National
LGBT activists join progressive rally challenging Tea Party
Lincoln Memorial event includes lesbian, gay, trans speakers
‘I am not either black or lesbian. I am both and much more,’ said Darlene Nipper at Saturday’s One Nation Working Together rally in D.C. (Photo courtesy of the Task Force)
A large contingent of LGBT leaders and activists joined tens of thousands of people who turned out for a rally at the Lincoln Memorial Saturday to mobilize voters backing liberal and progressive policies.
Organizers billed the event as a direct challenge to the Tea Party, whose leaders organized a “conservative” and Christian-oriented rally at the Lincoln Memorial site one month earlier hosted by Fox News commentator Glenn Beck.
The National Black Justice Coalition, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign were among more than 40 LGBT organizations that joined mainline civil rights, labor and immigrant rights groups in sponsoring the Saturday rally called One Nation Working Together.
“I stand here before you today as a proud openly lesbian African-American woman,” said Darlene Nipper, deputy executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, who spoke to the crowd from the Lincoln Memorial steps.
“I am not either black or lesbian. I am both and much more,” she said. “And like you, I seek justice for all of us. In America, justice means equal rights for everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, class, sex, gender expression, sexual orientation or ability.”
In her five-minute speech, Nipper joined most of the more than two dozen speakers in sounding a theme of unity among all progressive groups and constituencies.
“We can no longer work in silos, whether by campaign, issue or community,” said Gregory Cendana, a gay official with the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, who also addressed the rally from the memorial steps.
“There needs to be an understanding that the fight and struggle for economic justice and workers rights is the same fight and struggle for LGBT equality,” he said. “And for civil and human rights it’s the same as the fight for immigrant justice. And access to equality and education is the same fight for the environment and green jobs.”
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, appeared on the speakers’ platform with a group of labor, environmental and education advocates, who recited broad themes of unity for a progressive agenda.
“The whole point is we’re all in this together,” she told the Blade after the rally.
Many of the LGBT participants in the rally, like their straight counterparts, arrived by bus from cities and states along the East Coast, including New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. More than 200 LGBT activists held their own smaller rally at Freedom Plaza at 14th and Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., where they were joined by participants completing the D.C. AIDS Walk.
From Freedom Plaza, the LGBT contingent marched to the Lincoln Memorial carrying signs and banners promoting such causes as repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which calls for prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The National Black Justice Coalition, NGLTF, National Stonewall Democrats and Pride at Work, an LGBT labor group affiliated with the AFL-CIO, sponsored a forum the day before the rally on a national “LGBTQ inclusive social justice agenda” at Howard University School of Law.
Among those attending the Lincoln Memorial rally was former Army Lt. Dan Choi, a national advocate for repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Choi carried a sign calling for addressing LGBT teen suicide, saying ongoing discrimination was responsible for the recent rash of suicides among gay male teenagers.
Christine Quinn, the lesbian speaker of New York City Council, who also attended the rally, said she was among several thousand New Yorkers attending the event.
“I just wanted to make sure my voice was added to the others today calling for a national discussion that isn’t so divisive, isn’t so full of hate and nasty rhetoric but one that is instead about what we needed right now — jobs, improved public education, fuller civil rights and equal rights for everyone,” she said.
In her remarks at the rally, Nipper cited hate crimes as yet another problem that affects different groups and can be addressed by various groups working together.
“We are so proud that last year Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act,” she said. “I hope we never forget those two men and the hundreds of others who died at the hands of hatred — Matthew Shepard, who was killed for his gayness, and James Byrd, who was killed for his blackness.
“Yes, our communities are tied and united together,” she said. “Our communities – people of color and those in the lesbian, gay and bisexual and transgender community stand united against hate crimes of any type against anyone.”
Two other prominent out lesbians spoke at the rally — Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
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.”
Repealing marriage amendment among Va. House Democrats’ 2026 legislative priorities
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: 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
