with Perry into the news cameras, casting suspicion on their memories and re-characterizing their moment of liberation as a stunt. 

When a local gay journalist asked in April 1977, “Where are the gay activists in New Orleans?,” Esteve responded that there were none, because none were needed. “We don’t feel we’re discriminated against,” Esteve said. “New Orleans gays are different from gays anywhere else… Perhaps there is some correlation between the amount of gay activism in other cities and the degree of police harassment.” 

(Photo by H.J. Patterson/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

An attitude of nihilism and disavowal descended upon the memory of the UpStairs Lounge victims, goaded by Esteve and fellow gay entrepreneurs who earned their keep via gay patrons drowning their sorrows each night instead of protesting the injustices that kept them drinking. 

Into the 1980s, the story of the UpStairs Lounge all but vanished from conversation — with the exception of a few sanctuaries for gay political debate such as the local lesbian bar Charlene’s, run by the activist Charlene Schneider. 

By 1988, the 15th anniversary of the fire, the UpStairs Lounge narrative comprised little more than a call for better fire codes and indoor sprinklers. UpStairs Lounge survivor Stewart Butler summed it up: “A tragedy that, as far as I know, no good came of.” 

Finally, in 1991, at Stewart Butler and Charlene Schneider’s nudging, the UpStairs Lounge story became aligned with the crusade of liberated gays and lesbians seeking equal rights in Louisiana. The halls of power responded with intermittent progress. The New Orleans City Council, horrified by the story but not yet ready to take its look in the mirror, enacted an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and public accommodations that Dec. 12 — more than 18 years after the fire. 

“I believe the fire was the catalyst for the anger to bring us all to the table,” Schneider told The Times-Picayune, a tacit rebuke to Esteve’s strategy of silent accommodation. Even Esteve seemed to change his stance with time, granting a full interview with the first UpStairs Lounge scholar Johnny Townsend sometime around 1989. 

Most of the figures in this historic tale are now deceased. What’s left is an enduring story that refused to go gently. The story now echoes around the world — a musical about the UpStairs Lounge fire recently played in Tokyo, translating the gay underworld of the 1973 French Quarter for Japanese audiences.

When I finished my presentation to the City Council last June, I looked up to see the seven council members in tears. Unanimously, they approved a resolution acknowledging the historic failures of city leaders in the wake of the UpStairs Lounge fire. 

Council members personally apologized to UpStairs Lounge families and survivors seated in the chamber in a symbolic act that, though it could not bring back those who died, still mattered greatly to those whose pain had been denied, leaving them to grieve alone. At long last, official silence and indifference gave way to heartfelt words of healing. 

The way Americans remember the past is an active, ongoing process. Our collective memory is malleable, but it matters because it speaks volumes about our maturity as a people, how we acknowledge the past’s influence in our lives, and how it shapes the examples we set for our youth. Do we grapple with difficult truths, or do we duck accountability by defaulting to nostalgia and bluster? Or worse, do we simply ignore the past until it fades into a black hole of ignorance and indifference? 

I believe that a factual retelling of the UpStairs Lounge tragedy — and how, 50 years onward, it became known internationally — resonates beyond our current divides. It reminds queer and non-queer Americans that ignoring the past holds back the present, and that silence is no cure for what ails a participatory nation. 

Silence isolates. Silence gaslights and shrouds. It preserves the power structures that scapegoat the disempowered. 

Solidarity, on the other hand, unites. Solidarity illuminates a path forward together. Above all, solidarity transforms the downtrodden into a resounding chorus of citizens — in the spirit of voices who once gathered ‘round a white baby grand piano and sang, joyfully and loudly, “United We Stand.” 

(Photo by Philip Ames/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

Robert W. Fieseler is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of “Tinderbox: the Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.”

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New Supreme Court term includes critical LGBTQ case with ‘terrifying’ consequences

Business owner seeks to decline services for same-sex weddings

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The U.S. Supreme Court is to set consider the case of 303 Creative, which seeks to refuse design services for same-sex weddings. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

The U.S. Supreme Court, after a decision overturning Roe v. Wade that still leaves many reeling, is starting a new term with justices slated to revisit the issue of LGBTQ rights.

In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the court will return to the issue of whether or not providers of custom-made goods can refuse service to LGBTQ customers on First Amendment grounds. In this case, the business owner is Lorie Smith, a website designer in Colorado who wants to opt out of providing her graphic design services for same-sex weddings despite the civil rights law in her state.

