News
Republican’s proposal would make it easier to harass gay service members
Measure would put burden of proof on commanders to show ‘actual harm’


Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) is introducing an amendment to expand the “conscience” provision in defense law. (Photo public domain)
A House Republican from Louisiana is proposing a measure to expand the “conscience provision” in defense law in a way that would make it easier for service members to harass their gay comrades, according to a copy of his amendment provided by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The amendment, proposed by Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), puts the burden on the Pentagon to prove that the expression of religious beliefs would be an “actual harm” to good order and discipline in refusing to make an accommodation.
Further, the measure requires the Pentagon to implement regulations within 120 days after the defense secretary consults with “officialĀ militaryĀ Ā faith-groupĀ representativesĀ whoĀ endorseĀ militaryĀ chaplains.”
Fleming introduced the amendment before the House Armed Services Committee as a proposed change to the fiscal year 2014 defense authorization bill. The markup of that bill started at 10 a.m. on Wednesday and is expected to conclude late in the evening.
Ian Thompson, legislative representative of the ACLU, said the language proposed by the three-term House Republican would have a detrimental impact on a commanding officer’s ability to protect gay service members from harassment.
“It would tie the hands of commanders, prohibiting them from responsibly addressing threats to unit cohesion that an accommodation might create,” Thompson said.
The amendment would expand an existing “conscience provision” already in the law that President Obama signed under Section 533 as part of the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Authorization Act. At the time of the signing, Obama called it “unnecessary” and said he was signing the defense package under assurances the Pentagon wouldn’t “permit or condone discriminatory actions that compromise good order and discipline or otherwise violate military codes of conduct.”
Sexual orientation isn’t mentioned anywhere in the amendment, nor in the existing provision in the law that it would expand, but the amendment is likely intended to protect anti-gay service members.
Fleming’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the amendment or to verify the language offered by the ACLU.
The language of the amendment as provided by the ACLU follows:
SEC.Ā 5 EXPANSION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF PROTECTIONĀ OFĀ RIGHTSĀ OF CONSCIENCEĀ OFĀ MEMBERSĀ OFĀ THEĀ ARMEDĀ FORCES ANDĀ CHAPLAINSĀ OFĀ SUCHĀ MEMBERS
(a)Ā Ā ACCOMMODATIONĀ Ā OFĀ MEMBERS’Ā Ā BELIEFS, ACTIONS,Ā Ā AJ’\JDĀ SPEECH.-SubsectionĀ Ā (a)(1)Ā Ā Ā ofĀ section 533Ā ofĀ theĀ NationalĀ DefenseĀ AuthorizationĀ Ā ActĀ forĀ FiscalĀ YearĀ 2013Ā Ā (PublicĀ Ā LawĀ 112-239;Ā 126Ā Ā Stat.Ā Ā 1727;Ā Ā 10Ā Ā U.S.C.Ā prec.Ā 1030Ā note)Ā isĀ amended –
(1) by striking “TheĀ Ā Armed Forces shall accommodate the beliefs” and inserting “Except in cases of military necessity, the ArmedĀ Ā ForcesĀ Ā shallĀ accommodateĀ Ā theĀ Ā beliefs,Ā actions,Ā Ā andĀ Ā speech”;Ā Ā and
(2)Ā Ā byĀ Ā insertingĀ Ā Ā “,Ā Ā Ā actions,Ā Ā Ā orĀ Ā speech”Ā Ā Ā afterĀ “suchĀ Ā beliefs”.
(b)Ā NARROWĀ EXCEPTION.-SubsectionĀ (a)(2)Ā Ā of this sectionĀ isĀ amendedĀ byĀ strikingĀ Ā “thatĀ threaten”Ā andĀ insertingĀ “thatĀ actuallyĀ harm”.
(c) Ā DEADLINEĀ Ā FORĀ Ā Ā REGULATIONS;Ā Ā Ā Ā CONSULTATION.-TheĀ Ā implementationĀ regulations requiredĀ Ā byĀ subsectionĀ Ā (c)Ā ofĀ suchĀ Ā sectionĀ Ā shallĀ Ā beĀ issuedĀ Ā notĀ Ā laterĀ Ā thanĀ 120 daysĀ after theĀ Ā enactmentĀ Ā ofĀ thisĀ Ā Act.Ā Ā In preparingĀ suchĀ regulations,Ā Ā theĀ SecretaryĀ ofĀ DefenseĀ shallĀ consultĀ Ā withĀ Ā theĀ Ā officialĀ militaryĀ Ā faith-groupĀ representativesĀ whoĀ endorseĀ militaryĀ chaplains.
European Union
Latvia elects first openly gay president
Edgars RinkÄviÄs has been country’s foreign minister since 2011

