National
Obama pledges to work this year to end "Don’t Ask" in State of the Union
President Barack Obama (DC Agenda photo by Michael Key)
President Obama pledged during his State of the Union address to work this year to repeal the ban preventing gays from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces.
“This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are,” Obama said.
The State of the Union address on Wednesday marks the first time Obama has set a time for when he would tackle his 2008 campaign pledge to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Lawmakers attending Obama’s speech responded to his declaration with roaring applause.
Obama offered new details on his promise to repeal the law in a portion of his speech on the advancement of civil rights in his administration.
In the same part of the speech, Obama also touted how the nation has strengthened “laws to protect against crimes driven by hate,” presumably a reference to the passage last year of a federal hate crimes law protecting LGBT people.
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, praised Obama for renewing his pledge to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in a statement released following his speech.
“The Commander in Chief sent a clear message tonight that in a time of war, what matters is that our men and women get the job done — not whether they’re gay or straight,” he said.
Solmonese said HRC will work to support Obama in his pledge to overturn “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” through its “Voices of Honor campaign” — an HRC-led initiative geared toward building public support for ending the law.
The campaign will work organize veterans across the country, generate media coverage and build focused campaigns in key states critical to final votes in Congress, according to the HRC statement.
Also commending Obama for pledging to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2010 is Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. Paul DeMiglio, spokesperson for the organization, said “we very much need a sense of urgency” to make repeal happen this year.
“As Rep. Patrick Murphy and Sen. [Kirsten] Gillibrand have made clear, this is the year to repeal the law,” DeMiglio said. “What is also needed is more attention and leadership to win repeal. The American public, including conservatives, is overwhelmingly with the commander-in-chief on this one.”
DeMiglio said SLDN is calling on Obama to include repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as part of his defense budget request that the Pentagon is expected to deliver to Congress next month.
Murphy, the Pennsylvania Democrat who sponsors the repeal bill in the U.S. House, also applauded Obama for making the commitment to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
“While we increase our forces to fight terrorism, it makes no sense to kick out fighter pilots, medics, and Arabic linguists at the rate of nearly two servicemembers a day,” Murphy said. “It is time to repeal this ridiculous law that hurts our national security and military readiness.”
Another topic Obama mentioned of interest to many LGBT people is comprehensive immigration reform. Obama asked Congress to find a bipartisan solution to the immigration problems facing the country.
“We should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system — to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nations,” Obama said.
Many same-sex bi-national couples are looking to Congress to pass immigration reform this year and to include a provision that would allow LGBT Americans to sponsor their foreign partners for residency. Current law prevents an estimated 36,000 bi-national couples from staying together in the United States.
Steve Ralls, spokesperson for Immigration Equality, said the inclusion of immigration reform in the State of the Union address is “a welcome sign.”
“The White House has said in the past that they support ending discrimination against gay immigrant families and we expect that to be the case moving forward as well,” Ralls said. “Immigration reform is something that both progressives and conservatives agree needs to be tackled, so it makes sense to keep with the pledge to move forward on that as soon as possible.”
National
213 House members ask Speaker Johnson to condemn anti-trans rhetoric
Letter cites ‘demonizing and dehumanizing’ language
The Congressional Equality Caucus has sent a letter urging Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to condemn the surge in anti-trans rhetoric coming from members of Congress.
The letter, signed by 213 members, criticizes Johnson for permitting some lawmakers to use “demonizing and dehumanizing” language directed at the transgender community.
The first signature on the letter is Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, the only transgender member of Congress.
It also includes signatures from Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08), Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (MA-05), House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (CA-33), every member of the Congressional Equality Caucus, and members of every major House Democratic ideological caucus.
Some House Republicans have used slurs to address members of the transgender community during official business, including in committee hearings and on the House floor.
The House has strict rules governing proper language—rules the letter directly cites—while noting that no corrective action was taken by the Chair or Speaker Pro Tempore when these violations occurred.
The letter also calls out members of Congress—though none by name—for inappropriate comments, including calls to institutionalize all transgender people, references to transgender people as mentally ill, and false claims portraying them as inherently violent or as a national security threat.
Citing FBI data, the letter notes that 463 hate crime incidents were reported due to gender identity bias. It also references a 2023 Williams Institute report showing that transgender people are more than four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, despite making up less than 2% of the U.S. population.
The letter ends with a renewed plea for Speaker Johnson to take appropriate measures to protect not only the trans member of Congress from harassment, but also transgender people across the country.
“We urge you to condemn the rise in dehumanizing rhetoric targeting the transgender community and to ensure members of your conference are abiding by rules of decorum and not using their platforms to demonize and scapegoat the transgender community, including by ensuring members are not using slurs to refer to the transgender community.”
