National
‘Worldwide’ LGBT marches planned in April
Facebook organizers not connected to established LGBT organizations
A Facebook group of LGBT rights advocates that claims to have 20,000 members is organizing a series of simultaneous LGBT civil rights marches in the U.S. and abroad that are scheduled to take place April 21.
Oklahoma City gay activist Joe Knudson, who initiated what he hopes will be the world’s largest peaceful protest on behalf of LGBT equality, says organizers have so far lined up marches in 10 U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C; New York City; Chicago; Atlanta; and Hampton, Va.
He said the only location outside the U.S. confirmed for one of the marches so far is an as yet to be selected city in Pakistan. A number of participating cities in Europe are expected to be announced soon, he said.
“The Worldwide LGBT Civil Rights March in 2012 is already gathering sponsors and supporters by the thousands, as well as initial lead organizers from around the world,” organizers said in an October posting on Facebook.
“The march will be held worldwide at various locations at the same time, as well as an online news media event that will keep everyone posted on the events at all locations,” the Facebook posting says.
It adds, “This event has been created by the fastest growing LGBT Equality group, with members from around the world – Let’s Reach 1 Million People Campaign…It’s a start! LGBT Equality.”
Knudson, 56, said he started that group in the late spring or early summer of 2011 with the aim of building a grassroots LGBT advocacy campaign with an international reach. He said he and others involved with the group came up with the idea of the worldwide LGBT marches.
In his Facebook biography, Knudson says he began his career in the banking industry and came out as gay later in life, after being married to a woman and raising children. He has since founded a publishing company in Oklahoma City that he created to publish his recent book, “Living the Difference: An Enlightening Story Revealed for People of All Ages, Straight or Gay.”
Knudson said the book describes his struggles in reconciling himself as a gay man who has embraced his sexual orientation and now yearns to help others do the same and promote the cause of LGBT equality.
A Washington Blade spot survey this week of several of the nation’s largest LGBT national and state advocacy organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, found that all but one were unaware of the global marches.
Heather Cronk, a spokesperson for the national direct action group GetEqual, said GetEqual would play some role in the marches but she did not get back by press time with details about GetEqual’s involvement in the events.
Spokespersons for the other groups said no one had contacted them so far about the planned worldwide marches and they had not heard anything about the events until contacted this week by the Blade.
Among the groups unaware of the marches were HRC, Task Force, the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Empire State Pride Agenda of New York, the New York City LGBT Community Center, and the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, D.C.’s largest LGBT political group. The National Black Justice Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based LGBT group, did not respond by press time to an inquiry about whether it was aware of the marches.
Knudson said the New York City march was being coordinated by Christianne Bharath, a 16-year-old high school student on Long Island who says she serves as president of her school’s Gay-Straight Alliance group.
“It’s still in the early stages, Bharath told the Blade on Tuesday. “We’re getting the LGBT Center in with us and also the Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth Center,” of which she said she’s also involved.
Cyndi Creager, a spokesperson for the New York City LGBT Center, said no one from the march group had contacted the center as of this week. Creager said the center would consider whether to provide support for the New York march after learning more about it.
Veteran New York lesbian activist Roberta Sklar, who serves as communications director for the New York-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, said her group also had not been contacted by organizers of the marches.
IGLHRC has contacts with LGBT organizations and activists throughout the world, especially in Latin American countries.
Task Force spokesperson Inga Sorenson said no one from the Worldwide March organization has registered to participate in the Task Force’s annual Creating Change conference scheduled for later this month in Baltimore. The Creating Change conference is considered the preeminent annual gathering of the nation’s LGBT activist and movement leaders.
The designated organizer of the D.C. march, Curtis Sledge, said he lives in Richmond and doesn’t often come to D.C. He said he has changed his work hours as a manager of a McDonald’s restaurant in Richmond to enable him to come to D.C. to make arrangements for the march, including the filing of an application for parade permits with D.C. police and the National Park Service.
Sledge said organizers haven’t decided yet on the exact route of the D.C. march, but they are leaning toward having the march travel past the Lincoln Memorial and the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial located next to the National Mall.
He said organizers are planning for a rally with speakers to take place at the end of the march but haven’t decided yet where that would be held. Lesbian comedian Wanda Sykes is among those invited to speak and perform at the event, Sledge said.
“I’m just getting started,” he said. “I will be talking to people at HRC and I will contact D.C.-area universities to get them involved.”
March organizers said they have so far confirmed marches on April 21 in these cities: D.C.; New York City; Albany, N.Y.; Atlanta; Chicago; Oklahoma City; Hampton, Va.; Dayton, Ohio; Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky region; and Portland, Ore., with Pakistan set as the only country outside the U.S. so far.
