National
Down to the wire in N.Y.
All eyes on GOP caucus in N.Y. marriage debate; tense negotiations over marriage bill in Albany
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo encountered delays this week trying to get a same-sex marriage bill passed in the state Senate. As of Blade press time Thursday morning, the bill hadn't been voted on. (Photo by Pat Arnow; courtesy of Wikimedia)
New York’s same-sex marriage bill was in limbo as of Blade press time Thursday morning, as the legislative session was extended and lengthy negotiations took place over which religious exemptions would be included in the final language.
The state’s top political leaders said they supported several religious exceptions that had been added on Wednesday. The Democratic-led Assembly has already approved the bill but will need to approve any revised version that may come out of the Senate.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said late Wednesday that negotiations over the exemptions were going well.
“We are going back and forth on language,” the AP quoted Cuomo as saying. “But we have not hit any obstacles.” Negotiations were expected to continue Thursday, many New York-based media outlets said.
Negotiators are trying to include enough protections in the bill so that religious groups can not be sued for discrimination if the bill passes.
Though the New York Assembly, the state legislature’s lower house, is controlled by Democrats, Republicans have a slight majority (32-30) in the Senate. The measure needs only one more vote to pass the Senate after being approved by the Assembly last week. Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos said this week that Senate Republicans had not discussed the marriage proposal because they were sidetracked by other issues like rent control laws and caps on property tax increases. Cuomo said this week he was “cautiously optimistic” the marriage bill will pass.
The religious protections weren’t available by Blade deadline but were expected to include protection for religious groups such as adoption agencies and marriage counselors who oppose gay marriage.
Among Democrats in the Senate, 29 of the 30 say they’ll vote for gay marriage meaning only three Republican votes would be needed for it to pass the 62-seat chamber. Two have said they’ll vote for it. Two others are undecided on the record, though some reports from New York say the needed Republican votes are there.
New Yorkers United for Marriage, a coalition group of LGBT groups including Empire State Pride Agenda, Freedom to Marry, Human Rights Campaign and others, said Wednesday in a statement, it is pleased with the way things are unfolding.
“We are pleased that thoughtful discussion on marriage equality are ongoing and that progress continues to be made,” the release said. “The voices of the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers who support marriage for all have clearly been heard and momentum is on our side. The people of the state of New York expect and deserve a vote on this important issue.”
Gay Manhattan resident Lou Weiss, who wed his partner Danny Martin in Canada in 2005, said Wednesday he’s optimistic.
“It’s moved away from the sinning and the man-and-woman argument to the argument of how can we protect the church from these evil gays,” Weiss said. “That’s a major shift. We’re not discussing where it’s going but a minute portion of it. These religious exemptions have been in the bill for years. It should be clear we’re talking about civil ceremonies. They want a promise they won’t get sued. Well anybody can sue anybody. Nobody can give them a guarantee of that.”
Weiss said he’s embarrassed his city, usually a leader on progressive issues, is lagging behind on marriage, especially since the Stonewall riots happened there.
“I have friends say, ‘Oh, we thought New York would be the first to get it,’ but instead we’ll be number seven. We’ve had great domestic partner benefits for years, but I’m disappointed that it’s taken this long and that we’ll be number seven and not in our usual first place. It’s easy to forget, it’s not all that liberal outside of Manhattan.”
Weiss predicts it will pass in either this session or next. If it does, he and Martin plan to reaffirm their vows.
Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Iowa and D.C. allow gay marriage. Of them, all but Massachusetts and D.C. allow at least limited religious exemptions.
New York’s legislative session had been scheduled to end Monday.
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.”
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