National
National news in brief: June 3
The administration chooses top defense advisers, Illinois Civil Unions begin, a trans woman’s Texas marriage invalidated and a trans prom queen in Florida
Adm. Mullen, leader in ‘Don’t Ask’ repeal, retires
WASHINGTON — With the president’s selection of Army service chief General Martin Dempsey to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the most prominent figures in the effort to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Admiral Mike Mullen, will retire as the head of the body of senior uniformed leaders in the Defense Department.
Mullen will join outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in bidding farewell to the department. During his tenure, Mullen led the White House effort to repeal the 17-year-old ban on open service by gays and lesbians in the military. Mullen testified on multiple occasions in Congress on the need to end the ban on open service in order to preserve military readiness.
Gen. Dempsey will assume his new role alongside Gates’ successor, current director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta.
Meanwhile, a major opponent of repeal indicated he will no longer push to continue barring open service. According to ThinkProgress, a Washington-based progressive think tank, when asked if he would support reinstating the law at a town hall event in Pompano Beach, Fla., Republican Rep. Allen West said, “I’m not doing anything to prevent ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ The thing that I’m doing is … Look, a decision has been made.” Later he said about reinstating the law, “Now it has been done. I will sit back to see what happens.”
Illinois civil unions become law
CHICAGO — Wednesday marked the first day that Illinois same-sex couples can apply for civil union licenses from the state.
Lead lobbyist in the push to pass the bill in 2010, Rick Garcia told the Blade that lines stretched “out to the street,” at the Cook County Clerk’s office Wednesday morning. According to Garcia, the law survived six separate attempts by conservative lawmakers to derail the onset of the law after passage, and now provides 648 new rights to same-sex couples, including emergency medical decision making powers and the ability to put both spouses’ names on the birth certificate to babies born to same-sex spouses.
The new law, however, has emboldened conservatives to push for a voter referendum amending the Illinois Constitution to bar recognition of same-sex relationships.
Widow denied death benefits after husband dies
WHARTON, Texas — A judge has invalidated the marriage of Nikki Araguz and her deceased firefighter husband, killed in a fire in 2010, because Araguz is transsexual.
Though born intersex, Araguz was declared male at birth and was not able to present as her actual gender identity until years later. A couple is ineligible for marriage in the state of Texas if gender markers on both birth certificates match, rather than gender at the time that the nuptials occur.
After her husband Thomas’ death, Araguz’s in-laws sought to use the courts to invalidate the marriage and deny her spousal benefits upon claims that Thomas was unaware of Araguz’s former gender at the time they were married. The Wharton County, Texas court sided with the family.
Fla. high school selects trans prom queen, gay king
DAVIE, Fla. — Running against 14 other women at her school, McFatter Technical High School senior Andii Viveros, 17, surprised a Florida town by earning her classmates’ selection as prom queen.
Born Andrew Viveros, Andii began publicly presenting herself as female two years ago, despite being bullied and harassed, according to Steve Rothaus of the Miami Herald. “They called my name and I was in total shock,” the newly crowned prom queen told the Herald. “Many students have started a petition to have me removed from the ballot. They also are outraged and say I am making a mockery of prom, because I am going in an evening gown.”
Despite the pressure, Andii stayed in the running for the prominent role and took the top prize. McFatter students did not stop with that surprise, however. Prom-goers also selected openly gay Juan Macias as prom king.
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
