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Ugandan ambassador withdraws from King Day event

United Negro College Fund concerned about anti-gay persecution

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Uganda’s ambassador to the United States abruptly withdrew on Friday as the keynote speaker for a Jan. 16 Martin Luther King Day event sponsored by the United Negro College Fund in Greenbelt, Md.

The withdrawal by Ambassador Perezi K. Kamunanwire came one day after United Negro College Fund President and CEO Michael L. Lomax sent him a letter saying UNCF supporters had expressed concern over an anti-homosexuality bill recently introduced in the Uganda Parliament. The letter was triggered by an inquiry from the Blade.

ā€œYesterday I was asked for comment by the Washington Blade, the oldest and second-largest circulation LGBT newspaper in the country,ā€ Lomax told Kamunanwire in his letter.

ā€œUNCF’s history and mission make us especially alert to violations of human rights, wherever they occur,ā€ Lomax said in his letter. ā€œSo while we recognize that these issues are matters of internal Ugandan policy, we are dismayed at present polices in Uganda (and in many other African countries) criminalizing sexual orientation, and we view with alarm the draconian penalties, including the death penalty that the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill would impose if passed.ā€

Lomax added, ā€œGiven the interest expressed in the Washington community, I hope that you will address this issue when you speak at the King Day and take questions at the conclusion of your remarks.ā€

The Blade contacted the United Negro College Fund after a black LGBT resident of the D.C. area sent an email to the Blade expressing ā€œshock, sadness and disappointmentā€ that UNCF would invite a Ugandan official to speak at its King Day celebration given Uganda’s widely known record of anti-gay persecution.

ā€œWith the pending legislation there in Uganda, the death penalty for those found ā€˜guilty’ of being LGBTQ, I don’t think Ambassador Kamunanwire is the most appropriate speaker for Dr. King’s birthday,ā€ said the LGBT resident, who asked not to be identified.

Prior to Kamunanwire’s decision to withdraw as a speaker at the King Day event, UNCF spokesperson Joye Griffin told the Blade UNCF invited the ambassador to speak ā€œbased on his career as an educator and scholar,ā€ including his role as a professor at U.S. colleges.

ā€œAs one supporter put it, he has impressive credentials and his record indicates that he has spent a lifetime of engaging intellectually in the exploration of freedom struggles both here and abroad,ā€ Griffin said.

In his Jan. 12 letter to Kamunawire, which he released to the Blade, Lomax said he would be appearing at a separate United Negro College Fund event in Minneapolis to commemorate Martin Luther King Day in which the daughter of human rights advocate Bishop Desmond Tutu would appear.

ā€œAs I am sure you know, UNCF was founded 68 years ago in response to the pervasive denial of educational opportunities to African Americans,ā€ Lomax said in his letter. ā€œNon-discrimination is at the heart of what UNCF has always stood for. Our policy prohibits discrimination based on race, color, creed, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status and disability.ā€

Lomax told Kamunawire in his letter that UNCF is ā€œpartnering with the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans, on an initiative that has formed a working group to take stock of LGBT issues affecting students and faculty on our campuses and to establish a mission, goals and objectives to address those issues.ā€

In a press release issued on Friday, UNCF announced that Lomax apparently cancelled his appearance at the Minneapolis event and would replace Kamunanwire at the King Day celebration in Greenbelt.

The release says Lomax ā€œwill speak on human rights and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He will be substituting for the scheduled speaker, the Ugandan ambassador to the United States, Perezi K. Kamunawire, who withdrew after Dr. Lomax requested that he address the anti-homosexuality bill now pending in the Ugandan parliament.ā€

Kamunawire and a spokesperson for the Embassy of Uganda in Washington couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

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State Department

State Department hosts intersex activists from around the world

Group met with policy makers, health officials, NGOs

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The State Department last week hosted a group of intersex activists from around the world. (Courtesy photo)

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 JimĆ©nez, 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 today’s 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 ā€œXā€ gender marker. Zzyym in October 2021 received the first gender-neutral American passport.

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Federal Government

Federal government prepares for looming shutdown

White House warns of ‘damaging impacts across the country’

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U.S. Capitol Building (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

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 peoples’ 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: ā€œThere 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 President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

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Federal Government

QAnon follower pleads guilty to threatening member of Congress

Conspiracy movement claims Satan-worshipping pedophiles secretly rule the world

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QAnon banner at a pro-gun rally in Richmond, Va., in 2020. (YouTube screenshot from Anthony Crider)

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 Fox’s attorney from the Federal Public Defender’s 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/”V1″), who is from Houston. The call was received by V1’s office.

In the phone call Fox stated ā€œHey [Vl], you’re a man. It’s official. You’re literally a tranny and a pedophile, and I’m 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 ā€œQ 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 ā€œeradicationā€ of the people who were causing all the world’s misery. He believed that part of the eradication had already happened.

Fox explained that he had run Vl’s 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 ā€œQā€ 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 workers’ rights noted that Fox appears to be a ā€œtransvestigator.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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