National
Gay rights factor into Obama decision to cancel Putin meeting
President tells Leno he has ‘no patience’ for anti-gay laws


Members of All Out and Athlete Ally on Aug. 7 presented a petition with more than 300,000 signatures to the International Olympic Committee that urges it to pressure Russia to end its gay crackdown. (Photo courtesy of All Out)
The White House on Wednesday announced President Obama has cancelled a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that had been scheduled to take place next month in Moscow.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement the Kremlin’s decision to grant temporary asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden last week is among the factors that contributed to the decision to cancel the meeting that was to have taken place before the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg. An administration official told the Washington Blade that Russia’s LGBT rights record also played a role in Obama’s decision to cancel the talks with his Russian counterpart.
Obama is still scheduled to travel to the G-20 summit that will take place Sept. 5-6.
“Given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues and human rights and civil society in the last 12 months, we have informed the Russian government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda,” Carney said.
The announcement comes hours after Obama joined the chorus of those who have blasted Russia over its ongoing gay crackdown.
“I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimate them or are harmful to them,” he told Jay Leno during a pre-taped appearance on NBC’s “The Tonight Show.”
Gay advocacy groups on Wednesday also presented to the International Olympic Committee a petition with more than 300,000 signatures that urges it to pressure Russian officials to protect the rights of their LGBT citizens.
The petition that All Out and Athlete Ally presented to IOC officials in Lausanne, Switzerland, stresses the organizations stand “with citizens across Russia who are calling on their government to stop the crackdown against lesbian, gay, bi and trans people” ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics that will take place in Sochi, Russia, in February. The group also urges the IOC and other global and Russian leaders “to work to eliminate all anti-gay laws and protect all citizens from violence and discrimination” in the country.
Former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo; former Oakland Raider Chris Kluwe and Greg Louganis, an Olympic diver who was unable to compete in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow after the U.S. boycotted the games, are among those who have endorsed the petition.
Actor Stephen Fry in an open letter to IOC President Jacques Rogge and British Prime Minister David Cameron that he posted to his blog on Wednesday compared the decision to hold the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia to Nazi Germany hosting the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Leno told Obama he feels Russia’s anti-LGBT crackdown “seems like Germany with let’s round up the Jews.”
“The International Olympic Committee is being forced by Russia to tell athletes to shut up, but instead they are speaking out,” All Out Executive Director Andre Banks said. “Ironically, the global outcry is transforming Sochi into an amazing platform for Russians and athletes to defy the law and speak out.”
The IOC said in a July 31 statement it has “received assurances” from “the highest level of government in Russia” the broadly worded gay propaganda to minors ban that President Vladimir Putin signed in June will not affect athletes and others who will travel to Sochi.
The Associated Press on Aug. 5 reported the organization is engaged in “quiet diplomacy” with senior Russian officials on the issue. This report comes less than a week after Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told a Russian sports website the gay propaganda law will apply to those who attend the games.
Lady Gaga describes Russian gov’t as ‘criminal’
In addition to the gay propaganda ban, Putin last month signed a second law that bans foreign same-sex couples and any couple from a country in which gays and lesbians can legally marry from adopting Russian children. LGBT rights groups and other organizations that receive funding from outside Russia could face a fine if they don’t register as a “foreign agent.”
Authorities in the Russian capital in May arrested 30 people who tried to stage a Pride march outside Moscow City Hall. St. Petersburg officials in June took more than 40 LGBT rights advocates into custody who tried to stage their own Pride event.
Authorities in Murmansk on July 21 arrested four Dutch LGBT rights advocates who were filming a documentary about gay life in Russia.
Reports of anti-gay violence, hate crimes and even ultra-nationalists torturing gay Russian teenagers whom they meet on local social media networks continue to emerge from the country.
The Russian government last week announced it would investigate whether Lady Gaga and Madonna did not secure the proper visas to enter the country last year. Both singers spoke out against St. Petersburg’s law that bans gay propaganda to minors during their concerts in the city.
“The Russian government is criminal,” Lady Gaga wrote on her Twitter page on August 5. “Oppression will be met with revolution. Russian LGBTs you are not alone. We will fight for your freedom.”
Gay actor George Takei on Tuesday urged the IOC to move the 2014 games from Sochi to another city.
“The IOC must do the right thing, protect its athletes and the fans, and move the 2014 Winter Olympics out of Russia,” he wrote on his blog.
Actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein is among those who have urged the U.S. and other countries to boycott the Sochi games. Author Dan Savage and LGBT rights advocates Cleve Jones have also called for a boycott Russian vodka.
A coalition of LGBT sports organizations that includes Outsports.com and Athlete Ally on Aug. 1 announced they oppose a boycott of the Olympics. The Obama administration, retired tennis champion Martina Navratilova and Russian LGBT rights advocate Nikolai Alekseev are among those who also oppose calls to boycott the Sochi games.
All Out founder describes Sochi boycott calls as ‘premature’
Banks told the Blade during an interview in his Manhattan office on Aug. 2 that he feels calls to boycott the Sochi games are “premature.”
His group continues to work with Coming Out, a St. Petersburg LGBT advocacy group that was fined 500,000 rubles or slightly more than $15,000 for violating Russia’s “foreign agents” law that took effect in 2012. All Out is also working with the Russian LGBT Network.
“What we’re hearing from the groups inside Russia is we should use this opportunity to speak up and to speak out and to challenge the law as opposed to basically punishing Olympians for this law that they had nothing to do with,” Banks said.
Banks added the games provide an opportunity for the U.S. and other governments and international human rights organizations to speak out against Russia’s LGBT rights record in a way he feels the Russian government cannot ignore.
“The Sochi Olympics create this opportunity where actually everyone — these many kind of stakeholders — have an opportunity to say something at the same time about these laws in a way that can’t be ignored,” he said. “There’s an opportunity for the U.S. to take a more aggressive position than they have taken up to now.”
The White House
Biden’s Pride month proclamation: ‘Our nation faces another inflection point’
States across the country have passed anti-LGBTQ laws