The full letter, including the complete list of signatories, can be found at equality.house.gov. (https://equality.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/equality.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/letter-to-speaker-johnson-on-anti-transgender-rhetoric-enforcing-rules-of-decorum.pdf)
The White House
EXCLUSIVE: Garcia, Markey reintroduce bill to require US promotes LGBTQ rights abroad
International Human Rights Defense Act also calls for permanent special envoy
Two lawmakers on Monday have reintroduced a bill that would require the State Department to promote LGBTQ rights abroad.
A press release notes the International Human Rights Defense Act that U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) introduced would “direct” the State Department “to monitor and respond to violence against LGBTQ+ people worldwide, while creating a comprehensive plan to combat discrimination, criminalization, and hate-motivated attacks against LGBTQ+ communities” and “formally establish a special envoy to coordinate LGBTQ+ policies across the State Department.”
“LGBTQ+ people here at home and around the world continue to face escalating violence, discrimination, and rollbacks of their rights, and we must act now,” said Garcia in the press release. “This bill will stand up for LGBTQ+ communities at home and abroad, and show the world that our nation can be a leader when it comes to protecting dignity and human rights once again.”
Markey, Garcia, and U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) in 2023 introduced the International Human Rights Defense Act. Markey and former California Congressman Alan Lowenthal in 2019 sponsored the same bill.
The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s overall foreign policy.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded dozens of advocacy groups around the world, officially shut down on July 1. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year said the State Department would administer the remaining 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled.
Then-President Joe Biden in 2021 named Jessica Stern — the former executive director of Outright International — as his administration’s special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights.
The Trump-Vance White House has not named anyone to the position.
Stern, who co-founded the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice after she left the government, is among those who sharply criticized the removal of LGBTQ- and intersex-specific references from the State Department’s 2024 human rights report.
“It is deliberate erasure,” said Stern in August after the State Department released the report.
The Congressional Equality Caucus in a Sept. 9 letter to Rubio urged the State Department to once again include LGBTQ and intersex people in their annual human rights reports. Garcia, U.S. Reps. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who chair the group’s International LGBTQI+ Rights Task Force, spearheaded the letter.
“We must recommit the United States to the defense of human rights and the promotion of equality and justice around the world,” said Markey in response to the International Human Rights Defense Act that he and Garcia introduced. “It is as important as ever that we stand up and protect LGBTQ+ individuals from the Trump administration’s cruel attempts to further marginalize this community. I will continue to fight alongside LGBTQ+ individuals for a world that recognizes that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.”
National
US bishops ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals
Directive adopted during meeting in Baltimore.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week adopted a directive that bans Catholic hospitals from offering gender-affirming care to their patients.
Since ‘creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift,’ we have a duty ‘to protect our humanity,’ which means first of all, ‘accepting it and respecting it as it was created,’” reads the directive the USCCB adopted during their meeting that is taking place this week in Baltimore.
The Washington Blade obtained a copy of it on Thursday.
“In order to respect the nature of the human person as a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” reads the directive. “This includes, for example, some forms of genetic engineering whose purpose is not medical treatment, as well as interventions that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body.)”
“In accord with the mission of Catholic health care, which includes serving those who are vulnerable, Catholic health care services and providers ‘must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria’ and to provide for the full range of their health care needs, employing only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body,” it adds.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2024 condemned gender-affirming surgeries and “gender theory.” The USCCB directive comes against the backdrop of the Trump-Vance administration’s continued attacks against the trans community.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming medical interventions for minors.
Media reports earlier this month indicated the Trump-Vance administration will seek to prohibit Medicaid reimbursement for medical care to trans minors, and ban reimbursement through the Children’s Health Insurance Program for patients under 19. NPR also reported the White House is considering blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“The directives adopted by the USCCB will harm, not benefit transgender persons,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, in a statement. “In a church called to synodal listening and dialogue, it is embarrassing, even shameful, that the bishops failed to consult transgender people, who have found that gender-affirming medical care has enhanced their lives and their relationship with God.”
213 House members ask Speaker Johnson to condemn anti-trans rhetoric
D.C. LGBTQ bars ‘hanging in there’ amid tough economy
Japan’s first female prime minister reluctant to advance LGBTQ rights
Rep. Grijalva reiterates LGBTQ support at swearing in
PHOTOS: Cheers to Out Sports!
PHOTOS: Whitman-Walker Gala
Activist hosts Diwali celebration in D.C.
Calendar: November 14-20
Harford school board appeals state’s book ban decision to circuit court
