National
Election results bolster state marriage fights
Rhode Island, other states expected to debate issue in 2013


Polls show President Obama’s same-sex marriage support did not hurt him among voters. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Same-sex marriage advocates contend the Nov. 6 election results have given them additional momentum to fight for nuptials for gays and lesbians in their respective states.
Ray Sullivan, campaign manager of Marriage Equality Rhode Island, the group fighting for marriage rights for same-sex couples there, noted to the Washington Blade in a post-Election Day interview the General Assembly will have “more pro-equality legislators seated than ever in history” in 2013.
Gay House Speaker Gordon Fox, who sparked controversy in 2011 when he endorsed a civil unions bill because of a lack of support in his chamber for a marriage measure, has pledged to call a vote on a proposal that would allow nuptials for gays and lesbians in the state before the end of January. The Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union noted in May only 52 couples had obtained civil union licenses since the state’s civil union took effect in July 2011.
Gov. Lincoln Chafee signed an executive order earlier this year mandating state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in neighboring Massachusetts, Connecticut and other states. He has also publicly backed marriage rights for same-sex couples, even though he reluctantly signed the controversial 2011 civil unions bill into law.
“There is this sense that finally in Rhode Island it’s not a matter of if, but when,” said Sullivan, who noted MERI and other advocates could focus on building additional support for the same-sex marriage bill in the state Senate if it passes in the House. “The results from last Tuesday both here and throughout the country represent quite frankly ground-shifting momentum for the pro-equality effort. Our focus and our jobs will be to capitalize on that momentum, reaffirm the support we already have, work with this record [majority and] finally make 2013 the year that we get this done.”
Voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington on Election Day approved referenda that either extended nuptials to gays and lesbians or upheld their state’s same-sex marriage laws. Minnesotans also rejected a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, who supports nuptials for gays and lesbians, is among those who spoke out against Amendment 1.
Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, who signed his state’s civil unions bill into law in May 2011, raised eyebrows in August when he suggested to the Huffington Post state lawmakers could debate a same-sex marriage bill as early as next year.
Garden State Equality Chair Steven Goldstein expressed confidence in a post-Election Day statement New Jersey’s Democratic-controlled state legislature will override Gov. Chris Christie’s veto of the same-sex marriage bill lawmakers approved earlier this year. The state does not have a referendum or initiative process, but Goldstein stressed his group remains opposed to the idea of allowing voters to consider marriage rights for gays and lesbians at the ballot.
“The majority should never vote on the civil rights of a minority, period,” he said.
Same-sex marriage advocates in other states are poised to implement a different strategy.
Basic Rights Oregon has launched an online campaign designed to bolster support for a 2014 ballot measure that would overturn the state’s constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Oregon would become the first state in the country to overturn such a ban if voters support the referendum.
“As more and more Americans are having conversations with gay and lesbian friends and family about why marriage matters, they’re coming to realize that this is not a political issue: This is about love, commitment and family,” reads the appeal. “We know that we are on the right path. Our outreach, just like that of the states who [have won] the freedom to marry is winning hearts and minds.”
Rick Sutton, executive director of Equality Indiana Action, which opposes a proposed state constitutional amendment that would ban marriage for same-sex couples that is expected to go before voters in 2014, told the Blade his group has already looked to the campaign that defeated Minnesota’s Amendment 1 for guidance.
“It’s pretty clear to me to win an amendment like that — there’s was very similar to what ours will likely be — you have to have a pretty broad coalition of businesses, faith community, labor, retired folks, the whole gamut,” said Sutton. He noted WellPoint, the Simon Property Group and other Indiana-based corporations have already spoken out against the proposed amendment. “It will be difficult to attract and retain top quality scientists and engineers, particularly younger ones, who just don’t think this is something government should be getting involved with. They’re concerned about their future workforce.”
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Nov. 14 indicates 51 percent of Americans support marriage rights for same-sex couples. A Gallup poll conducted shortly after President Obama publicly endorsed marriage rights for same-sex couples noted 60 percent of respondents said his position on the issue would not influence whether they would support or oppose his re-election bid.
