National
Manning found guilty of lesser charges
LGBT advocates say gay soldier’s actions unrelated to his sexual orientation
Pfc. Bradley Manning was acquitted of aiding-the-enemy, the most serious charge brought against him. (Public domain photo)
A military judge on Tuesday found gay U.S. Army private Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge lodged against him following allegations in 2010 that he leaked hundreds of thousands of classified military reports and diplomatic cables.
At the conclusion of a court martial proceeding that began in June at Fort Meade, Md., Army Col. Denise Lind found Manning guilty of nearly all of the other charges filed against him, including six counts of violating the U.S. Espionage Act. All of the charges stemmed from his alleged transmittal of the classified documents to the dissident, whistleblower group Wikileaks.
The verdict came after Manning pleaded guilty earlier this year to 10 of the 22 counts filed against him. Experts in military law said the charges on which he was convicted carry a combined maximum sentence of 136 years of confinement in a military prison, although they expect the judge to hand down a much shorter sentence.
Had he been convicted on the aiding-the-enemy charge, he could have faced life in prison without the possibility of parole.
LGBT activists following the Manning case dispute press reports that surfaced at the time of his arrest in 2010 that his motive for leaking the classified information was related, in part, to his anger over the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law, which banned gays from serving openly in the armed forces.
Transgender advocates have also expressed skepticism of a claim by one of Manning’s defense attorneys that his action was due, in part, to his personal struggle over his gender identity. The attorney and others who know Manning noted that he referred to himself for a short period of time with a female name and downloaded information over the internet about gender identity disorder.
“I don’t see that his identity has anything to do with what he did,” said Maryland transgender advocate Dana Beyer. “His sexual identity, however you want to define it, is completely irrelevant.”
Beyer’s assessment appears to be shared by virtually all of the national LGBT advocacy organizations, which have either remained silent on the Manning case or have said Manning’s actions should not be condoned and don’t reflect the views of the LGBT rights movement.
That view surfaced in the news in the spring of this year when the San Francisco LGBT Pride committee rejected a proposal to name Manning as a grand marshal for the city’s Pride parade.
Fred Sainz, vice president of communications for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT political organization, told the Blade this week that HRC would have no comment on the Manning verdict.
Spokespersons for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), which monitors media coverage of the LGBT community, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
D.C. gay attorney Philip Fornaci is among the small corps of LGBT activists who have joined opponents of U.S. policies in the Middle East and elsewhere that have supported Manning and helped raise money for his legal defense.
Supporters argue that Manning is a whistle blower who courageously released information showing a flawed and illegal U.S. foreign policy to enable the American public to pressure the government to change those policies.
“While the national LGBT advocacy organizations shamelessly shower President Obama with praise for allowing openly gay men and women to enlist in the military, their complete silence on the Manning case is indefensible,” Fornaci said in an Aug. 6, 2012 commentary in the Blade. “If Manning did in fact leak information to Wikileaks as he is accused, he has displayed enormous courage.”
Presenting a far different perspective on Manning was R. Clarke Cooper, former executive director of the national gay group Log Cabin Republicans. Cooper, a combat veteran of the Iraq War and current civilian intelligence officer in the Army Reserves, penned a Blade commentary in December 2011 calling Manning “a traitor to the United States of America.”
Responding to early reports, which have since been disputed — that Manning might seek to use his opposition to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell as a defense for leaking classified documents — Cooper called such a defense a “betrayal of all gay and lesbian service members past and present.”
He added, “Whatever his reasons or excuses, Bradley Manning does not deserve the sympathy of the LGBT community.”
Peter Rosenstein, a gay Democratic activist and supporter of the Obama administration, expressed a similar view opposing LGBT support for Manning.
“I don’t believe the fact that Manning is gay has anything to do with his case,” Rosenstein told the Blade. “What he did was wrong, maybe even treasonous. Making him a gay hero as they tried to do in San Francisco is absurd.”
Shortly after his 2010 arrest, the publicly viewable part of Manning’s Facebook profile listed the Washington Blade as among his ‘favorite’ pages along with several other LGBT-related websites, including the Human Rights Campaign, gay then U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), and a site pushing for repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
The anti-gay Family Research Council cited reports of Manning’s backing of gay rights causes to support its strong opposition to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t tell.
D.C. gay blogger John Aravosis reported that no evidence was found to show Manning leaked classified information because he was upset over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or supported gay rights.
A national group called the Bradley Manning Support Network, whose members have corresponded with Manning and members of Manning’s family, has said Manning’s motive for releasing classified documents was a desire to correct what he believed to be a harmful U.S. foreign policy.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
State Department
Rubio mum on Hungary’s Pride ban
Lawmakers on April 30 urged secretary of state to condemn anti-LGBTQ bill, constitutional amendment
More than 20 members of Congress have urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to publicly condemn a Hungarian law that bans Pride events.
California Congressman Mark Takano, a Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.), who is the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Europe Subcommittee, spearheaded the letter that lawmakers sent to Rubio on April 30.
Hungarian lawmakers in March passed a bill that bans Pride events and allow authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify those who participate in them. MPs last month amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ events.
“As a NATO ally which hosts U.S. service members, we expect the Hungarian government to abide by certain values which underpin the historic U.S.-Hungary bilateral relationship,” reads the letter. “Unfortunately, this new legislation and constitutional amendment disproportionately and arbitrarily target sexual and gender minorities.”
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government over the last decade has moved to curtail LGBTQ and intersex rights in Hungary.
A law that bans legal recognition of transgender and intersex people took effect in 2020. Hungarian MPs that year also effectively banned same-sex couples from adopting children and defined marriage in the constitution as between a man and a woman.
An anti-LGBTQ propaganda law took effect in 2021. The European Commission sued Hungary, which is a member of the European Union, over it.
MPs in 2023 approved the “snitch on your gay neighbor” bill that would have allowed Hungarians to anonymously report same-sex couples who are raising children. The Budapest Metropolitan Government Office in 2023 fined Lira Konyv, the country’s second-largest bookstore chain, 12 million forints ($33,733.67), for selling copies of British author Alice Oseman’s “Heartstopper.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman, who is gay, participated in the Budapest Pride march in 2024 and 2023. Pressman was also a vocal critic of Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown.
“Along with years of democratic backsliding in Hungary, it flies in the face of those values and the passage of this legislation deserves quick and decisive criticism and action in response by the Department of State,” reads the letter, referring to the Pride ban and constitutional amendment against public LGBTQ events. “Therefore, we strongly urge you to publicly condemn this legislation and constitutional change which targets the LGBTQ community and undermines the rights of Hungarians to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.”
U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Sarah McBride (D-Del.), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), James McGovern (D-Mass.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), Julie Johnson (D-Texas), Ami Bera (D-Calif.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Gabe Amo (D-R.I.), Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Dina Titus (D-Nev.), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) signed the letter alongside Takano and Keating.
A State Department spokesperson on Wednesday declined to comment.
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