Knudson and others involved in organizing the marches acknowledge that they don’t have longstanding ties with existing LGBT organizations but hope to build those ties during the final planning stages for the marches.
D.C. gay activist Phil Attey, who has used Facebook to organize LGBT-related endeavors, said Knudson contacted him last year to seek his help with the worldwide march project. Attey said he supports the project and thinks the decision by organizers to hold marches in many cities rather than just Washington was an “excellent idea.” Attey called on march organizers to focus their attention in the U.S. on electing LGBT supportive members of Congress in the November election.
“I will be putting my energy into re-electing the president and electing members of Congress who support our civil rights,” he said. “I think that’s what they should be doing.”
The White House
Report: Grenell wants Russian ambassadorship
Country’s anti-LGBTQ record a reported barrier
Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for “special missions,” is making it known that he is interested in the Russian ambassadorship.
According to reporting by the Daily Mail, Grenell has “floated” his interest in the role to coworkers, but issues surrounding the former German ambassador’s sexuality have made securing the position more difficult.
“He had an interest in the job — or at least he floated the idea to select colleagues. But Putin’s regime is extremely anti–LGBTQ, so I’m sure they didn’t take that thought too seriously,” one source close to Grenell told the Daily Mail. “That would never happen anyway.”
Grenell has long been one of Trump’s closest allies and was the first openly gay person to hold a Cabinet-level position. He was ousted last month as acting director of the Kennedy Center, a position he had held since Trump reestablished the board to be composed of his political supporters in 2025.
In addition to leading the nation’s cultural arts center, Grenell previously served as the U.S. ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020, and as the special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations from 2019 to 2021. He was also a State Department spokesperson to the U.N. under the George W. Bush administration and a Fox News contributor.
Russia has a longstanding history of being anti-LGBTQ.
In 2013, the country passed a law banning any public endorsement of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors. In December 2022, Putin signed legislation expanding the ban, making it illegal to promote same-sex relationships or suggest that non-heterosexual orientations are “normal” for people of any age, widening censorship across media and public life.
The Russian courts have also supported the restriction of LGBTQ identity in the country. In November 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court granted a request from the Justice Ministry to outlaw the “international LGBT movement” as “extremist,” allowing authorities to criminalize advocacy and potentially prosecute individuals for expressions of LGBTQ+ identity or support.
In addition to LGBTQ rights issues, the war between Russia and Ukraine has become a global concern. Ukraine, which was part of the former Soviet Union, includes the territory known as Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. The annexation remains a major point of international dispute over sovereignty. Since 2022, Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine has escalated the conflict, drawing global attention and sanctions while straining U.S.-Russia relations.
The U.S. has spent $188 billion in total related to the war in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Russian ambassadorship seems to be a difficult role to fill, according to additional information presented by the Daily Mail. With Trump already being seen as relatively positive by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and with close ties to members of his Cabinet and family — like son-in-law Jared Kushner — the ambassadorship is complicated and viewed as less critical than in previous administrations.
“There is no rush to fill that role because it has now been deemed unnecessary,” another source told the U.K.-based publication.
Bob Foresman, a seasoned businessman with decades-long ties to the Kremlin, was reportedly once the frontrunner, according to the Daily Mail. Foresman served as vice chair of UBS Investment Bank and Deputy Chairman of Renaissance Capital between 2006 and 2009, and earlier led investment banking for Russia at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein from 1997 to 2000.
“This is a pattern, especially in the Trump administration — special envoys big–footing the ambassadors,” a source told the Daily Mail. “It is shocking that we are already in April and we don’t have an ambassador to one of the most important countries in the world.”
Tennessee
Tenn. lawmakers pass transgender “watch list” bill
State Senate to consider measure on Wednesday
The Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill last week to create a transgender “watch list” that also pushes detransition medical treatment. The state Senate will consider it on Wednesday.
House Bill 754/State Bill 676 has been deemed “ugly” by LGBTQ advocates and criticized by healthcare information litigators as a major privacy concern.
The bill would require “gender clinics accepting funds from this state to perform gender transition procedures to also perform detransition procedures; requires insurance entities providing coverage of gender transition procedures to also cover detransition procedures; requires certain gender clinics and insurance entities to report information regarding detransition procedures to the department of health.”
It would require that any gender-affirming care-providing clinics share the date, age, and sex of patients; any drugs prescribed (dosage, frequency, duration, and method administered); the state and county; the name, contact information, and medical specialty of the healthcare professional who prescribed the treatment; and any past medical history related to “neurological, behavioral, or mental health conditions.” It would also mandate additional information if surgical intervention is prescribed, including details on which healthcare professional made a referral and when.
