National
Judge rules Kentucky must recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages
Four gay and lesbian couples filed lawsuit
Judge John G. Heyburn II of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky said the Bluegrass Stateās constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman is also unconstitutional.
āThe court concluded that Kentuckyās denial of recognition for valid same-sex marriages violates the U.S. Constitutionās guarantee of equal protection under the law, even under the most deferential standard of review,ā wrote Heyburn in his 23-page ruling. āAccordingly, Kentuckyās statutes and constitutional amendment that mandate this denial are unconstitutional.ā
Four gay and lesbian couples who legally married outside Kentucky filed the lawsuit seeking marriage rights in their state.
Greg Bourke and Michael Deleon, a Louisville couple who has been together for 31 years and are raising two teenaged children, exchanged vows in Canada in 2004. Jimmy Meade and Luther Barlowe of Bardstown, who have been together for 44 years, tied the knot in Iowa in 2009.
Randell Johnson and Paul Campion of Louisville, who have been together for 22 years and have four children, married in California in 2008. Kimberly Franklin and Tamera Boyd exchanged vows in Connecticut in 2010.
Kentucky voters in 2004 overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
āUsually, as here, the tradition behind the challenged law began at a time when most people did not fully appreciate, much less articulate, the individual rights in question,ā said Heyburn, who frequently refers to the landmark 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down Virginiaās interracial marriage ban in his decision. āFor years, many states had a tradition of segregation and even articulated reasons why it created a better, more stable society. Similarly, many states deprived women of their equal rights under the law, believing this to properly preserve our traditions.ā
Heyburn, who then-President George H.W. Bush appointed to the federal bench in 1992, also cited last Juneās U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.
āThe body of constitutional jurisprudence that serves as its foundation has evolved gradually over the past 47 years,ā wrote Heyburn.
Eighteen states and D.C. have extended marriage rights to same-sex couples.
A federal judge last month ruled Oklahomaās gay nuptials ban is unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court less than two weeks earlier blocked any future same-sex marriages from taking place in Utah pending the outcome of an appeal of U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shelbyās December ruling that struck down the Beehive Stateās gay nuptials ban.
A federal judge in Norfolk, Va., is expected to issue her ruling shortly in a lawsuit that challenges Virginiaās same-sex marriage ban.
āToday a Republican-appointed federal judge in Kentucky held ā as did judges in Utah and Oklahoma weeks ago and as did the U.S. Supreme Court last year ā that there is simply not legitimate justification for denying equal protection to same-sex couples, echoing the majority of Americans who support the freedom to marry, including a growing number of conservatives,ā said Freedom to Marry President Evan Wolfson.
The Family Foundation of Kentucky, which filed an amicus brief in support of the commonwealth’s same-sex marriage ban, criticized Heyburn’s decision.
“Legislating same-sex marriage from the bench is not the will of the people,” said the group on its Twitter page.
Heyburn issued his ruling on the same day a federal judge in San Antonio heard oral arguments in a case that challenges Texasās marriage amendment.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Missouri on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in state court on behalf of eight same-sex couples who are seeking recognition of their marriages legally performed in other jurisdictions. The Forum for Equality Louisiana on the same day filed an identical lawsuit in a federal court in New Orleans on behalf of four gay and lesbian couples who legally married outside the Pelican State.
Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday announced the Justice Department will now recognize same-sex marriages in civil and criminal cases and extend full benefits to gay spouses of police officers and other public safety personnel killed while on duty. This new policy applies to the 32 states that currently do not recognize same-sex marriages.
State Department
State Department hosts intersex activists from around the world
Group met with policy makers, health officials, NGOs

The State Department last week hosted five intersex activists from around the world.
Kimberly Zieselman, a prominent intersex activist who advises Jessica Stern, the special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad, brought the activists to D.C.
⢠Morgan Carpenter, co-founder and executive director of Intersex Human Rights Australia
⢠Natasha Jiménez, an intersex activist from Costa Rica who is the general coordinator of Mulabi, the Latin American Space for Sexualities and Rights
⢠Julius Kaggwa, founder of the Support Initiative for People with Atypical Sex Development Uganda
⢠Magda Rakita, co-founder and executive director of Fujdacja Interakcja in Poland and co-founder of Interconnected UK
⢠Esan Regmi, co-founder and executive director of the Campaign for Change in Nepal.
