National
Florida LGBT rights movement grows more visible
Local, state officials more receptive to advocates’ concerns
St. Petersburg (Fla.) Councilman Steve Kornell (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—St. Petersburg City Councilman Steve Kornell was at his first candidate debate in 2009 when a woman in the audience asked him to respond to a “rumor” that he was gay. There was an audible gasp in the room, but Kornell did not hesitate to acknowledge his sexual orientation.
Even his opponents applauded him.
“Even though I was completely out, thousands of people didn’t know me at all so they didn’t know that about me,” Kornell, whom voters elected to represent the city’s Pinellas Point neighborhood in 2009, told the Washington Blade during a Feb. 4 interview near his home. “Somebody could have used that as an attack, and my response to that was I’m going to put it right out there.”
Kornell is among the public faces of a statewide LGBT rights movement whose profile has grown significantly over the last 15 years.
Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, said she had difficulty putting together a statewide board of directors when the organization formed in 1997 because people were afraid they would lose their jobs if they were outed. Journalists who wanted to cover Equality Florida events had to stand in the back of the room. They could only film the backs of the heads of those who had given their permission to appear on camera.
“When people stepped forward to the microphone at a county commissioner or a city council meeting to talk about the need for basic discrimination protection, they were literally risking their job,” Smith said. “There are some parts of Florida where that remains true.”
Only a handful of cities and counties included gay-specific protections in their anti-discrimination and anti-bullying ordinances in 1997. That number has grown to dozens of municipalities throughout the state.
Then-Gov. Charlie Crist in 2010 announced Florida would no longer enforce a law that banned gays and lesbians from adopting children in response to a state appellate court that found the 1977 statute unconstitutional. He signed the state’s LGBT-inclusive anti-bullying law in 2008.
State Reps. Joe Saunders (D-Orlando) and Dave Richardson (D-Miami Beach) last year made history as the first openly gay candidates elected to the state legislature. The Florida Senate Committee on Children, Families and Elder Affairs on Feb. 19 will debate a bill sponsored by state Sen. Eleanor Sobel (D-Hollywood) that would create a statewide domestic partnership registry.
Saunders and state Sen. Joe Abruzzo (D-Wellington) on Feb. 7 filed the Florida Competitive Workforce Act that would add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the state’s employment non-discrimination law. State Rep. Holly Raschein (R-Key West) is the proposal’s primary co-sponsor.
“Florida has changed dramatically over the last 15 years,” Smith said. “The change has accelerated in just the past three or four years.”
In spite of the aforementioned victories, the movement has suffered a series of stinging setbacks over the last decade.
Voters in 2008 approved a state constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
The Hillsborough County Commission on Jan. 24 voted 4-3 against a proposed countywide domestic partner registry — commissioners in neighboring Pinellas County that includes St. Petersburg nine days earlier approved an identical registry for unmarried same-sex and heterosexual couples. The Lake County School Board’s move to ban extra-curricular clubs in the district after a group of middle school students in Leesburg tried to form a GSA has sparked outrage among LGBT advocates and their supporters.
Smith noted the board’s announcement coincided with a near unanimous vote in the Tavares City Council on Feb. 6 that created Lake County’s first domestic partner registry.
“It’s not a direct line between here and there,” she said. “It’s a zigzag line and forward motion and push back, but the message we deliver is we’re going to keep coming because we’re fighting for our lives, for our families, for many of us for our children. We’re never going to give up.”
SAVE Dade Executive Director CJ Ortuno (Photo by KUTTNERpix.com; courtesy of CJ Ortuno.)
CJ Ortuño, executive director of SAVE (Safeguarding American Values for Everyone) Dade, brings this message to his advocacy.
The Miami Beach resident who is a straight man of Cuban descent told the Blade that a gay man named John introduced his parents. He and his partner lived downstairs, and gave them the dining room table from which Ortuño’s young daughter Amalia eats.
Ortuño said he decided to become involved with the movement during President Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008 — the same year Florida voters approved the constitutional same-sex marriage ban.
“It was me staring at my daughter and saying, ‘I don’t know who she’s going to love when she gets older, but I’ll definitely be damned if I don’t do something,” he said. “I want to change this world and leave it a little better than the way I found it.”
