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National news in brief: Feb 24

Roland Martin meets with GLAAD, Minn. Lutherans vote to oppose marriage ban, transgender editor Janet Mock honored as influential African American, and more

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CNN pundit Roland Martin met with glad to discuss homophobia and the impact of the violent Super Bowl night tweets.

CNN’s Roland Martin meets with GLAAD

LOS ANGELES — CNN contributor Roland Martin — who, on Super Bowl Sunday, posted controversial comments considered homophobic to his profile on Twitter — met with representatives from GLAAD, an LGBT media watchdog organization this week to discuss the impact of homophobia.

Prior to the game, Martin tweeted “If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him! #superbowl.” Martin initially denied his posting was meant to be homophobic, but eventually acknowledged that it could be construed as such.

Following the meeting with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Martin took to his show ‘Washington Watch’ to speak out against anti-LGBT violence and bullying, and to acknowledge the negative impact his words had.

“It was a discussion that touched on many other areas, and as GLAAD expressed in a statement afterwards – and a sentiment with which I concur – ‘Both parties came away with a better understanding of one another and look forward to continuing this dialogue,’” Martin said.

Minn. Evangelical Lutherans oppose marriage ban

MINNEAPOLIS — Members from 160 Minnesota Evangelical Lutheran churches overwhelmingly approved a resolution opposing a proposed ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage in the state Constitution, according to ABC affiliate KAAL.

“Jesus has no barriers in loving his children,” Karen Johnson, one of 700 voting members, told colleagues. “Education brings knowledge and knowledge brings healing. I’m passionate in the knowledge that his love is for all our children.”

Five other Evangelical Lutheran synods in Minnesota are expected to vote on similar resolutions soon.

Janet Mock honored by black news site

NEW YORK — Transgender People Magazine editor Janet Mock was included among the top 100 most influential African Americans by video news website, The Grio.

“Raised in Hawaii, Mock bucked societal norms early on; first putting on a dress as a dare when she was a child, and later wearing makeup and platform shoes as a teen,” the site wrote of the celebrated writer.

“I was very conscious of the fact that I was supposed to be a boy,” Mock said in a video posted to the site. “But very early on I also fought back against those norms that my father wanted his son to [follow], and I didn’t want to be his son, I wanted to be me, and ‘me’ was being a girl.”

Gay couple leads TV station’s wedding contest

ATLANTA — After winning more than 50 percent of the votes cast in a poll this week, Ronnie Mallette and Brent Ferricci were in first place among four couples competing for a dream wedding from an Atlanta television station.

The final decision will be made by a panel of judges, but at the moment a majority of voters in the 11 Alive “Wow Wedding Contest,” which annually delivers a dream wedding to one lucky couple, is supporting the two men who have been together for 11 years, according to their profile.

“Don’t forget how much you love each other,” said Jonathan Howard, who with his now-husband Gregory Jones took second place two years ago in a similar contest sponsored by Crate & Barrel. “The love you have for each other is very visible to everybody.”

“And when all is said and done, win or lose just putting yourself out there in this contest is making a difference,” Howard continued, saying the couple ought to reach out to friends and loved ones to help tell their story. “Words and images really do matter and being out there is making a difference. ”

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State Department

Transgender, nonbinary people file lawsuit against passport executive order

State Department banned from issuing passports with ‘X’ gender markers

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(Bigstock photo)

Seven transgender and nonbinary people on Feb. 7 filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s executive order that bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers.

Ashton Orr, Zaya Perysian, Sawyer Soe, Chastain Anderson, Drew Hall, Bella Boe, and Reid Solomon-Lane are the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the private law firm Covington & Burling LPP filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The lawsuit names Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as defendants.

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June 2021 announced the State Department would begin to issue gender-neutral passports and documents for American citizens who were born overseas.

Dana Zzyym, an intersex U.S. Navy veteran who identifies as nonbinary, in 2015 filed a federal lawsuit against the State Department after it denied their application for a passport with an “X” gender marker. Zzyym in October 2021 received the first gender-neutral American passport.

The State Department policy took effect on April 11, 2022.

Trump signed the executive order that overturned it shortly after he took office on Jan. 20. Rubio later directed State Department personnel to “suspend any application requesting an ‘X’ sex marker and do not take any further action pending additional guidance from the department.”  