Jennifer Pizer, acting chief legal officer of Lambda Legal, said in an interview with the Blade, “it’s not too much to say an immeasurably huge amount is at stake” for LGBTQ people depending on the outcome of the case.

“This contrived idea that making custom goods, or offering a custom service, somehow tacitly conveys an endorsement of the person — if that were to be accepted, that would be a profound change in the law,” Pizer said. “And the stakes are very high because there are no practical, obvious, principled ways to limit that kind of an exception, and if the law isn’t clear in this regard, then the people who are at risk of experiencing discrimination have no security, no effective protection by having a non-discrimination laws, because at any moment, as one makes their way through the commercial marketplace, you don’t know whether a particular business person is going to refuse to serve you.”

The upcoming arguments and decision in the 303 Creative case mark a return to LGBTQ rights for the Supreme Court, which had no lawsuit to directly address the issue in its previous term, although many argued the Dobbs decision put LGBTQ rights in peril and threatened access to abortion for LGBTQ people.

And yet, the 303 Creative case is similar to other cases the Supreme Court has previously heard on the providers of services seeking the right to deny services based on First Amendment grounds, such as Masterpiece Cakeshop and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In both of those cases, however, the court issued narrow rulings on the facts of litigation, declining to issue sweeping rulings either upholding non-discrimination principles or First Amendment exemptions.

Pizer, who signed one of the friend-of-the-court briefs in opposition to 303 Creative, said the case is “similar in the goals” of the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation on the basis they both seek exemptions to the same non-discrimination law that governs their business, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, or CADA, and seek “to further the social and political argument that they should be free to refuse same-sex couples or LGBTQ people in particular.”

“So there’s the legal goal, and it connects to the social and political goals and in that sense, it’s the same as Masterpiece,” Pizer said. “And so there are multiple problems with it again, as a legal matter, but also as a social matter, because as with the religion argument, it flows from the idea that having something to do with us is endorsing us.”

One difference: the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation stemmed from an act of refusal of service after owner, Jack Phillips, declined to make a custom-made wedding cake for a same-sex couple for their upcoming wedding. No act of discrimination in the past, however, is present in the 303 Creative case. The owner seeks to put on her website a disclaimer she won’t provide services for same-sex weddings, signaling an intent to discriminate against same-sex couples rather than having done so.

As such, expect issues of standing — whether or not either party is personally aggrieved and able bring to a lawsuit — to be hashed out in arguments as well as whether the litigation is ripe for review as justices consider the case. It’s not hard to see U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who has sought to lead the court to reach less sweeping decisions (sometimes successfully, and sometimes in the Dobbs case not successfully) to push for a decision along these lines.

Another key difference: The 303 Creative case hinges on the argument of freedom of speech as opposed to the two-fold argument of freedom of speech and freedom of religious exercise in the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation. Although 303 Creative requested in its petition to the Supreme Court review of both issues of speech and religion, justices elected only to take up the issue of free speech in granting a writ of certiorari (or agreement to take up a case). Justices also declined to accept another question in the petition request of review of the 1990 precedent in Smith v. Employment Division, which concluded states can enforce neutral generally applicable laws on citizens with religious objections without violating the First Amendment.

Representing 303 Creative in the lawsuit is Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that has sought to undermine civil rights laws for LGBTQ people with litigation seeking exemptions based on the First Amendment, such as the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

Kristen Waggoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, wrote in a Sept. 12 legal brief signed by her and other attorneys that a decision in favor of 303 Creative boils down to a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment.

“Colorado and the United States still contend that CADA only regulates sales transactions,” the brief says. “But their cases do not apply because they involve non-expressive activities: selling BBQ, firing employees, restricting school attendance, limiting club memberships, and providing room access. Colorado’s own cases agree that the government may not use public-accommodation laws to affect a commercial actor’s speech.”

Pizer, however, pushed back strongly on the idea a decision in favor of 303 Creative would be as focused as Alliance Defending Freedom purports it would be, arguing it could open the door to widespread discrimination against LGBTQ people.

“One way to put it is art tends to be in the eye of the beholder,” Pizer said. “Is something of a craft, or is it art? I feel like I’m channeling Lily Tomlin. Remember ‘soup and art’? We have had an understanding that whether something is beautiful or not is not the determining factor about whether something is protected as artistic expression. There’s a legal test that recognizes if this is speech, whose speech is it, whose message is it? Would anyone who was hearing the speech or seeing the message understand it to be the message of the customer or of the merchants or craftsmen or business person?”