SAVE Dade, which was founded in 1993 in the wake of the Anita Bryant-led movement that successfully repealed Dade County’s gay-inclusive human rights ordinance, continues to work with local municipalities to offer domestic partner benefits to their LGBT employees.
The Coral Gables City Commission last October unanimously approved domestic partner benefits to LGBT employees — more than a year after lesbian police officer Rene Tastet filed a complaint with the city manager’s office after she did not receive bereavement leave to attend her partner’s father’s funeral in North Carolina. The organization is also lobbying the Miami-Dade County Commission to add gender identity and expression to the county’s human rights ordinance.
“I think we can do that this year like our neighbors to the north (Broward County) and south (Monroe County) of us,” Ortuño said.
SAVE Dade also works with Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and other members of South Florida’s congressional delegation on immigration reform — and especially the Uniting American Families Act that would allow gays and lesbians to sponsor their foreign-born partners for residency in the United States. The organization also advocates for the re-authorization of the Ryan White CARE Act.
“We do the same thing on a statewide level,” he said, noting Miami-Dade has the largest legislative delegation in Tallahassee. “We don’t drive state policy, but we often support or provide resources through our Dade delegation.”
Smith said Equality Florida, which has chapters throughout the state, looks to its local partners to cultivate relationships with lawmakers in Tallahassee.
“They have a constituency that they are accountable to,” she said. “We really look to our local partners to help us reach out and cultivate these relationships. We do so much local work that the partnerships are essential.”
Saunders told the Blade during a Feb. 1 interview in his Orlando office that some of his fellow lawmakers are “still trying to readjust and figure out how to deal with this new community that’s now represented” in light of his and Richardson’s election. Kornell said his presence on the St. Petersburg City Council has had what he described as a positive impact on LGBT-specific issues.
St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster, whom Kornell said made some “less than pro-gay” statements when he was a city councilman, approved his proposal to extend domestic partner benefits to the city’s 1,800 non-unionized employees.
“The mayor went ahead and did it,” Kornell said. “That’s the kind of thing when we have gay people sitting at the table; those kinds of things start to shift. It’s hard to hate somebody when you get to know them.”
Federal Government
RFK Jr.’s HHS report pushes therapy, not medical interventions, for trans youth
‘Discredited junk science’ — GLAAD
A 409-page report released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services challenges the ethics of medical interventions for youth experiencing gender dysphoria, the treatments that are often collectively called gender-affirming care, instead advocating for psychotherapy alone.
The document comes in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order barring the federal government from supporting gender transitions for anyone younger than 19.
“Our duty is to protect our nation’s children — not expose them to unproven and irreversible medical interventions,” National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said in a statement. “We must follow the gold standard of science, not activist agendas.”
While the report does not constitute clinical guidance, its findings nevertheless conflict with not just the recommendations of LGBTQ advocacy groups but also those issued by organizations with relevant expertise in science and medicine.
The American Medical Association, for instance, notes that “empirical evidence has demonstrated that trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression.”
Gender-affirming care for transgender youth under standards widely used in the U.S. includes supportive talk therapy along with — in some but not all cases — puberty blockers or hormone treatment.
“The suggestion that someone’s authentic self and who they are can be ‘changed’ is discredited junk science,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. “This so-called guidance is grossly misleading and in direct contrast to the recommendation of every leading health authority in the world. This report amounts to nothing more than forcing the same discredited idea of conversion therapy that ripped families apart and harmed gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people for decades.”
GLAAD further notes that the “government has not released the names of those involved in consulting or authoring this report.”
Janelle Perez, executive director of LPAC, said, “For decades, every major medical association–including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics–have affirmed that medical care is the only safe and effective treatment for transgender youth experiencing gender dysphoria.
“This report is simply promoting conversion therapy by a different name – and the American people know better. We know that conversion therapy isn’t actually therapy – it isolates and harms kids, scapegoats parents, and divides families through blame and rejection. These tactics have been used against gay kids for decades, and now the same people want to use them against transgender youth and their families.
“The end result here will be a devastating denial of essential health care for transgender youth, replaced by a dangerous practice that every major U.S. medical and mental health association agree promotes anxiety, depression, and increased risk of suicidal thoughts and attempts.
