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RNC 2012: Kolbe gives ‘qualified endorsement’ to Romney

Former lawmaker says GOP candidate better than Obama on economics

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Former congressman Jim Kolbe (Blade photo by Michael Key)

TAMPA, Fla. ā€” Former Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), who’s gay, offered his “qualified endorsement” of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Tuesday, saying the candidate’s business background makes him a good choice for president. Kolbe noted that Romney needs to come along further on LGBT issues.

“I think based on the economic issues, yeah, I think my endorsement would be a qualified endorsement,” Kolbe said in an interview with the Washington Blade. “I think he’s clearly the better of the two candidates, but we have a long ways to go to bring him around on this [LGBT rights] issue.”

Kolbe, 70, spoke with the Blade following remarks he delivered at theĀ “Republicans Out to Win” event co-hosted by the Log Cabin Republicans and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund at the Oystercatchers barĀ at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay. Other speakers included R. Clarke Cooper, Log Cabin’s national director, and Jeff Spitko, senior vice president for external affairs at the Victory Fund.

The former lawmaker, who served in the U.S. House from 1985 to 2007, said he wishes Romney were “further along in the development of his thinking” on LGBT rights, but addedĀ it’s one of many issues and said RomneyĀ “has a much better background in business and economics” than President Obama.

“I think he’s much more likely to turn the country in the right direction on fiscal matters,” Kolbe said. “To me, that is the existential issue that we face today, and for that reason, I support Mitt Romney.”

Romney has built up a significant anti-LGBT record over the course of his campaign. The candidate has signed an agreement with the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage pledging to back a Federal Marriage Amendment and defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court. Romney’s last stated position on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is that he opposes the legislation, although he once said he’d co-sponsor the bill as a U.S. Senate candidate in 1994.

Kolbe emphasized that a bi-partisan approach to LGBT rights is necessary and he expects the Republican Party to change on the issue over time because “it’s clearly, clearly a generational issue” andĀ younger members of the GOP are more progressive.

“I can honestly say I haven’t talked to a young person under the age of 30 that cares a whit about this issue, who thinks gay marriage is bad and should banished, abolished or denied,” Kolbe said. “There may be some that aren’t endorsing it, but none of them are actively opposed to it. It’s just totally generational.”

Asked if he wants Log Cabin to follow suit and endorse Romney, Kolbe replied he’d like to see the organization throw its support behind the candidate, but isn’t a member of the national board and doesn’t know what action the organization will take. Log Cabin is expected to announce whether or not it’ll endorse Romney prior to its national dinner in D.C. on Sept. 20.

Kolbe, a trade expert who’s a fellow at the German Marshall Fund think tank, said he’s spoken with the Romney campaign’s foreign policy team on trade and development issues, but hasn’t had any discussions with the Romney campaign on LGBT rights.

Even though Kolbe said he thinks Romney is better than Obama on economic issues, the former congressman said the election will be “very close” and said Romney needs to articulate his economic vision more clearly to win.

“He’s got to use this convention as his launching pad for a vision of what he would do that’s different than Obama,” Kolbe said. “And I think what he hasn’t done yet is articulate a different economic vision. We know it’s different, but we don’t know exactly what it is.”

The former lawmaker also responded to the anti-gay language in the draft version of the Republican Party platform. In addition to endorsing a Federal Marriage Amendment, the platform criticizes the Obama administration for dropping defense of DOMA in court and judges for “re-defining marriage” in favor of gay couples.

Kolbe predicted the 2012 Republican platform will be the last one to include such language.

“That’ll be the last time that will be in the Republican Party platform,” Kolbe said. “It won’t be there four years from now. It’s got its last gasp. I don’t believe it’ll be there four years from now; I wish it weren’t there now, but I don’t believe it will be four years from now.”

The Romney campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Kolbe’s “qualified endorsement” of the candidate.