“What happened I think with this election is that it’s taken away the argument from our opponents that when legislators are forced to vote to affirm the right of same-sex couples to marriage equality, the popular sentiment is on the opposite side,” Equality Illinois CEO Bernard Cherkasov told the Blade.
Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Illinois on May 30 filed lawsuits against the Cook County Clerk’s office on behalf of 25 same-sex couples. Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez have both said they support the litigation, while Cook County Clerk David Orr and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel are among those who support marriage rights for same-sex couples.
More than 4,800 same-sex couples have taken advantage of the state’s civil unions law since it took effect in July 2011, but Cherkasov said the election results confirm “there’s popular support for marriage equality.”
“Lawmakers should follow suit and actually grant marriage equality to gay and lesbian couples in loving, committed relationships,” he said. “We intend to carry that message to our lawmakers in Illinois.”
Sutton agreed as he discussed Obama’s evolution on the successful same-sex marriage referenda in Maine, Maryland and Washington on Election Day.
“National momentum is there,” he said. “The time has come for the other side to realize where they are. They won’t give up quietly. Their argument never changes. It’s always the same, and we’re ready for that. We’re absolutely ready.”
Federal Government
Treasury Department has a gay secretary but LGBTQ staff are under siege
Agency reverses course on LGBTQ inclusion under out Secretary Scott Bessent

A former Treasury Department employee who led the agency’s LGBTQ employee resource group says the removal of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) from its discrimination complaint forms was merely a formalization of existing policy shifts that had already taken hold following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump and his appointment of Scott Bessent — who is gay — to lead the agency.
Christen Boas Hayes, who served on the policy team at Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from 2020 until March of this year, told the Washington Blade during a phone interview last week that the agency had already stopped processing internal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints on the basis of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
“So the way that the forms are changing is a procedural recognition of something that’s already happening,” said Hayes. “Internally, from speaking to two EEO staff members, the changes are already taking place from an EEO perspective on what kind of cases will be found to have the basis for a complaint.”
The move, they said, comes amid the deterioration of support structures for LGBTQ workers at the agency since the administration’s early rollout of anti-LGBTQ executive orders, which led to “a trickle down effect of how each agency implements those and on what timeline,” decisions “typically made by the assistant secretary of management’s office and then implemented by the appropriate offices.”
At the end of June, a group of U.S. House Democrats including several out LGBTQ members raised alarms after a Federal Register notice disclosed Treasury’s plans to revise its complaint procedures. Through the agency’s Office of Civil Rights and EEO, the agency would eliminate SOGI as protected categories on the forms used by employees to initiate claims of workplace discrimination.
But Hayes’s account reveals that the paperwork change followed months of internal practice, pursuant to a wave of layoffs targeting DEI personnel and a chilling effect on LGBTQ organizing, including through ERGs.
Hayes joined Treasury’s FinCEN in 2020 as the agency transitioned into the Biden-Harris administration, working primarily on cryptocurrency regulation and emerging technologies until they accepted a “deferred resignation” offer, which was extended to civil servants this year amid drastic staffing cuts.
“It was two things,” Hayes said. “One was the fact that the policy work that I was very excited about doing was going to change in nature significantly. The second part was that the environment for LGBTQ staff members was increasingly negative after the release of the executive orders,” especially for trans and nonbinary or gender diverse employees.
“At the same time,” Hayes added, “having been on the job for four years, I also knew this year was the year that I would leave Treasury. I was a good candidate for [deferred resignation], because I was already planning on leaving, but the pressures that emerged following the change in administration really pushed me to accelerate that timeline.”
Some ERGs die by formal edict, others by a thousand cuts
Hayes became involved with the Treasury LGBTQ ERG shortly after joining the agency in 2020, when they reached out to the group’s then-president — “who also recently took the deferred resignation.”