Despite the implications in the case for LGBTQ rights, 303 Creative may have supporters among LGBTQ people who consider themselves proponents of free speech.

One joint friend-of-the-court brief before the Supreme Court, written by Dale Carpenter, a law professor at Southern Methodist University who’s written in favor of LGBTQ rights, and Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment legal scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, argues the case is an opportunity to affirm the First Amendment applies to goods and services that are uniquely expressive.

“Distinguishing expressive from non-expressive products in some contexts might be hard, but the Tenth Circuit agreed that Smith’s product does not present a hard case,” the brief says. “Yet that court (and Colorado) declined to recognize any exemption for products constituting speech. The Tenth Circuit has effectively recognized a state interest in subjecting the creation of speech itself to antidiscrimination laws.”

Oral arguments in the case aren’t yet set, but may be announced soon. Set to defend the state of Colorado and enforcement of its non-discrimination law in the case is Colorado Solicitor General Eric Reuel Olson. Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would grant the request to the U.S. solicitor general to present arguments before the justices on behalf of the Biden administration.

With a 6-3 conservative majority on the court that has recently scrapped the super-precedent guaranteeing the right to abortion, supporters of LGBTQ rights may think the outcome of the case is all but lost, especially amid widespread fears same-sex marriage would be next on the chopping block. After the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against 303 Creative in the lawsuit, the simple action by the Supreme Court to grant review in the lawsuit suggests they are primed to issue a reversal and rule in favor of the company.

Pizer, acknowledging the call to action issued by LGBTQ groups in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, conceded the current Supreme Court issuing the ruling in this case is “a terrifying prospect,” but cautioned the issue isn’t so much the makeup of the court but whether or not justices will continue down the path of abolishing case law.

“I think the question that we’re facing with respect to all of the cases or at least many of the cases that are in front of the court right now, is whether this court is going to continue on this radical sort of wrecking ball to the edifice of settled law and seemingly a goal of setting up whole new structures of what our basic legal principles are going to be. Are we going to have another term of that?” Pizer said. “And if so, that’s terrifying.”

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Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman, named president of Human Rights Campaign

Progressive activist a veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund

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Kelley Robinson (Screen capture via HRC YouTube)

Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman and veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, is to become the next president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading LGBTQ group announced on Tuesday.

Robinson is set to become the ninth president of the Human Rights Campaign after having served as executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund and more than 12 years of experience as a leader in the progressive movement. She’ll be the first Black, queer woman to serve in that role.

“I’m honored and ready to lead HRC — and our more than three million member-advocates — as we continue working to achieve equality and liberation for all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people,” Robinson said. “This is a pivotal moment in our movement for equality for LGBTQ+ people. We, particularly our trans and BIPOC communities, are quite literally in the fight for our lives and facing unprecedented threats that seek to destroy us.”

Kelley Robinson IS NAMED as The next human rights Campaign president

The next Human Rights Campaign president is named as Democrats are performing well in polls in the mid-term elections after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving an opening for the LGBTQ group to play a key role amid fears LGBTQ rights are next on the chopping block.

“The overturning of Roe v. Wade reminds us we are just one Supreme Court decision away from losing fundamental freedoms including the freedom to marry, voting rights, and privacy,” Robinson said. “We are facing a generational opportunity to rise to these challenges and create real, sustainable change. I believe that working together this change is possible right now. This next chapter of the Human Rights Campaign is about getting to freedom and liberation without any exceptions — and today I am making a promise and commitment to carry this work forward.”

The Human Rights Campaign announces its next president after a nearly year-long search process after the board of directors terminated its former president Alphonso David when he was ensnared in the sexual misconduct scandal that led former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign. David has denied wrongdoing and filed a lawsuit against the LGBTQ group alleging racial discrimination.

Kelley Robinson, Planned Parenthood, Cathy Chu, SMYAL, Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders, Amy Nelson, Whitman-Walker Health, Sheroes of the Movement, Mayor's office of GLBT Affairs, gay news, Washington Blade
Kelley Robinson, seen here with Cathy Chu of SMYAL and Amy Nelson of Whitman-Walker Health, is the next Human Rights Campaign president. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
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