National
Will Obama’s jobs speech be LGBT-inclusive?
Legalized discrimination persists, ENDA frozen

With the nation awaiting President Obama’s jobs speech later this week, some advocates are hoping for a mention of employment protections for LGBT workers.
Justin Tanis, spokesperson for the San Francisco-based Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, said the Thursday speech before a joint session of Congress is “absolutely” an opportunity for Obama to address the absence of federal protections for LGBT workers.
“I think any serious plan to get Americans back to work has to look at the forces that are keeping Americans from working ā and it’s clear that homophobia and transphobia are still very present in the lives of LGBT people,” Tanis said. “As long as our country fails to address those, discrimination is going to continue.”
While some states have laws that prohibit employers from discriminating against LGBT workers, in many places these protections are non-existent. Firing a person based on sexual orientation is legal in 29 states, while firing someone based on gender identity is legal in 35 states.
Federal legislation that would prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in most situations in the public and private workforce is known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The bill is sponsored by gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).
Tanis said Obama should express “vigorous support” for the enactment of employment protections such as ENDA in Congress during his much-anticipated jobs speech.
“It’s clear there needs to be a long-term plan for addressing anti-LGBT discrimination in the workplace whether it takes the form of ENDA or other measures,” Tanis said.
Whether President Obama will spend political capital to address the lack of non-discrimination protections for LGBT workers remains to be seen. A White House spokesperson declined to comment on whether the speech would be LGBT-inclusive.
Last week, the monthly jobs report from the Labor Department revealed that the unemployment rate remains fixed at 9.1 percent and a net of zero job growth took place in August.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said last week the proposals Obama will unveil on Thursday would “absolutely” change these numbers into something more positive.
“The president will come forward with specific proposals that by any objective measure would add to growth and job creation in the short term,” Carney said. “And that will be part of a broad package that reflects his commitment to grow the economy now and to build a foundation for economic growth for the future to ensure that we win the future.”
Some LGBT advocates are skeptical that these proposed policy changes would be inclusive of ENDA or, more generally, the lack of federal job protections for LGBT workers.
Richard Socarides, president of Equality Matters, said he thinks the incorporation of LGBT job protections as part of these measures would be “highly unrealistic.”
“I don’t think they will see the connection,” Socarides said. “To be candid, I don’t think it’s a particularly good strategic opportunity. I think that all Americans ā including LGBT Americans ā want to see the economy improve and for the administration’s policies to create jobs.”
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said she doesn’t know enough about the president’s speech to say whether Obama should address the lack of federal job protections for LGBT Americans.
“I would bet he’s not likely to, and I don’t know enough about the speech to know if he should,” Keisling said. “If it’s a speech just about rebuilding infrastructure, it probably isn’t all that appropriate. If it’s an overall getting people working thing, it may be appropriate.”
Keisling said the most important part of the speech ā even for LGBT people ā is “there’ll be jobs for us to have because the economy is really, really hurting.”
Still, the jobs speech could be an opportunity for Obama to unveil an administrative action he could take on his own to prevent some LGBT Americans from experiencing discrimination in the workplace.
With Congress unlikely to act on ENDA as long as Republicans remain in control of the House, some LGBT advocates have called for an executive order barring the federal government from contracting with companies that don’t have their own non-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Carney last week said the proposals Obama would unveil on Thursday would be both legislative and administrative. An executive order barring LGBT job bias among federal contractors could fall into this latter category.
But Carney emphasized that regulatory changes ā as opposed to an executive order ā would be the administrative means by which the president would address the job situation.
“He can also do things, as he has in the past, administratively that can help the economy grow, that can … relieve businesses from burdensome regulations; other measures he can take administratively that donāt require legislative action, he will continue to do that as well,” Carney said.
Socarides said Obama could unveil an executive order barring LGBT job bias among federal contractors at any time even without the jobs speech as a backdrop,
“Any day and everyday is a good day to do that,” Socarides said. “You don’t need a special day or a special day or a special speech. I would be surprised if they were considering it in the context of a jobs creation speech, but it is important.”
State Department
State Department hosts intersex activists from around the world
Group met with policy makers, health officials, NGOs

The State Department last week hosted five intersex activists from around the world.
Kimberly Zieselman, a prominent intersex activist who advises Jessica Stern, the special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad, brought the activists to D.C.