Special U.S. Envoy for Global Youth Issues Abby Finkenauer and Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine are among the officials with whom the activists met.
Zieselman told the Washington Blade on Sept. 21 the activists offered State Department officials an “intersex 101” overview during a virtual briefing.
More than 60 Save the Children staffers from around the world participated in another virtual briefing. Zieselman noted the activists also met with Stern, U.N. and Organization of American States officials, funders and NGO representatives while in D.C.
“The people we met were genuinely interested,” Rakita told the Blade.
Stern in an exclusive statement to the Blade said “the visiting intersex activists clearly had an impact here at State, sharing their expertise and lived experience highlighting the urgency to end human rights abuses, including those involving harmful medical practices against intersex persons globally.” Andrew Gleason, senior director for gender equality and social justice at Save the Children US, in a LinkedIn post he wrote after attending his organization’s meeting with the activists echoed Stern.
“There are many learnings to recount from todayās discussion, but one thing is clear, this is unequivocally a child rights issue, and one that demands attention and action at the intersection of LGBTQI+ rights, reproductive rights and justice, disability justice and more,” wrote Gleason. “Gratitude to the panelists for sharing such poignant testimonies and providing insights into what organizations like ours can do to contribute to the broader intersex movement; and thank you to Kimberly for your leadership and bringing this group together.”
The activists’ trip to D.C. coincided with efforts to end so-called sex “normalization” surgeries on intersex children.
Greek lawmakers in July passed a law that bans such procedures on children under 15 unless they offer their consent or a court allows them to happen. Doctors who violate the statute face fines and prison.
Germany Iceland, Malta, Portugal and Spain have also enacted laws that seek to protect intersex youth.
A law that grants equal rights and legal recognition to intersex people in Kenya took effect in July 2022. Lawmakers in the Australian Capital Territory earlier this year passed the Variation in Sex Characteristics (Restricted Medical Treatment) Bill 2023.
Intersex Human Rights Australia notes the law implements “mechanisms to regulate non-urgent medical care to encourage child participation in medical decisions, establish groundbreaking oversight mechanisms and provide transparency on medical practices and decision making.” It further points out the statute “will criminalize some deferrable procedures that permanently alter the sex characteristics of children” and provides “funding for necessary psychosocial supports for families and children.”
“It’s amazing,” Carpenter told the Blade when discussing the law and resistance to it. “It’s not perfect. There was some big gaps, but physicians are resisting every step of the way.”
The State Department in April 2022 began to issue passports with an “X” gender marker.
Dana Zzyym, an intersex U.S. Navy veteran who identifies as non-binary, in 2015 filed a federal lawsuit against the State Department after it denied their application for a passport with an āXā gender marker. Zzyym in October 2021 received the first gender-neutral American passport.
Federal Government
Federal government prepares for looming shutdown
White House warns of ‘damaging impacts across the country’

However remote they were on Monday, odds of avoiding a government shutdown were narrowed by Thursday evening as House Republicans continued debate over their hyper-partisan appropriations bills that stand no chance of passage by the Upper Chamber.
As lawmakers in the Democratic controlled Senate forged ahead with a bipartisan stop-gap spending measure that House GOP leadership had vowed to reject, the federal government began bracing for operations to grind to a halt on October 1.
This would mean hundreds of thousands of workers are furloughed as more than 100 agencies from the State Department to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation roll out contingency plans maintained by the White House Office of Management and Budget. On Thursday the Office of Personnel Management sent out memos to all agencies instructing them to ready for a shutdown on Sunday.
Before 1980, operations would continue per usual in cases where Congress failed to break an impasse over spending, as lapses in funding tended to last only a few days before lawmakers brokered a deal.
Since then, the government has shut down more than a dozen times and the duration has tended to become longer and longer.
“Across the United States, local news outlets are reporting on the harmful impacts a potential government shutdown would have on American families,” the White House wrote in a release on Thursday featuring a roundup of reporting on how the public might be affected.
