National
Gay soldier accused of leaking classified files
Did anger over ‘Don’t Ask’ motivate Manning to act?
Reports that a U.S. Army intelligence analyst who’s accused of leaking classified information is gay have raised questions about whether a resentment of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” could have motivated his alleged crime.
Pfc. Bradley Manning, 22, is the prime suspect in the investigation of leaked video footage showing a U.S. Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed 12 civilians, including employees of a Reuters news agency.
Manning allegedly gave the footage to WikiLeaks, a whistle-blowing website devoted to disclosing the secrets of governments and corporations.
In an instant message conversation with a friend, Manning reportedly said he was responsible for the leak as well as another video showing a 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan. He also reportedly claimed to have 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that would reveal the inner workings of U.S. embassies.
“Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” Manning said in the conversation, according to Wired.com.
Additionally, Manning is a person of interest in an investigation seeking to determine the source of thousands of secret documents leaked related to the Afghanistan war. But as of earlier this week, Manning reportedly hadn’t been formally named as a suspect in the matter.
The charges against Manning are serious. Lt. Col. Rene White, a Pentagon spokesperson, said Manning is under investigation “for allegedly improperly downloading, storing and disclosing to unauthorized third parties classified or sensitive [U.S. government] documents or media.”
White said Manning is being held in the brig at the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va.
“Manning will remain in pre-trial confinement as the Army continues its investigation,” White said. “We don’t know if Pfc. Manning is the source of the recently leaked documents. We are assessing them now to determine the potential damage to lives, sources and methods and national security.”
Courtney Whittmann, a spokesperson for U.S. Army Military District of Washington, said Manning could face up to 52 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge as well as forfeiture of all pay and allowances. She said the court of his appearance is yet to be determined.
As this investigation is underway, a report from British media describing Manning as gay is raising questions about whether discontent with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” contributed to his alleged decision to leak the classified material.
The Daily Telegraph reported that Manning is openly gay and had several postings on his Facebook page that he was unhappy with the military and was going through relationship troubles with a same-sex partner.
At the beginning of May, Manning reportedly wrote he was “livid” after being “lectured by ex-boyfriend,” then later posted that he was “not a piece of equipment” and was “beyond frustrated with people and society at large.”
In the same month, when he was serving at a U.S. military base near Baghdad, Manning reportedly changed his status to: “Bradley Manning is now left with the sinking feeling that he doesn’t have anything left.”
The publicly viewable portion of his Facebook profile this week listed the Washington Blade as among his favorite pages as well as several other LGBT-related pages, including the Human Rights Campaign, gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and “REPEAL THE BAN — End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”
After Window Media closed the Blade late last year, Manning donated $120 to a “Save the Blade” initiative that helped re-launch the paper, according to Blade records.
Manning has also been seen in gay venues in D.C. and was present at the National Stonewall Democrats’ Capital Champions event in 2009.
Jon Hoadley, a gay activist and former Stonewall Democrats president, is among those who know Manning. Still, Hoadley said he said he didn’t know Manning well and hasn’t seen him in more than a year.
“Other [than] through some Stonewall events and stuff like that — and through a few friends — I didn’t know him really well,” Hoadley said.
Whittmann, the Army military district of Washington spokesperson, said she didn’t immediately know whether “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was a factor in the investigation of Manning, but said she would look to find more information on the matter.
The co-director of OutServe, an organization for LGBT active duty service members, said he was skeptical that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” played a role in Manning’s alleged decision to leak classified information.
OutServe’s co-director, who’s adopted the alias J.D. Smith to avoid being outed under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” said he didn’t think Manning’s discontent with the law led him to his alleged decision to leak classified information.
“From what I’ve being reading on this situation, he had a lot of issues that he was dealing with — not just about his homosexuality,” said Smith, who noted OutServe has had no contact with Manning. “We don’t know all the factors. All the details haven’t come out to the public yet.”
The Family Research Council has seized on reports that Manning is gay to drum up opposition to repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
In an e-mail blast, Tony Perkins, president of FRC, called Manning an “extreme homosexual activist” and said his “fury over the services’ homosexual policy may have led him to publicize highly classified documents about the wars.”
“Unfortunately for all of us, Manning’s betrayal painfully confirms what groups like FRC have argued all along: the instability of the homosexual lifestyle is a detriment to military readiness,” Perkins wrote.
John Aravosis, a gay D.C.-based blogger, responded to the FRC mailing on his website, Americablog.com, calling it evidence of the continued lies and distortion that FRC puts forth on LGBT issues.
“FRC cites the Telegraph, and claims that the Telegraph says Manning has an ‘extensive history’ of campaigning for gay rights,” Aravosis wrote. “In fact, the Telegraph article mentions that Manning once showed up at a single gay rights rally — that’s it. How is that an ‘extensive’ history as an ‘extreme’ gay activist? It’s not.”
Aravosis also disputed the notion that evidence exists showing that anger over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” led Manning to leak classified information.
“Finally, there’s nothing, anywhere, to suggest that Manning had any ‘fury’ over [‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’], or that, even if he did, such fury led him to leak the documents,” Aravosis said. “Where did FRC come up with it?”
Smith said FRC’s decision to try to solicit funds over the charges against Manning is “pretty awful.”
“There are plenty of instances where straight soldiers have done things as well,” Smith said. “And I don’t think they should [be] playing this as homosexual treason at all. I think that we need to be very careful in how this is portrayed.”
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.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a bill that reopens the federal government.
Six Democrats — U.S. Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Adam Gray (D-Calif.), Don Davis (D-N.C.), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) — voted for the funding bill that passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Two Republicans — Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Greg Steube (R-Fla.) — opposed it.
The 43-day shutdown is over after eight Democratic senators gave in to Republicans’ push to roll back parts of the Affordable Care Act. According to CNBC, the average ACA recipient could see premiums more than double in 2026, and about one in 10 enrollees could lose a premium tax credit altogether.
These eight senators — U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Angus King (I-Maine), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) — sided with Republicans to pass legislation reopening the government for a set number of days. They emphasized that their primary goal was to reopen the government, with discussions about ACA tax credits to continue afterward.
None of the senators who supported the deal are up for reelection.
King said on Sunday night that the Senate deal represents “a victory” because it gives Democrats “an opportunity” to extend ACA tax credits, now that Senate Republican leaders have agreed to hold a vote on the issue in December. (The House has not made any similar commitment.)
The government’s reopening also brought a win for Democrats’ other priorities: Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was sworn in after a record-breaking delay in swearing in, eventually becoming the 218th signer of a discharge petition to release the Epstein files.
This story is being updated as more information becomes available.
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