Just as the 1969 Stonewall riots marked a transformational time for LGBTQ civil rights in America, the country now faces another critical inflection point, President Joe Biden said in the White House’s proclamation Wednesday honoring Pride month.
This moment is precipitated by the wave of hateful anti-LGBTQ legislation moving through state and local legislatures across the country and amid the escalating violence and threats of violence against the community, the statement notes:
“In 2023 alone, state and local legislatures have already introduced over 600 hateful laws targeting the LGBTQI+ community. Books about LGBTQI+ people are being banned from libraries. Transgender youth in over a dozen states have had their medically necessary health care banned. Homophobic and transphobic vitriol spewed online has spilled over into real life, as armed hate groups intimidate people at Pride marches and drag performances, and threaten doctors’ offices and children’s hospitals that offer care to the LGBTQI+ community. Our hearts are heavy with grief for the loved ones we have lost to anti-LGBTQI+ violence.”
Biden drew parallels between the “LGBTQI+ protestors” who “bravely stood their ground” against the law enforcement dispatched to arrest them more than 50 years ago and the youth organizers leading walkouts in response to discriminatory education laws, along with the “young people and their parents [who] are demonstrating unimaginable courage by testifying in state capitols in defense of their basic rights.”
The statement reaffirms the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to standing “proudly with the LGBTQI+ community in the enduring struggle for freedom, justice and equality,” chronicling some of the major steps the administration has taken on this front.
Biden highlighted his issuance, on his first day in office, of an executive order prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination, along with his signage last year of the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified protects for the rights of same-sex couples that might otherwise be jeopardized by the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.
The statement then noted the administration’s moves to protect LGBTQ youth by ordering federal agencies to: Combat conversion therapy, “end the crisis of homelessness among LGBTQI+ youth and adults,” and address anti-LGBTQ discrimination in foster care.
Meanwhile, Biden said, the Justice Department is fighting against discriminatory laws targeting transgender youth, while the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services have drafted rules that would better protect anti-LGBTQ discrimination “in healthcare, at school and in sports” and the White House is developing ways to combat online harassment and abuse that “disproportionately target LGBTQ people.”
Finally, the White House noted: Its rollout last year of the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline for LGBTQ youth, who can now reach specially trained counselors by dialing 988 and then three; the administration’s appointment of historic numbers of LGBTQ appointees at all levels of the federal government; and its repeal of bans preventing trans people from serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
From passing federal nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans via the Equality Act to addressing “the crisis of violence against transgender women and girls of color,” Biden acknowledged the work that lies ahead.
“This month and every month,” his proclamation concludes, “let us celebrate the pride that powers the movement for LGBTQI+ rights and commit to doing our part to help realize the promise of America, for all Americans.”
Pentagon
Defense secretary orders cancellation of drag show at Nev. Air Force base
Event was to have taken place at Nellis AFB on Thursday