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Montana

Montana Supreme Court blocks ban on healthcare for trans youth

ā€˜Todayā€™s ruling permits our clients to breathe a sigh of reliefā€™

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The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that SB 99, a 2023 Montana law that bans life-saving gender-affirming care for transgender youth, is unconstitutional under the Montana Constitutionā€™s privacy clause, which prohibits government intrusion into private medical decisions. This ruling will allow Montana communities and families to continue accessing medical treatments for transgender minors with gender dysphoria, the ACLU announced in a statement.

 ā€œI will never understand why my representatives are working to strip me of my rights and the rights of other transgender kids,ā€ Phoebe Cross, a 17-year-old transgender boy told the ACLU. ā€œJust living as a trans teenager is difficult enough, the last thing me and my peers need is to have our rights taken away.ā€

ā€œFortunately, the Montana Supreme Court understands the danger of the state interfering with critical healthcare,ā€ said Lambda Legal Counsel Kell Olson. ā€œBecause Montanaā€™s constitutional protections are even stronger than their federal counterparts, transgender youth in Montana can sleep easier tonight knowing that they can continue to thrive for now, without this looming threat hanging over their heads.ā€

ā€œWe are so thankful for this opportunity to protect trans youth, their families, and their medical providers from this baseless and dangerous law,ā€ said Malita Picasso, Staff Attorney for the ACLUā€™s LGBTQ & HIV Project. ā€œEvery day that transgender Montanans are able to access this care is a critical and life-saving victory. We will never stop fighting until every transgender person has the care and support they need to thrive.ā€

ā€œTodayā€™s ruling permits our clients to breathe a sigh of relief,ā€ said Akilah Deernose, Executive Director of the ACLU of Montana. ā€œBut the fight for trans rights is far from over. We will continue to push for the right of all Montanans, including those who are transgender, to be themselves and live their lives free of intrusive government interference.ā€

The Court found that the Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their privacy claim, holding: ā€œThe Legislature did not make gender-affirming care unlawful. Nor did it make the treatments unlawful for all minors. Instead, it restricted a broad swath of medical treatments only when sought for a particular purpose. The record indicates that Provider Plaintiffs, or other medical professionals providing gender-affirming care, are recognized as competent in the medical community to provide that care.[T]he law puts governmental regulation in the mix of an individualā€™s fundamental right ā€˜to make medical judgments affecting her or his bodily integrity and health in partnership with a chosen health care provider.ā€™

Two justices filed a concurrence arguing that the Court should also clarify that discrimination on the basis of transgender status is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Montanaā€™s Equal Protection Clause, the ACLU reported.

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U.S. Supreme Court

Expert challenges prevailing analysis that SCOTUS will uphold trans healthcare ban

NCLR’s Shannon Minter more optimistic about U.S. v. Skrmetti

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NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Less than a week after oral arguments were concluded in the landmark U.S. v. Skrmetti case, most pundits and legal experts seem to agree the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to uphold Tennessee’s law banning gender affirming health treatments for minors.

Shannon Minter, however, is not convinced.

In fact, as the legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights told the Blade during an interview on Tuesday, “neither I nor the lawyers I know who are following and have litigated these cases” buy into the “negative” analysis published by many mainstream press outlets after the parties addressed the justices at One First Street on Dec. 4.

“I was totally surprised,” Minter said, and “really disappointed,” in coverage of the oral arguments that appeared in places like SCOTUSblog, where Amy Howe wrote that “nearly all of the courtā€™s conservative majority expressed skepticism about a challenge to Tennesseeā€™s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender teenagers.”

The article was hardly an outlier. The New York Times reported it was “probable” that “there were at least five votes for rejecting the equal protection challenge to the law,” while Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern explained that Skrmetti will determine whether “constitutional limits on sex discrimination” can “survive this 6-3 conservative supermajority” and then concluded that “after two and a half hours of arguments, it appears the answer will be no.”