“This guidance applies to all applications currently in progress and any future applications,” reads Rubio’s memo. “Guidance on existing passports containing an ‘X’ sex marker will come via other channels.”

The lawsuit says Trump’s executive order is an “abrupt, discriminatory, and dangerous reversal of settled United States passport policy.” It also concludes the new policy is “unlawful and unconstitutional.”

“It discriminates against individuals based on their sex and, as to some, their transgender status,” reads the lawsuit. “It is motivated by impermissible animus. It cannot be justified under any level of judicial scrutiny, and it wrongly seeks to erase the reality that transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people exist today as they always have.”

Solomon-Lane, who lives in North Adams, Mass., with his spouse and their three children, in an ACLU press release says he has “lived virtually my entire adult life as a man” and “everyone in my personal and professional life knows me as a man, and any stranger on the street who encountered me would view me as a man.”

“I thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety and ease,” he said. “Now, as a married father of three, Trump’s executive order and the ensuing passport policy have threatened that life of safety and ease.”

“If my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used my passport for travel or identification, causing potential risk to my safety and my family’s safety,” added Solomon-Lane.

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Federal Government

Education Department moves to end support for trans students

Mental health services among programs that are in jeopardy

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The U.S. Department of Education headquarters in D.C. (Photo courtesy of the GSA/Education Department)

An email sent to employees at the U.S. Department of Education on Friday explains that “programs, contracts, policies, outward-facing media, regulations, and internal practices” will be reviewed and cut in cases where they “fail to affirm the reality of biological sex.”

The move, which is of a piece with President Donald Trump’s executive orders restricting transgender rights, jeopardizes the future of initiatives at the agency like mental health services and support for students experiencing homelessness.

Along with external-facing work at the agency, the directive targets employee programs such as those administered by LGBTQ resource groups, in keeping with the Trump-Vance administration’s rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the federal government.

In recent weeks, federal agencies had begun changing their documents, policies, and websites for purposes of compliance with the new administration’s first executive action targeting the trans community, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

For instance, the Education Department had removed a webpage offering tips for schools to better support homeless LGBTQ youth, noted ProPublica, which broke the news of the “sweeping” changes announced in the email to DOE staff.

According to the news service, the directive further explains the administration’s position that “The deliberate subjugation of women and girls by means of gender ideology — whether in intimate spaces, weaponized language, or American classrooms — negated the civil rights of biological females and fostered distrust of our federal institutions.”

A U.S. Senate committee hearing will be held Thursday for Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for education secretary, who has been criticized by LGBTQ advocacy groups. GLAAD, for instance, notes that she helped to launch and currently chairs the board of a conservative think tank that “has campaigned against policies that support transgender rights in education.”

NBC News reported on Tuesday that Trump planned to issue an executive order this week to abolish the Education Department altogether.

While the president and his conservative allies in and outside the administration have repeatedly expressed plans to disband the agency, doing so would require approval from Congress.

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State Department

Protesters demand US fully restore PEPFAR funding

Activists blocked intersection outside State Department on Thursday

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HIV/AIDS activists block an intersection outside the State Department on Feb. 6, 2025. They were demanding the Trump-Vance administration to fully restore PEPFAR funding. (Photo courtesy of Housing Works)

Dozens of HIV/AIDS activists on Thursday protested outside the State Department and demanded U.S. officials fully restore President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding.

The activists — members of Housing Works, Health GAP, and the Treatment Action Group — blocked an intersection for an hour. Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell told the Washington Blade that police did not make any arrests.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Jan. 24 directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days in response to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed after his inauguration. Rubio later issued a waiver that allows PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the freeze.

The Blade on Wednesday reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of a lack of U.S. funding.

“PEPFAR is a program that has saved 26 million lives and changed the trajectory of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic,” said Housing Works CEO Charles King in a press release. “The recent freeze on its funding is not just a bureaucratic decision; it is a death sentence for millions who rely on these life-saving treatments. We cannot allow decades of progress to be undone. The U.S. must immediately reaffirm its commitment to global health and human dignity by restoring PEPFAR funding.” 

“We demand Secretary Rubio immediately reverse his deadly, illegal stop-work order, which has already disrupted life-saving HIV services worldwide,” added Russell. “Any waiver process is too little, too late.”

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