National
National News in brief: June 10
Cubs; Red Sox join Giants in ‘It Gets Better,’ Conn. to add trans protections, White House to celebrate Pride this month
The San Francisco Giants were the first professional sports team to join the ‘It Gets Better’ campaign. (Photo courtesy San Francisco Giants)
Cubs, Red Sox join ‘It Gets Better’ campaign
CHICAGO — On the heels of a new “It Gets Better” video recorded by the San Francisco Giants — the first professional American sports team to record a video for the project to stem LGBT youth suicide — the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs have announced they will join the campaign.
The Cubs, who play at Wrigley Field just blocks from Chicago’s gay neighborhood known as “Boys Town,” are owned by openly gay Laura Ricketts and her siblings.
“The Cubs applaud the Giants for their stand against anti-LGBT bullying. Bullying of anyone for any reason is unacceptable,” Ricketts told Chicago’s LGBT newspaper, the Windy City Times, Saturday. “We are proud to join the Giants in taking a stand against bullying and encourage other professional sports organizations to do the same.”
On Monday, the Boston Red Sox announced they would be the third professional sports team to add to the library of 10,000 “It Gets Better” videos, in answer to a Change.org petition started by 12-year-old Sam Maden of New Hampshire. A similar petition has been launched to encourage the Baltimore Orioles to record a video; it’s available at change.org.
Conn. adds trans protections to bias law
HARTFORD, Conn. — The first state to bring about marriage equality by legislative vote, rather than judicial intervention, is poised to extend employment protections to transgender residents.
Though 21 states and the District of Columbia ban employment and public accommodations discrimination based on sexual orientation, only 14 states ban such discrimination based on gender identity. The bill, HB6599, which adds gender identity and expression as a protected class to race, age, sex, marital status and physical ability, passed 20-16, and heads to Gov. Dan Malloy (D) who has vowed to sign it.
Meghan Stabler, a national advocate and educator on transgender rights, who testified at the Judiciary Committee hearing in March, hopes Connecticut’s strategy will be duplicated elsewhere.
“This was the result of a lot of consistent work by a number of organizations for several years, not just pushing for a bill that’s inclusive, but education and outreach to legislative people and state and local organizations — both of faith as well as other allied organizations,” Stabler told the Blade.
White House to host Pride celebration
WASHINGTON – The White House plans to host a reception on June 29 to commemorate June as Pride month, the Washington Blade learned this week.
A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the celebration would take place, but added further information isn’t yet available.
“Later this month, the White House will hold a reception to observe LGBT Pride month,” the official said. “Further details will be provided at a later date.”
The White House has hosted Pride celebrations in June for each of the two previous years in which President Obama has been in office.
Hendricks to run for Va. Assembly seat
An official with the National Black Justice Coalition announced this week that he would seek the Virginia Assembly seat opening up in his hometown upon the retirement of independent Del. Watkins Abbitt.
Jasper Hendricks, III, has worked for the National Black Justice Coalition for three years, and has previously worked in politics, including on the staff of Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami as well as serving as political director of the Wisconsin Democratic Party during the 2006 governor’s race.
Hendricks, however, has lived in the 59th District his entire life.
“I’m originally from here. I went to school in Appomattox,” he said, “I have been commuting via Amtrak to D.C. three days a week.” He says he spends long weekends with his family at home.
“Right now I’m the first Democrat to announce. I’ve heard there are others who are considering it, but taking advice from locals, I was the first person to file.”
When asked about his chances in this sometimes red, sometimes blue district, Hendricks expressed confidence.
“The district is very rural, encompasses Appomattox County of the famous Civil War battles … so it’s a very rural district.”
The current state delegate of 26 years, Watkins Abbitt, was originally a Democrat, but he switched to independent about 15 years ago, and now caucuses with Republicans. His father, Watkins Abbitt Sr. is a former member of Congress.
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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