Conservative justices not in lockstep

From the interpretation of key exchanges between the justices and the parties last week to assessments of whether and to what extent certain conservatives might be inclined to join their liberal colleagues in this case and expectations for how precedent-setting decisions could shape its outcome, Minter offered a variety of reasons for why he is skeptical of the reasoning that undergirds much of the mainstream opinion on where the court is likely to land when a decision in Skrmetti is published, as expected, in June 2025.

Asked why his take on Wednesday’s oral arguments diverged so significantly from those offered by many reporters and legal analysts, Minter suggested that conservative Justice Samuel Alito might be responsible to some extent for “the negative perception [reflected] in the mainstream press” because he was “unremittingly negative and spoke a lot” and “took up most of the space.”

Last week aside, given his well established, deeply conservative ideological bent and record of skepticism toward LGBTQ rights, one might reasonably expect Alito to issue a decision that would uphold Tennessee’s trans healthcare ban. Likewise with respect to Justice Clarence Thomas who, compared to Alito, is hardly less conservative or more solicitous of opportunities to expand the LGBTQ community’s rights and freedoms.

Minter characterized both justices’ engagement with the Skrmetti litigants as “negative,” adding that another conservative on the bench, Brett Kavanaugh, was occasionally prickly but otherwise seemed eager to understand the nuances of the case and address questions like whether or how “a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, here” might “predetermine what we would have to do in a sports case.”

By contrast, it is difficult to predict where the other conservatives on the high court might land on legal questions central to the case. Neil Gorsuch, for instance, was difficult to read even before he declined to ask a single question or otherwise speak when the court heard oral arguments last week.

Minter noted that “less than four years ago when the court issued its decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, it was Gorsuch whose majority opinion, cosigned by the conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and their liberal colleagues, recognized “that discrimination because a person is transgender is inherently based on sex, that it is a type of sex discrimination.”

“So the issue here” in the Skrmetti case “looks awfully similar,” Minter said, because the core legal questions concern the constitutionality of “a statute that targets transgender people” and confronts the court with the question of “whether or not [the law] discriminates based on sex.”

Acknowledging that one should not read too deeply into Gorsuch’s decision to play his hand “extremely close to the vest” during oral arguments, Minter said, “I would like to think that if he had a significant change of view” since authoring the court’s landmark opinion on anti-trans discrimination in 2020, the justice would have “wanted to ask some questions to explore that.”

For these reasons, “just from the very outset,” one might reasonably expect or at least “be hopeful that Justice Gorsuch will continue to [treat] these issues the same way that he did in Bostock,” Minter said.

He added that Roberts, likewise, was careful last week not to indicate which direction he was leaning and instead asked both parties to address concise but challenging questions. While Minter conceded that “It’s hard to draw any definitive conclusion,” he said the chief justice’s performance offered little reason to suspect that he has “shifted his fundamental understanding of these issues from one case to another.”

In a more “encouraging” showing last week, the court’s sixth conservative justice, Amy Coney Barrett, appeared to be “taking these issues very seriously” and “very genuinely grappling with whether or not this is a sex based law, and even with whether discrimination against transgender people, which is considered in its own right, [should] be subject to some sort of heightened scrutiny,” Minter said.

Another major reason for optimism, Minter said, was the “very belabored” discussion of Bostock on Wednesday that was kicked off by the court’s interest in revisiting recent caselaw and the petitioners’ masterful application of relevant precedent to legal questions at issue in Skrmetti.

Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden-Harris administration’s U.S. solicitor general who represents the federal government and argues alongside the petitioners, did “such a beautiful job of saying that the analysis of Bostock itself was not new,” but rather “drew upon preexisting equal protection case law,” Minter said.

Importantly, he said Prelogar was careful to delineate how both the statutory proscriptions against workplace discrimination ordained by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the rights guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment “rely on something called but-for causation, where all you have to show is that sex, in this case, was a but-for cause of the discrimination ā€” meaning it doesn’t have to be the only cause; there can be other factors at play, but as long as it is a cause, it’s discrimination.”