The Latvian Parliament elected Edgars RinkÄviÄs as the countryās next president in a vote held Wednesday. When he assumes office on July 8, he will be the countryās first openly gay head of state, as well as the first openly gay head of state of an EU country or a former Soviet country.
Latviaās president is a largely ceremonial role that is elected by the national Parliament. He won a narrow majority of 52 out of 100 votes on the third ballot, held coincidentally during Pride week in the capital, Riga.
RinkÄviÄs has served as Latviaās foreign minister since 2011, a post where he became popular for championing European integration.
In 2014, he became the first Latvian political figure to come out publicly, while the country debated a same-sex civil union law. To date, the Latvian Parliament has still been unable to pass any laws recognizing same-sex couples, despite multiple court decisions ordering it to do so.
Reached for comment after the election, the Latvian LGBTQ advocacy group Mozaika and Riga Pride released a joint statement saying they are thrilled with the election.
āWe are thrilled about the fact that Edgars RinkÄviÄs will be the next president of Latvia. Ā First and foremost, he is one of the most popular and professional politicians in Latvia, and with this election he broke the glass ceiling. He is an absolute inspiration to many young people and the LGBTQ community at large.Ā
We are hopeful that he will stand behind his promise to have human rights and democracy as one of his priorities and we believe he will play an instrumental role to strengthen Latviaās society and will make it safer not just for the LGBT community but for many vulnerable groups,ā the groups say.

Not everyone has been so thrilled. Former Member of the European Parliament Andrejs Mamikins, tweeted that āGod will no longer bless Latvia,ā in response to the election.
āToday, godlessness won the presidential election in Latvia. Disgrace and misery @edgarsrinkevics,ā he wrote.
Latvian TV reports that the State Police have opened an investigation into Mamikinsā post for possible violations of the law banning incitement to hatred.
Latvia, a deeply conservative Baltic nation of about 1.8 million people about one-third of whom are Russian-speakers, regained its independence amid the breakup of the Soviet Union. Since that time, it has taken a stridently pro-Western political orientation, including joining NATO, the European Union and the Eurozone.
But the countryās political elite has never warmly embraced LGBTQ rights. According to ILGA-Europeās Rainbow Index 2023, Latvia scored only 22 percent on a list of legislated rights for LGBT people, placing it 37th among 49 ranked countries.
Latviaās neighbors on the Baltic Sea have also been slow to advance LGBTQ rights, although Estoniaās government is expected to advance a same-sex marriage bill in Parliament next week, and Lithuaniaās parliament passed a civil union bill through a second reading vote in May.
While openly gay and lesbian people have served as prime minister of several other EU countries ā including Irelandās Leo Varadkar, Luxembourgās Xavier Bettel and Belgiumās Elio Di Rupo ā RinkÄviÄs will be the first gay person to hold the role of head of state of an EU country. The only other openly gay head of state in modern history was Paolo Rondelli, who was one of the two Captains Regent of the microstate San Marino for six months in 2022.
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Rob Salerno is a writer, journalist and actor based in Los Angeles, California, and Toronto, Canada.
National
LGBTQ literature advocacy org to host celebrity panel
Discussion to be moderated by writer Saāiyda Shabazz, āGleeā actor Chris Colfer