⢠Morgan Carpenter, co-founder and executive director of Intersex Human Rights Australia
⢠Natasha Jiménez, an intersex activist from Costa Rica who is the general coordinator of Mulabi, the Latin American Space for Sexualities and Rights
⢠Julius Kaggwa, founder of the Support Initiative for People with Atypical Sex Development Uganda
⢠Magda Rakita, co-founder and executive director of Fujdacja Interakcja in Poland and co-founder of Interconnected UK
⢠Esan Regmi, co-founder and executive director of the Campaign for Change in Nepal.
Special U.S. Envoy for Global Youth Issues Abby Finkenauer and Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine are among the officials with whom the activists met.
Zieselman told the Washington Blade on Sept. 21 the activists offered State Department officials an “intersex 101” overview during a virtual briefing.
More than 60 Save the Children staffers from around the world participated in another virtual briefing. Zieselman noted the activists also met with Stern, U.N. and Organization of American States officials, funders and NGO representatives while in D.C.
“The people we met were genuinely interested,” Rakita told the Blade.
Stern in an exclusive statement to the Blade said “the visiting intersex activists clearly had an impact here at State, sharing their expertise and lived experience highlighting the urgency to end human rights abuses, including those involving harmful medical practices against intersex persons globally.” Andrew Gleason, senior director for gender equality and social justice at Save the Children US, in a LinkedIn post he wrote after attending his organization’s meeting with the activists echoed Stern.
“There are many learnings to recount from todayās discussion, but one thing is clear, this is unequivocally a child rights issue, and one that demands attention and action at the intersection of LGBTQI+ rights, reproductive rights and justice, disability justice and more,” wrote Gleason. “Gratitude to the panelists for sharing such poignant testimonies and providing insights into what organizations like ours can do to contribute to the broader intersex movement; and thank you to Kimberly for your leadership and bringing this group together.”
The activists’ trip to D.C. coincided with efforts to end so-called sex “normalization” surgeries on intersex children.
Greek lawmakers in July passed a law that bans such procedures on children under 15 unless they offer their consent or a court allows them to happen. Doctors who violate the statute face fines and prison.
Germany Iceland, Malta, Portugal and Spain have also enacted laws that seek to protect intersex youth.
A law that grants equal rights and legal recognition to intersex people in Kenya took effect in July 2022. Lawmakers in the Australian Capital Territory earlier this year passed the Variation in Sex Characteristics (Restricted Medical Treatment) Bill 2023.
Intersex Human Rights Australia notes the law implements “mechanisms to regulate non-urgent medical care to encourage child participation in medical decisions, establish groundbreaking oversight mechanisms and provide transparency on medical practices and decision making.” It further points out the statute “will criminalize some deferrable procedures that permanently alter the sex characteristics of children” and provides “funding for necessary psychosocial supports for families and children.”
“It’s amazing,” Carpenter told the Blade when discussing the law and resistance to it. “It’s not perfect. There was some big gaps, but physicians are resisting every step of the way.”
The State Department in April 2022 began to issue passports with an “X” gender marker.
Dana Zzyym, an intersex U.S. Navy veteran who identifies as non-binary, in 2015 filed a federal lawsuit against the State Department after it denied their application for a passport with an āXā gender marker. Zzyym in October 2021 received the first gender-neutral American passport.
Federal Government
Federal government prepares for looming shutdown
White House warns of ‘damaging impacts across the country’

However remote they were on Monday, odds of avoiding a government shutdown were narrowed by Thursday evening as House Republicans continued debate over their hyper-partisan appropriations bills that stand no chance of passage by the Upper Chamber.
As lawmakers in the Democratic controlled Senate forged ahead with a bipartisan stop-gap spending measure that House GOP leadership had vowed to reject, the federal government began bracing for operations to grind to a halt on October 1.
This would mean hundreds of thousands of workers are furloughed as more than 100 agencies from the State Department to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation roll out contingency plans maintained by the White House Office of Management and Budget. On Thursday the Office of Personnel Management sent out memos to all agencies instructing them to ready for a shutdown on Sunday.
Before 1980, operations would continue per usual in cases where Congress failed to break an impasse over spending, as lapses in funding tended to last only a few days before lawmakers brokered a deal.
Since then, the government has shut down more than a dozen times and the duration has tended to become longer and longer.
“Across the United States, local news outlets are reporting on the harmful impacts a potential government shutdown would have on American families,” the White House wrote in a release on Thursday featuring a roundup of reporting on how the public might be affected.