“She said that because of the pressure that ERGs had faced under the first Trump administration, the group was rebuilding, and I became the president of the group pretty quickly,” Hayes said. “Those pressures have increased in the second Trump administration.”
One of the previous ERG board members had left the agency after encountering what Hayes described as “explicitly transphobic” treatment from supervisors during his gender transition. “His supervisors denied him a promotion,” and, “importantly, he did not have faith in the EEO complaint process” to see the issues with discrimination resolved, Hayes said. “And so he decided to just leave, which was, of course, such a loss for Treasury and our Employee Resource Group and all of our employees at Treasury.”
The umbrella LGBTQ ERG that Hayes led included hundreds of members across the agency, they said, and was complemented by smaller ERGs at sub-agencies like the IRS and FinCEN — several of which, Hayes said, were explicitly told to cease operations under the new administration.
Hayes did not receive any formal directive to shutter Treasury’s ERG, but described an “implicit” messaging campaign meant to shut down the group’s activities without issuing anything in writing.
“The suggestion was to stop emailing about anything related to the employee resource group, to have meetings outside of work hours, to meet off of Treasury’s campus, and things like that,” they said. “So obviously that contributes to essentially not existing functionally. Because whereas we could have previously emailed our members comfortably to announce a happy hour or a training or something like that, now they have to text each other personally to gather, which essentially makes it a defunct group.”
Internal directories scrubbed, gender-neutral restrooms removed
Hayes said the dismantling of DEI staff began almost immediately after the executive orders. Employees whose position descriptions included the terms “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were “on the chopping block,” they said. “That may differ from more statutorily mandated positions in the OMWI office or the EEO office.”
With those staff gone, so went the infrastructure that enabled ERG programming and community-building. “The people that made our employee resource group events possible were DEI staff that were fired. And so, it created an immediate chilling effect on our employee resource group, and it also, of course, put fear into a lot of our members’ hearts over whether or not we would be able to continue gathering as a community or supporting employees in a more practical way going forward. And it was just, really — it was really sad.”
Hayes described efforts to erase the ERGs from internal communication channels and databases. “They also took our information off internal websites so nobody could find us as lawyers went through the agency’s internal systems to scrub DEI language and programs,” they said.
Within a week, Hayes said, the administration had removed gender-neutral restrooms from Main Treasury, removed third-gender markers from internal databases and forms, and made it more difficult for employees with nonbinary IDs to access government buildings.
“[They] made it challenging for people with X gender markers on identification documents to access Treasury or the White House by not recognizing their gender marker on the TWAVES and WAVES forms.”
LGBTQ staff lack support and work amid a climate of isolation
The changes have left many LGBTQ staff feeling vulnerable — not only because of diminished workplace inclusion, but due to concerns about job security amid the administration’s reductions in force (RIFs).
“Plenty of people are feeling very stressed, not only about retaining their jobs because of the layoffs and pending questions around RIFs, but then also wondering if they will be included in RIF lists because they’re being penalized somehow for being out at work,” Hayes said. “People wonder if their name will be given, not because they’re in a tranche of billets being laid off, but because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.”
In the absence of functional ERGs, Hayes said, LGBTQ employees have been cut off from even informal networks of support.
“Employees [are] feeling like it’s harder to find members of their own community because there’s no email anymore to ask when the next event is or to ask about navigating healthcare or other questions,” they said. “If there is no ERG to go to to ask for support for their specific issue, that contributes to isolation, which contributes to a worse work environment.”
Hayes said they had not interacted directly with Secretary Bessent, but they and others observed a shift from the previous administration. “It is stark to see that our first ‘out’ secretary did not host a Pride event this year,” they said. “For the last three years we’ve flown the rainbow Pride flag above Treasury during Pride. And it was such a celebration among staff and Secretary Yellen and the executive secretary’s office were super supportive.”
“Employees notice changes like that,” they added. “Things like the fact that the Secretary’s official bio says ‘spouse’ instead of ‘husband.’ It makes employees wonder if they too should be fearful of being their full selves at work.”
