National
Lawmakers seek update on State Dept. LGBT policy
Letter inquires on U.S assistance with anti-gay crimes overseas, LGBT dialogue abroad
U.S. House members concerned with LGBT rights and foreign affairs last week called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to provide an update on pro-LGBT policy changes underway at the State Department.
In a letter dated June 24, members of the LGBT Equality Caucus seek an update on several topics, including U.S. assistance with the investigations of anti-gay crimes overseas; the extent to which the State Department’s regional bureaus are focusing on LGBT issues; and what the State Department is doing to prepare Foreign Service officers for dialogue on LGBT issues.
The 45 names on the letter are noteworthy because two signers are also leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee: Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the Republican chair of the panel, and Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the panel’s ranking Democrat. The State Department didn’t respond to the letter in time for this posting upon immediate request from the Washington Blade.
In the letter, lawmakers make particular note of anti-gay activity in Uganda and Honduras. With respect to Uganda, the letter expresses concern over the murder earlier this year of David Kato, an activist who worked against pending legislation in the country that would institute the death penalty for homosexual acts. Kato was brutally beaten to death after a publication in Uganda identified him as gay.
The letter also expresses concern over “recent murders of LGBT activists” in Honduras. Lawmakers write the Obama administration has issued strong statements against anti-gay violence in both countries, but want more action.
“We commend you for your ongoing efforts to push for effective investigation and prosecutions in those cases,” the letter states. “In that context, we would appreciate more detail on what assistance, if any, the United States, is providing to the governments of Uganda and Honduras in those investigations.”
On Monday, Clinton addressed during her Pride speech the extent to which Foreign Service officers in Honduras encouraged action after investigations into 30 anti-LGBT crimes in the past year appeared to be heading nowhere.
“Then our embassy team got involved,” Clinton said. “They publicly called on the Honduran government to solve the murders, bring the perpetrators to justice, do more to protect all Hondurans from harm. Soon after, the government announced it was creating a task force to investigate and prevent hate crimes. And with the help of a United States prosecutor and detective, which our embassy arranged to be made available to assist in this effort, we are making progress.”
For other issues, lawmakers base much of their requests on the speech Clinton gave last year for Pride in which she said the State Department was implementing several policy changes to benefit the LGBT community abroad. Clinton’s speech was renowned for her ad-libbed line, “human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights,” which has been echoed in other foreign policy statements on LGBT issues from the Obama administration.
The letter recalls Clinton said during her speech last year she has asked the State Department’s regional bureaus to enhance the reporting on the condition of LGBT communities abroad; has elevated the dialogue with which Foreign Service officers discuss LGBT issues overseas; and has implemented changes to grant LGBT people asylum in the United States. Lawmakers seek updates on each of these areas.
For example, on helping LGBT refugees, lawmakers say they would “appreciate more information on the progress made by the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration to achieve this goal, as well as on resettlement procedures for LGBT refugees who face imminent danger.”
The letter also asserts that Clinton specified in previous correspondence with Congress that the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor has set up a task force to enhance interdepartmental and interagency coordination of LGBT issues overseas. Lawmakers seek an update on this process and “what efforts have been made to integrate these issues within the strategic planning process at the State Department and at the interagency level.”
Mark Bromley, chair of the Council for Global Equality, said Ros-Lehtinen’s signature on the letter is significant because she has a powerful voice in foreign affairs as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and because her name makes the missive a bipartisan request.
“It’s a clear signal that support for the fundamental human rights of LGBT communities should not be a partisan issue,” Bromley said.
Bromley added that Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the only out lesbian in Congress and chair of the LGBT Equality Caucus, deserves special credit because she worked to organize the letter in a bipartisan way.
NOTE: This posting has been updated.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
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