HB 0754 would also require the state to produce a “comprehensive annual statistical report,” with all collected data shared with the heads of the legislature and the legislative librarian, and eventually published online for public access.
The bill also reframes detransitioning as a major focus of gender-affirming healthcare — despite studies showing that the number of trans people who detransition is statistically quite low, around 13 percent, and is often the result of external pressures (such as discrimination or family) rather than an issue with their gender identity.
This legislation stands in sharp contrast to federal protections restricting what healthcare information can be shared. In 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, requiring protections for all “individually identifiable health information,” including medical records, conversations, billing information, and other patient data.
Margaret Riley, professor of law, public health sciences, and public policy at the University of Virginia, has written about similar efforts at the federal level, noting the Trump-Vance administration’s push to subpoena multiple hospitals’ records of gender-affirming care for trans patients despite no claims — or proof — that a crime was committed.
It has “sown fear and concern, both among people whose information is sought and among the doctors and other providers who offer such care. Some health providers have reportedly decided to no longer provide gender-affirming care to minors as a result of the inquiries, even in states where that care is legal.” She wrote in an article on the Conversation, where she goes further, pointing out that the push, mostly from conservative members of the government, are pushing extracting this private information “while giving no inkling of any alleged crimes that may have been committed.”
State Rep. Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby), the bill’s sponsor, said in a press conference two weeks ago that he has met dozens of individuals who sought to transition genders and ultimately detransitioned. In committee, an individual testified in support of the bill, claiming that while insurance paid for gender-affirming care, detransition care was not covered.
“I believe that we as a society are going to look back on this time that really burst out in 2014 and think, ‘Dear God, What were we thinking? This was as dumb as frontal lobotomies,’” Faison said of gender-affirming care. “I think we’re going to look back on society one day and think that.”
Jennifer Levi, GLAD Law’s senior director of Transgender and Queer Rights, shared with PBS last year that legislation like this changes the entire concept of HIPAA rights for trans Americans in ways that are invasive and unnecessary.
“It turns doctor-patient confidentiality into government surveillance,” Levi said, later emphasizing this will cause fewer people to seek out the care that they need. “It’s chilling.”
The Washington Blade reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, which shared this statement from Executive Director Miriam Nemeth:
“HB 754/SB 676 continues the ugly legacy of Tennessee legislators’ attacks on the lives of transgender Tennesseans. Most Tennesseans, regardless of political views, oppose government databases tracking medical decisions made between patients and their doctors. The same should be true here. The state does not threaten to end the livelihood of doctors and fine them $150,000 for safeguarding the sensitive information of people with diabetes, depression, cancer, or other conditions. Trans people and intersex people deserve the same safety, privacy, and equal treatment under the law as everyone else.”
Iran
LGBTQ groups condemn Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization
Ceasefire announced less than two hours before Tuesday deadline
The Council for Global Equality is among the groups that condemned President Donald Trump on Tuesday over his latest threats against Iran.
Trump in a Truth Social post said “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Tehran did not reach an agreement with the U.S. by 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
Iran is among the handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death.
Israel and the U.S. on Feb. 28 launched airstrikes against Iran.
One of them killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran in response launched missiles and drones against Israel and other countries that include Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and Cyprus.
Gas prices in the U.S. and around the world continue to increase because the war has essentially closed the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that connects the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s crude oil passes.
Trump less than 90 minutes before his deadline announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran that Pakistan helped broker.
“We the undersigned human rights, humanitarian, civil liberties, faith-based and environmental organizations, think tanks and experts are deeply alarmed by President Trump’s threat regarding Iran that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’ if his demands are not met. Such language describes a grave atrocity if carried out,” reads the statement that the Council for Global Equality more than 200 other organizations and human rights experts signed. “A threat to wipe out ‘a whole civilization’ may amount to a threat of genocide. Genocide is a crime defined by the Genocide Convention and by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as committing one or more of several acts ‘with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, racial or religious groups as such.'”
The statement states “the law is clear that civilians must not be targeted, and they must also be protected from indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks.”
“Strikes on civilian infrastructure — such as the recent attack on a bridge and the attacks President Trump is repeatedly threatening to carry out to destroy power plants — have devastating consequences for the civilian population and environment,” it reads.
“We urge all parties to respect international law,” adds the statement. “Those responsible for atrocities, including crimes against humanity and war crimes, can and must be held accountable.”
The Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, MADRE, and the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center are among the other groups that signed the letter.
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Cuba bajo presión y sin respuestas
Tenn. lawmakers pass transgender “watch list” bill