The Blade contacted the Treasury Department with a request for comment outlining Hayes’s allegations, including the removal of inclusive infrastructure, the discouragement of ERG activity, the pre-formalization of EEO policy changes, and the targeting of DEI personnel. As of publication, the agency has not responded.
U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court to consider bans on trans athletes in school sports
27 states have passed laws limiting participation in athletics programs

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear two cases involving transgender youth challenging bans prohibiting them from participating in school sports.
In Little v. Hecox, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU, Legal Voice, and the law firm Cooley are challenging Idaho’s 2020 ban, which requires sex testing to adjudicate questions of an athlete’s eligibility.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described the process in a 2023 decision halting the policy’s enforcement pending an outcome in the litigation. The “sex dispute verification process, whereby any individual can ‘dispute’ the sex of any female student athlete in the state of Idaho,” the court wrote, would “require her to undergo intrusive medical procedures to verify her sex, including gynecological exams.”
In West Virginia v. B.P.J., Lambda Legal, the ACLU, the ACLU of West Virginia, and Cooley are representing a trans middle school student challenging the Mountain State’s 2021 ban on trans athletes.
The plaintiff was participating in cross country when the law was passed, taking puberty blockers that would have significantly reduced the chances that she could have a physiological advantage over cisgender peers.
“Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project. “Trans kids play sports for the same reasons their peers do — to learn perseverance, dedication, teamwork, and to simply have fun with their friends,” Block said.
He added, “Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth. We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”
“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Tara Borelli. “Everyone understands the value of participating in team athletics, for fitness, leadership, socialization, and myriad other benefits.”
Borelli continued, “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last April issued a thoughtful and thorough ruling allowing B.P.J. to continue participating in track events. That well-reasoned decision should stand the test of time, and we stand ready to defend it.”
Shortly after taking control of both legislative chambers, Republican members of Congress tried — unsuccessfully — to pass a national ban like those now enforced in 27 states since 2020.
Federal Government
UPenn erases Lia Thomas’s records as part of settlement with White House
University agreed to ban trans women from women’s sports teams

In a settlement with the Trump-Vance administration announced on Tuesday, the University of Pennsylvania will ban transgender athletes from competing and erase swimming records set by transgender former student Lia Thomas.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found the university in violation of Title IX, the federal rights law barring sex based discrimination in educational institutions, by “permitting males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to occupy women-only intimate facilities.”
The statement issued by University of Pennsylvania President J. Larry Jameson highlighted how the law’s interpretation was changed substantially under President Donald Trump’s second term.
“The Department of Education OCR investigated the participation of one transgender athlete on the women’s swimming team three years ago, during the 2021-2022 swim season,” he wrote. “At that time, Penn was in compliance with NCAA eligibility rules and Title IX as then interpreted.”
Jameson continued, “Penn has always followed — and continues to follow — Title IX and the applicable policy of the NCAA regarding transgender athletes. NCAA eligibility rules changed in February 2025 with Executive Orders 14168 and 14201 and Penn will continue to adhere to these new rules.”
Writing that “we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules” in place while Thomas was allowed to compete, the university president added, “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”
“Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, UPenn has agreed both to apologize for its past Title IX violations and to ensure that women’s sports are protected at the university for future generations of female athletes.”
Under former President Joe Biden, the department’s Office of Civil Rights sought to protect against anti-LGBTQ discrimination in education, bringing investigations and enforcement actions in cases where school officials might, for example, require trans students to use restrooms and facilities consistent with their birth sex or fail to respond to peer harassment over their gender identity.
Much of the legal reasoning behind the Biden-Harris administration’s positions extended from the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that sex-based discrimination includes that which is based on sexual orientation or gender identity under Title VII rules covering employment practices.
The Trump-Vance administration last week put the state of California on notice that its trans athlete policies were, or once were, in violation of Title IX, which comes amid the ongoing battle with Maine over the same issue.
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