“With just days left before the end of the fiscal year, extreme House Republicans are playing partisan games with peoplesā lives and marching our country toward a government shutdown that would have damaging impacts across the country,” the White House said.
The nature and extent of that damage will depend on factors including how long the impasse lasts, but the Biden-Harris administration has warned of some consequences the American public is likely to face.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for example, warned: āThere is no good time for a government shutdown, but this is a particularly bad time for a government shutdown, especially when it comes to transportation.”
Amid the shortage of air traffic controllers and efforts to modernize aviation technology to mitigate flight delays and cancellations, a government shutdown threatens to “make air travel even worse,” as Business Insider wrote in a headline Thursday.
Democratic lawmakers including California Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters, meanwhile, have sounded the alarm in recent weeks over the consequences for the global fight against AIDS amid the looming expiration, on Oct. 1, of funding for PEPFAR, the Presidentās Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Federal Government
QAnon follower pleads guilty to threatening member of Congress
Conspiracy movement claims Satan-worshipping pedophiles secretly rule the world

A New Mexico man has entered a plea deal after being charged with a federal criminal complaint of making threats through interstate communications directed at a member of Congress.
Federal prosecutors charged Michael David Fox, a resident of DoƱa Ana County, for calling the Houston district office of an unnamed member of Congress on or about May 18, 2023, and uttering threats that included knowingly threatening to kill an active member of Congress.
The plea agreementĀ was brought before U.S. Magistrate Judge Damian L. Martinez of U.S. District Court in New MexicoĀ in the Las Cruces by Foxās attorney from the Federal Public Defenderās Office in August.
According to the criminal complaint as outlined by a Federal Bureau of Investigation criminal investigator for the Albuquerque Field Office, Las Cruces Resident Agency, on May 18 at approximately 9:04 p.m. Fox called the office of a congresswoman for the District of Texas, U.S. House of Representatives (Victim One/”V1ā³), who is from Houston. The call was received by V1’s office.
In the phone call Fox stated āHey [Vl], youāre a man. Itās official. Youāre literally a tranny and a pedophile, and Iām going to put a bullet in your fucking face. You mother fucking satanic cock smoking son of a whore. You understand me you fucker?ā
Law enforcement was able to trace the call back to Las Cruces, N.M., and it was believed that Fox was the user of cell phone account used to make the call. According to the FBI agents who interviewed Fox, he admitted to making the call.
Fox acknowledged that the threat was direct but claimed that he did not own any guns. Fox
claimed to be a member of the Q2 Truth Movement, the Q Movement. Fox explained these
movements believe all over the world there were transgender individuals running
governments, kingdoms and corporations.
Fox told the FBI that there is a plan called āQ the Plan to Save the Worldā which he learned about from an online video. Fox claimed that he believed Q was going to engage in the āeradicationā of the people who were causing all the worldās misery. He believed that part of the eradication had already happened.
Fox explained that he had run Vlās skull features through forensic analysis and determined
that Vl was born male and is now trans. Fox discussed his military service with the
U.S. Air Force, “Q the Plan to Save the World,” and how God communicates using
numbers.
Fox continued to reiterate several different types of conspiracy theories indicating
extreme far right ideologies as his explanation for why he conducted the phone call to
threaten V1.
According to the FBI, Fox rescinded his threat against Vl and apologized. Fox claimed he was not intoxicated or under the influence of drugs when he made the call. Fox stated he understood how Vl would feel threatened by his phone call, and he acknowledged that anyone he knew or cared about would also be concerned with such a threat.
The charge of interstate threatening communications carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.
QAnon began in 2017, when a mysterious figure named āQā started posting on the online message board 4chan, claiming to have inside access to government secrets. Since then, QAnon has grown into a conspiracy movement that claims Satan-worshipping pedophiles secretly rule the world. It is claimed by QAnon adherents that former President Donald Trump is the only person who can defeat them.
Brooklyn, N.Y.-based journalist Ana Valens, a reporter specializing in queer internet culture, online censorship and sex workersā rights noted that Fox appears to be a ātransvestigator.ā Valens noted that the transvestigation conspiracy theory is a fringe movement within QAnon that claims the world is primarily run by trans people. Phrenological analysis is common among transvestigators, with a prominent focus on analyzing celebrities for proof that they are trans.
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