“The reason Bostock was a surprise is just that, sadly, we’re so accustomed to the law not being applied equally or fairly to transgender people,” said Minter, who credited Gorsuch for applying “the law and the preexisting analysis honestly and fairly to transgender people” and deciding, “correctly,” that “there’s just no way to apply this framework that we’ve always applied and not come to the conclusion that this is sex discrimination.”

After the 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned decades-old abortion protections that were first established with Roe v. Wade in 1973, critics argued the conservative justices had cavalierly abandoned the principle of stare decisis, which holds that courts should abide or defer to previous precedent-setting decisions, where possible, especially in landmark decisions that govern how people live their lives.

Asked whether the Supreme Court might be less inclined to overturn decisions like Bostock that were issued more recently and authored by the justices who currently serve on the bench, Minter said “absolutely,” adding that it would be “extraordinary for them to not follow the analysis and reasoning in a decision they decided so recently.”

The stare decisis issue provides more reason for optimism about Skrmetti, Minter said. Overturning important precedent is “unsettling to the stability of the law and to the status and stature of the court,” and “it helps that Bostock was a 6-3 decision” rather than a narrower, more contentious case settled by a 5-4 majority.

The future of gender-affirming care

The path by which U.S. v. Skrmetti reached the highest court in the land is a case study of the devastating consequences, the second and third-order effects, of scapegoating a vulnerable community with a moral panic that is allowed to fester thanks to fear and bigotry.

After several years in which state legislatures collectively introduced hundreds of bills targeting the rights of trans young people and their families, including access to healthcare, the Movement Advancement Project reports that 37 percent of transgender youth (ages 13-17) now live in places that legally prohibit them from accessing best practice medication and surgical care, with dozens of states enforcing these bans.

Among them, of course, is Tennessee, where a complaint was filed last year and fast-tracked through the federal courts such that now, justices on the Supreme Court are debating whether unelected judges or democratically elected lawmakers should adjudicate complex questions that advocates (for queer and trans communities, for civil liberties, for healthcare providers) believe are best addressed by patients and families or caregivers in close coordination with trained specialists who operate under evidence-based guidelines for clinical practice.

Apart from litigation before the high court, another development that signals the appetite and the political will for bringing anti-trans policies and politics from statehouses to the national stage was the massive spend on anti-trans advertising to support Trump and other Republican campaigns during the 2024 election cycle, which Minter noted was “very painful and distressing” for trans people and their families.

After Nov. 5, debates about whether and the extent to which the GOP’s anti-trans messaging strategy may have delivered electoral victories for the president-elect, or for the congressional Republicans who maintained control of the U.S. House and reclaimed their majority in the U.S. Senate, have given way to concerns about the escalation of transphobic hate speech and the legislative and legal attacks against the community that began to ramp up well before the incoming Trump-Vance administration will be seated with the 119th Congress next month.

At this juncture, Minter said that trans young people and their families must wait to see not only how the Supreme Court decides U.S. v. Skrmetti and what the corresponding implications might be in terms of their access to healthcare, but also whether and how and how aggressively the attacks against them will take shape in January and beyond.

In the meantime, “there are some basic things people can do to protect themselves,” Minter said. For example, “this would be a good time to get your identity documents updated, if you haven’t done that yet. It’s a good time to make sure your prescriptions are current. if you live in a state that has banned trans healthcare for minors and you’re the parent of a transit child, you know, it’s good to explore out of state resources. It would be a good thing for transgender people to go ahead now and get copies of their medical records, or at least make sure you know how you can quickly do so in case you do need to make any adjustments to how you’re obtaining the care, if you need to find a new provider or explore out of state resources, depending on what may happen in your state.”

He added, “Now, if there’s some sort of national action,” like a federal ban on access to transgender medicine for minors, “then, of course, it’s not necessarily going to matter where you live, or what state you live in” but “NCLR and other legal groups are prepared to immediately challenge” any such action on the national level.

Here again, Minter, a transgender litigator who came out in his 30s and who throughout his career has argued highly consequential cases, with some yielding major advancements in LGBTQ civil rights, is optimistic. “The post election polling has shown that the public would not be supportive of that action,” he said, because Americans “would far prefer the federal government, the president, and Congress focus on issues that matter broadly to people, especially the economy.”

