National
Obama includes gays in Holocaust speech
President urges genocide ‘never again’ occur

President Obama explicitly addressed the plight gay men faced during the Holocaust in a speech Monday urging that the atrocities of the genocide “never again” occur.
Speaking at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in D.C., Obama included gays as part of the groups of people who were among the estimated 6 million victims during the genocide.
“We must tell our children about a crime unique in human history,” Obama said. “The one and only Holocaust ā six million innocent people ā men, women, children, babies ā sent to their deaths just for being different, just for being Jewish. We tell them, our children, about the millions of Poles and Catholics and Roma and gay people and so many others who also must never be forgotten.”
Obama’s speech, delivered to an estimated 250 people, took place days after Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah, which began Wednesday evening and ended in the evening Thursday.
The audience consisted of Holocaust survivors, Jewish community leaders, and organizations that work on atrocity prevention. It’s unclear if any representatives of the LGBT community were in the audience.
“We must tell our children,” Obama said. “But more than that, we must teach them. Because remembrance without resolve is a hollow gesture. Awareness without action changes nothing. In this sense, ‘never again’ is a challenge to us all ā to pause and to look within.”
“Never again” was a refrain that Obama used repeatedly throughout the speech as he called for the rejection of hatred in all forms and the right for free states to exist, including Israel.
During the speech, Obama unveiled the executive order he signed earlier in the day authorizing sanctions on Syrian and Iranian companies using internet technology to track dissidents.
The president also announced he wouldĀ award the Presidential Medal of Freedom ā the nation’s highest civilian honor ā to Jan Karski, a Polish Catholic who witnessed Jews being taken away to concentration camps and personally reported about the genocide to President Franklin Roosevelt.
Prior to the speech,Ā Obama was led on a tour of the museum by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and Museum Director Sara Bloomfield.Ā After the tour, the president and Wiesel lit a candle and observed a moment of silence in the Hall of Remembrance.
Obama’s inclusion of gays in his speech is significant because gay men were persecuted under Nazi control of Germany, although the state didn’t seek to kill all gay men as it did with the Jews as part of Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution.”
The president addressed the atrocities of the Holocaust before in 2010Ā during a speech observing the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz ā but didn’t explicitly mention the plight that gays faced during the genocide at that time.
Edward Phillips, director of exhibition at the museum, said he thinks Obama was working off a phrase in Wiesel’s speech prior to Obama’s remarks in which the Holocaust survivor said, “Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.”
“I think it’s incredibly important that the understanding of what took place in Nazi Germany was not just about the persecution of Jews,” Phillips said. “There were a range of groups that were persecuted, including gay Germans. So, I think inclusion is the correct way of interpreting the history of the period.”
According to the Holocaust Museum’s website, gay men were denounced asĀ parasites and “enemies of the state.” Storm troopers closed down gay bars and other places where gay men gathered in addition to stopping the sale of publications with sexual content.
More than 100,000 men were arrested under laws against homosexuality and around 50,000 served prison terms as convicted homosexuals. Perhaps hundredsĀ were castrated under court order or coercion.
Gay men were among those who were sent to concentration camps. Between 5,000 and 15,000 gay men were imprisoned there. Many died there from starvation, disease, exhaustion, beatings and murder.
Lesbians didn’t suffer the same fate in Nazi Germany because they were deemed still capable of reproducing. However, theyĀ did suffer the loss of their own gathering places and associations.
A significant portion of the Holocaust Museum is dedicated to the persecution that gay men faced in Nazi Germany. ActivistsĀ David Mixner, Roberta Bennett and Rabbi Denise Eger raised more than $1 million to ensure the Holocaust museum addressed gay victims of the genocide.
About three or four different places of the permanent exhibition of the museum address gay persecution. A chart showing the various badges worn by prisoners of concentration camps reveals that gay men were forced to wear pink triangles ā a symbol that has since been adopted by the LGBT community as a sign of gay liberation.
State Department
Transgender, nonbinary people file lawsuit against passport executive order
State Department banned from issuing passports with ‘X’ gender markers

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 āXā 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 āsuspend any application requesting an āXā sex marker and do not take any further action pending additional guidance from the department.ā
āThis guidance applies to all applications currently in progress and any future applications,” reads Rubio’s memo. “Guidance on existing passports containing an āXā sex marker will come via other channels.ā
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.”
āI 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, Trumpās 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 familyās safety,ā added Solomon-Lane.
Federal Government
Education Department moves to end support for trans students
Mental health services among programs that are in jeopardy

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 āfail to affirm the reality of biological sex.ā
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, āDefending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.ā
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 āThe deliberate subjugation of women and girls by means of gender ideology ā whether in intimate spaces, weaponized language, or American classrooms ā 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.
State Department
Protesters demand US fully restore PEPFAR funding
Activists blocked intersection outside State Department on Thursday

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 ā members of Housing Works, Health GAP, and the Treatment Action Group ā 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 ālife-saving humanitarian assistanceā 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.
āPEPFAR 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.”
āWe 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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