“With just days left before the end of the fiscal year, extreme House Republicans are playing partisan games with peoplesā lives and marching our country toward a government shutdown that would have damaging impacts across the country,” the White House said.
The nature and extent of that damage will depend on factors including how long the impasse lasts, but the Biden-Harris administration has warned of some consequences the American public is likely to face.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for example, warned: āThere is no good time for a government shutdown, but this is a particularly bad time for a government shutdown, especially when it comes to transportation.”
Amid the shortage of air traffic controllers and efforts to modernize aviation technology to mitigate flight delays and cancellations, a government shutdown threatens to “make air travel even worse,” as Business Insider wrote in a headline Thursday.
Democratic lawmakers including California Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters, meanwhile, have sounded the alarm in recent weeks over the consequences for the global fight against AIDS amid the looming expiration, on Oct. 1, of funding for PEPFAR, the Presidentās Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Federal Government
QAnon follower pleads guilty to threatening member of Congress
Conspiracy movement claims Satan-worshipping pedophiles secretly rule the world

A New Mexico man has entered a plea deal after being charged with a federal criminal complaint of making threats through interstate communications directed at a member of Congress.
Federal prosecutors charged Michael David Fox, a resident of DoƱa Ana County, for calling the Houston district office of an unnamed member of Congress on or about May 18, 2023, and uttering threats that included knowingly threatening to kill an active member of Congress.
The plea agreementĀ was brought before U.S. Magistrate Judge Damian L. Martinez of U.S. District Court in New MexicoĀ in the Las Cruces by Foxās attorney from the Federal Public Defenderās Office in August.
According to the criminal complaint as outlined by a Federal Bureau of Investigation criminal investigator for the Albuquerque Field Office, Las Cruces Resident Agency, on May 18 at approximately 9:04 p.m. Fox called the office of a congresswoman for the District of Texas, U.S. House of Representatives (Victim One/”V1ā³), who is from Houston. The call was received by V1’s office.
In the phone call Fox stated āHey [Vl], youāre a man. Itās official. Youāre literally a tranny and a pedophile, and Iām going to put a bullet in your fucking face. You mother fucking satanic cock smoking son of a whore. You understand me you fucker?ā
Law enforcement was able to trace the call back to Las Cruces, N.M., and it was believed that Fox was the user of cell phone account used to make the call. According to the FBI agents who interviewed Fox, he admitted to making the call.
Fox acknowledged that the threat was direct but claimed that he did not own any guns. Fox
claimed to be a member of the Q2 Truth Movement, the Q Movement. Fox explained these
movements believe all over the world there were transgender individuals running
governments, kingdoms and corporations.
Fox told the FBI that there is a plan called āQ the Plan to Save the Worldā which he learned about from an online video. Fox claimed that he believed Q was going to engage in the āeradicationā of the people who were causing all the worldās misery. He believed that part of the eradication had already happened.
Fox explained that he had run Vlās skull features through forensic analysis and determined
that Vl was born male and is now trans. Fox discussed his military service with the
U.S. Air Force, “Q the Plan to Save the World,” and how God communicates using
numbers.
Fox continued to reiterate several different types of conspiracy theories indicating
extreme far right ideologies as his explanation for why he conducted the phone call to
threaten V1.
According to the FBI, Fox rescinded his threat against Vl and apologized. Fox claimed he was not intoxicated or under the influence of drugs when he made the call. Fox stated he understood how Vl would feel threatened by his phone call, and he acknowledged that anyone he knew or cared about would also be concerned with such a threat.
The charge of interstate threatening communications carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.
QAnon began in 2017, when a mysterious figure named āQā started posting on the online message board 4chan, claiming to have inside access to government secrets. Since then, QAnon has grown into a conspiracy movement that claims Satan-worshipping pedophiles secretly rule the world. It is claimed by QAnon adherents that former President Donald Trump is the only person who can defeat them.
Brooklyn, N.Y.-based journalist Ana Valens, a reporter specializing in queer internet culture, online censorship and sex workersā rights noted that Fox appears to be a ātransvestigator.ā Valens noted that the transvestigation conspiracy theory is a fringe movement within QAnon that claims the world is primarily run by trans people. Phrenological analysis is common among transvestigators, with a prominent focus on analyzing celebrities for proof that they are trans.
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