Earlier, when discussing an exchange between Barrett and the parties, which concerned the justice’s questions about America’s history of de jure (official, lawful) anti-trans discrimination, Minter remarked that”It’s a good thing” ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, who represents the plaintiffs alongside Prelogar, was there “to explain to the court that, yes, there certainly has been a long history of governmental discrimination against transgender people.”

Ticking through some examples Strangio had shared with the court, Minter noted American officials’ enforcement of bans on military service, bans on government employment, bans on marriage, bathroom bans, gendered dress codes based on birth sex, and policies under which trans parents or guardians were forced to forfeit custody of their children or dependents.

Barrett’s pursuit of this line of questioning, Minter said, was an optimistic sign. And perhaps there is even reason for hope that a conservative Christian Trump-appointed jurist’s interest in the country’s record of anti-trans discrimination could carry implications beyond how she decides the tremendously consequential case that is now before the court.

Either way, Barrett ā€” along with the other justices and their clerks and the courtroom staff, together with attorneys, spectators, journalists, and other observers who were lucky enough to score a spot to see the action live from One First Street (or, at least, were able to tune in remotely) ā€” saw Strangio make his case on Wednesday, becoming the first out transgender lawyer ever to argue before the high court.

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State Department

State Department honors Ghanaian LGBTQ activist

Ebenezer Peegan among Secretary of Stateā€™s Human Rights Defender Award recipients

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends the Human Rights Defender Award Ceremony at the State Department on Dec. 10, 2024. (State Department photo by Chuck Kennedy)

The State Department on Tuesday honored a Ghanaian LGBTQ activist and seven other human rights advocates from around the world.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented Rightify Ghana Executive Director Ebenezer Peegah with the Secretary of Stateā€™s Human Rights Defender Award during a ceremony at the State Department.

ā€œHeā€™s been a prominent figure advocating for equality and justice,ā€ Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Enrique Roig told the Washington Blade on Tuesday during an interview.

The other human rights activists who received the award include:

ā€¢ Mary Ann Abunda, a migrant workers advocate in Kuwait

ā€¢ Permanent Human Rights Assembly of Bolivia President Amparo Carvajal

ā€¢ Aida Dzhumanazarova, country director for the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law in Kyrgyzstan

ā€¢ Mang Hre Lian, founder of the Chin Media Network in Myanmar

ā€¢ Juana Ruiz of AsociaciĆ³n Asvidas, an organization that advocates for survivors of gender-based violence in Colombia

ā€¢ Rufat Sararov, a former prosecutor who runs Defense Line in Azerbaijan

The State Department posthumously honored Thulani Maseko, a prominent human rights activist from Eswatini who was killed in 2023. His wife, Tanele Maseko, accepted the award on his behalf.

The ceremony took place on International Human Rights Day, which commemorates the U.N. General Assemblyā€™s ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, 1948. Sararov did not attend because Azeri authorities arrested him before he could obtain a visa that would have allowed him to travel to the U.S.

Ghanaian Supreme Court to rule on anti-LGBTQ law on Dec. 18

Ghanaian lawmakers on Feb. 28 approved the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill that would, among other things, criminalize allyship. President Nana Akufo-Addo has said he will not sign the bill until the Supreme Court rules on whether it is constitutional or not. 

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the law on Dec. 18. John Dramani Mahama, the countryā€™s president-elect, will take office on Jan. 7.

Ruig applauded Peegahā€™s efforts to highlight the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill.

ā€œFor us in the U.S. government, the work that heā€™s done on this issue has also been instrumental in our own discussions with the current government as well as the incoming administration around the concerns that weā€™ve expressed with regards to this legislation,ā€ Roig told the Washington Blade ā€œHeā€™s been an important partner in all this as well.ā€

Peegah on Aug. 14 met with Pope Francis at the Vatican.

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