Affectionately known by fans of the show as the āfashionable soprano,ā Chris Colferās character in āGleeā came out as gay to his father in the fourth episode of the Golden Globe-winning musical drama series. Colfer paused in between fragments of sentences to catch his breath as his pupils, set atop his recognizable rosy cheeks, dilated.
āBeing a part ofā¦the glee club and football has really shown me that I can be anything,ā he said. āAnd what I am isā¦Iām gay.ā
Colfer, who is also author of young adult fiction series āThe Land of Stories,ā will be one of four panelists at a virtual event hosted by LGBTQ organization Pride and Less Prejudice (PLP) on Saturday, June 3. At the event, panelists will discuss queer visibility in authorship and the importance of queer people telling queer stories.
āWe selected [them] because weāre trying to look at the intersection between TV, film, podcasts, [and] books because itās all media and itās all really great avenues for queer people telling their own story,ā said Rebecca Damante, co-founder and outreach coordinator of the organization.
PLP began in 2019 when Damante had conversations with her mother about her experiences as a queer person and how she came to terms with her sexuality in high school. Although she watched shows such as āGleeā and āPretty Little Liarsā that had great queer representation, she knew that āit wouldāve made a huge differenceā if she had seen this as a kid.
āI was a huge reader as a kid and my mom had a lot of great books in our library about interfaith families and adoption,ā said Damante. āI come from an interfaith family and have family members who are adopted, so she had diverse books in that way but never really had LGBTQ inclusive books.ā
This motivated the mother-daughter duo to start an organization that donates LGBTQ-inclusive books to classrooms from pre-K to third grade.
They posted a Google form to social media that was reposted by GLAAD, where Damante had interned, and amplified by LGBTQ activist Kristin Russo. Teachers would put in requests for books and this allowed PLP to start an email chain that they could also use to solicit donations.
It wasnāt until Damante posted to Pantsuit Nation, a Facebook group that rallied Hillary Clinton supporters during her 2016 presidential run, that PLP garnered interest from hundreds of teachers. This led to a celebrity campaign video where actors Nicole Maines, Theo Germaine, and Darryl Stephens, among others, emphasized the importance of LGBTQ literature in classrooms.
Since 2019, the organization has raised more than $140,000 in grants and donations and donated over 8,000 books.
Dylan Moss, a kindergarten teacher in Albany, N.Y., is among those who have benefitted from PLPās efforts.
During a quest for more diverse and inclusive books for his classroom, he stumbled upon PLPās website between 2020 and 2021 and reached out to the organization. Since then, he has been actively involved in PLPās efforts and is now a member of the advisory committee that helps to create lesson plans that accompany the books.
āBiases start to get formed [in kindergarten], so I like to help [my students] create better narratives,ā said Moss in a Zoom interview. āItās easier to learn it now than to take away all the negative biases they have from everyday society, family, and just being around other humans.ā
Moss also added, over email, that when discussing diverse topics in the classroom, conversations are aligned with social studies standards.
āIād rather [my students] understand that people are different and that thereās a reason weāre different and that we should love that weāre different,ā he said on Zoom. āYou donāt have to go deep into the ideas necessarily. You can just give them the basis of what youāre saying and kind of let them take it from there.ā
For Lisa Forman, Damanteās mom and co-founder and executive director of PLP, approaching education this way is not only a form of allyship and advocacy, itās āstanding up for whatās right.ā
The first half of the 2022-2023 school year saw 1,477 attempts to ban 874 individual book titles, 26% of which had LGBTQ characters or themes, according to data from Pen America, an organization that advances human rights and literature causes in the United States and worldwide.Ā
In 2022, the Washington Blade reported that a Loudoun County, Va., school board voted to remove āGender Queer: A Memoir,ā an illustrated autobiography by non-binary author Maia Kobabe that contains descriptions and comic book style drawings of sexual acts that Kobabe uses to tell the story of the journey and struggle in discovering the authorās gender identity.
āAs much as these books are for the queer kids in the classroom, theyāre for every kid,ā said Forman. āWeāre doing this not just for the queer kidsā¦we want to normalize the idea of being queer in the classroom.ā
Looking to the upcoming celebrity panel, Damante wants to leave attendees feeling inspired enough to own their narratives, whether they identify as queer or not.
āIf teachers are able to see the impact of these queer stories then theyāll understand why itās important for them to share the books,ā she said.
Maryland
Prince Georgeās County library system launches banned book club
First discussion to take place in Hyattsville on June 14

The Prince Georgeās County Memorial Library System has launched its Rock Banned Book Club.
The club will feature monthly discussions of the 13 top banned books from 2022, most of which focus on LGBTQ-specific themes.
The clubās first discussion, which will take place at the Hyattsville Branch Library on June 14, will be on āGender Queer: A Memoirā by Maia Kobabe.
Kobabeās memoir won the 2020 American Library Association Alex Award and recounts Kobabeās exploration of gender identity and sexuality through adolescence and adulthood. According to the American Library Association, the book faced the most censorship challenges of any novel at 151.
āWeāre seeing nationally the highest rate of challenges to books in libraries since the data has been collected by the American Library Association,ā Nicholas Brown, acting co-chief executive officer of the library, said. āI think what happens with all of the discourse around book banning is that, oftentimes, not everyone participating in that discourse is actually taking the time to read the full works and discuss them and understand where the author might be coming from and whose stories are being reflected in these books.ā
Along with the book club, the library system is hosting a Pride celebration at the Hyattsville branch on Saturday from 12 – 4 p.m. It will feature a panel discussion, vogue and runway workshops, free HIV testing and more.
The library system will host its second annual Rainbow Festival on June 24 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Bowie Branch Library with family-friendly events like craft stations, story time and a live DJ. In April, the library system won a Top Innovator Award from the Urban Libraries Council for its banned books campaign.
āI think a lot of folks donāt always realize that your local public library is kind of the front line of democracy and we always have been,ā Brown said. āPublic libraries across the country are very united on this and if the right to read continues to be under threat like itās been, it is not a good time for the state of our democracy.ā
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