A previously scheduled drag show to kick off Pride month on the sprawling Nellis Air Force Base, an advanced combat aviation training facility for the U.S. Air Force northeast of Las Vegas, was cancelled Wednesday according to a Pentagon official, after U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stepped in.
A Pentagon source familiar with the matter told the Washington Blade that Milley informed Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., that it is not Pentagon policy to fund drag shows on bases and the show needed to be canceled or moved off base.
The issue over drag performances was a focus at a House Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this year on March 29, when anti-LGBTQ Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) demanded in an angry tone that Austin and Milley explain why drag queen story hours were being hosted on U.S. military installations. The Florida Republican mentioned bases in Montana, Nevada, Virginia and Germany.
In a highly publicized incident in May 2022, Stars and Stripes reported that the Commanding General of the 86th Airlift Wing at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany had a drag queen story time, that was to be held in honor of Pride month cancelled.
According to Stars and Stripes, the 86th Air Wing’s public affairs sent a statement to a radical-right anti-LGBTQ news outlet in Canada, the Post Millennial, which had requested comment to its article about the event and also accused the Air Force of pushing a more “woke” agenda among servicemen.
In a press release, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) took partial credit for the cancellation.
Rubio sent a letter to U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall regarding the Air Force Library at Ramstein hosting a “Drag Queen Story Time” event for young children of servicemembers.
Rubio urged him to cancel the event, discipline the staff involved in planning and hosting the event and respond to questions on whether other installations both at home and around the world have done similar events. Following receipt of Rubio’s letter, the Air Force canceled the event.
“The last thing parents serving their nation overseas should be worried about, particularly in a theater with heightened geopolitical tensions, is whether their children are being exposed to sexually charged content simply because they visited their local library,” Rubio wrote.

A Pentagon official referring to the drag show at Nellis said Milley was visibly angry about the decision to host the event on base after being informed about it earlier this week.
The drag show was scheduled for Thursday, but Maj. Gen. Case A. Cunningham, the commander of the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center at Nellis was informed in the past few days that it must either be canceled or moved off base.
On May 23, Gaetz sent a letter to Austin and Milley, alleging that the “pervasive and persistent use of taxpayer dollars for drag events,” had a June 1 Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., event scheduled.
Gaetz went on to write that “Nellis Air Force Base has announced a so-called ‘family-friendly’ drag organized by the Nellis LGBTQ+ Pride Council for June 1, 2023. In this latest outright attack on children, this event is being advertised as having no minimum age requirement.”
In his letter Gaetz also demanded to know:
- Does the DoD feel it’s appropriate for children to attend a sexualized drag performance?
- Why are base commanders defying your intent and direction by facilitating drag events?
- If this event goes forward, whether on June 1 or a later scheduled date, please provide an explanation regarding your justification for why you allowed the event to take place.
According to a spokesperson for the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center, Nellis, in June 2021 the base had hosted a Pride month drag show titled “Drag-u-Nellis.” The spokesperson noted the 2021 show was intended to promote inclusivity and diversity.
Alabama
Ala. extends ban on transgender female athletes to universities
Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed bill on Tuesday

Governor Kay Ivey on Tuesday signed House Bill 261, which limits transgender students to playing sports in public colleges and universities only with “their biological sex assigned at birth.”
“Look, if you are a biological male, you are not going to be competing in women’s and girls’ sports in Alabama. It’s about fairness, plain and simple,” said Ivey in a statement released by her office.
House Bill 261 was approved 26-4 in the Alabama Senate and 83-5 in the House of Representatives. In the vote in the House more than a dozen lawmakers abstained from the vote.
Ivey had previously signed legislation in 2021 banning trans female athletes from competing in K-12 girls sports. At the time she signed that bill the governor had noted that “Alabama remains committed to protecting female athletes at all levels and upholding the integrity of athletics.”
Carmarion D. Anderson-Harvey, Alabama state director of the Human Rights Campaign, said the legislation is part of a “systematic attack against LGBTQ+ people” in Alabama and elsewhere.
“In just two years, [Ivey] and extremist lawmakers in Alabama have passed four anti-LGBTQ+ bills. From dictating what bathrooms we can use to blatantly ignoring the actual problems in women’s sports, these politicians are making Alabama an increasingly hostile place for transgender people and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole,” Anderson-Harvey said.
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