“Like being gay or lesbian, being transgender is not a choice, and no amount of pressure can force someone to change who they are. We also know that 98% of people who receive transition-related health care continue to receive that health care throughout their lifetime. Trans health care is health care.”
“Today’s report seeks to erase decades of research and learning, replacing it with propaganda. The claims in today’s report would rip health care away from kids and take decision-making out of the hands of parents,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of NCLR. “It promotes the same kind of conversion therapy long used to shame LGBTQ+ people into hating themselves for being unable to change something they can’t change.”
“Like being gay or lesbian, being transgender is not a choice—it’s rooted in biology and genetics,” Minter said. “No amount or talk or pressure will change that.”
Human Rights Campaign Chief of Staff Jay Brown released a statement: “Trans people are who we are. We’re born this way. And we deserve to live our best lives and have a fair shot and equal opportunity at living a good life.
“This report misrepresents the science that has led all mainstream American medical and mental health professionals to declare healthcare for transgender youth to be best practice and instead follows a script predetermined not by experts but by Sec. Kennedy and anti-equality politicians.”
The White House
Trump nominates Mike Waltz to become next UN ambassador
Former Fla. congressman had been national security advisor
President Donald Trump on Thursday announced he will nominate Mike Waltz to become the next U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
Waltz, a former Florida congressman, had been the national security advisor.
Trump announced the nomination amid reports that Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, were going to leave the administration after Waltz in March added a journalist to a Signal chat in which he, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other officials discussed plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen.
“I am pleased to announce that I will be nominating Mike Waltz to be the next United States ambassador to the United Nations,” said Trump in a Truth Social post that announced Waltz’s nomination. “From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role.”
Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as interim national security advisor, “while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department.”
“Together, we will continue to fight tirelessly to make America, and the world, safe again,” said Trump.
Trump shortly after his election nominated U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to become the next U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Trump in March withdrew her nomination in order to ensure Republicans maintained their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
U.S. Federal Courts
Second federal lawsuit filed against White House passport policy
Two of seven plaintiffs live in Md.
Lambda Legal on April 25 filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of seven transgender and nonbinary people who are challenging the Trump-Vance administration’s passport policy.
The lawsuit, which Lambda Legal filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Baltimore, alleges the policy that bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers “has caused and is causing grave and immediate harm to transgender people like plaintiffs, in violation of their constitutional rights to equal protection.”
Two of the seven plaintiffs — Jill Tran and Peter Poe — live in Maryland. The State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the federal government are defendants.
“The discriminatory passport policy exposes transgender U.S. citizens to harassment, abuse, and discrimination, in some cases endangering them abroad or preventing them from traveling, by forcing them to use identification documents that share private information against their wishes,” said Lambda Legal in a press release.
Zander Schlacter, a New York-based textile artist and designer, is the lead plaintiff.
The lawsuit notes he legally changed his name and gender in New York.
Schlacter less than a week before President Donald Trump’s inauguration “sent an expedited application to update his legal name on his passport, using form DS-5504.”
Trump once he took office signed an executive order that banned the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers. The lawsuit notes Schlacter received his new passport in February.
“The passport has his correct legal name, but now has an incorrect sex marker of ‘F’ or ‘female,'” notes the lawsuit. “Mr. Schlacter also received a letter from the State Department notifying him that ‘the date of birth, place of birth, name, or sex was corrected on your passport application,’ with ‘sex’ circled in red. The stated reason was ‘to correct your information to show your biological sex at birth.'”
“I, like many transgender people, experience fear of harassment or violence when moving through public spaces, especially where a photo ID is required,” said Schlacter in the press release that announced the lawsuit. “My safety is further at risk because of my inaccurate passport. I am unwilling to subject myself and my family to the threat of harassment and discrimination at the hands of border officials or anyone who views my passport.”
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.
Lambda Legal represented Zzyym.
The State Department policy took effect on April 11, 2022.
Trump signed his executive order shortly after he took office in January. Germany, Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands are among the countries that have issued travel advisories for trans and nonbinary people who plan to visit the U.S.
A federal judge in Boston earlier this month issued a preliminary injunction against the executive order. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of seven trans and nonbinary people.
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