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State Dept. denounces ‘rising violence’ against LGBT people worldwide

Nigeria, Uganda, Russia among countries criticized

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John Kerry, United States Department of State, LGBT, United Nations General Assembly, gay news, Washington Blade
John Kerry, United States Department of State, LGBT, United Nations General Assembly, gay news, Washington Blade

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry participates in an LGBT ministerial event in New York last September during the U.N. General Assembly. (Photo courtesy of the State Department.)

LGBT rights feature prominently in the 2013 Human Rights Report the U.S. State Department released on Thursday.

The report specifically references draconian anti-gay measures that Ugandan and Nigerian lawmakers approved last year ā€“ their countryā€™s presidents signed them into law earlier this week and last month respectively. The State Department also notes up to 200 people may remain incarcerated in Cameroon under the countryā€™s sodomy law.

The report further highlights Russian President Vladimir Putin last June signed a bill into law that bans gay propaganda to minors.

ā€œFrom Nigeria to Russia to Iran, indeed in some 80 countries the world over, LGBT communities face discriminatory laws and practices that attack their basic human dignity and undermine their safety,ā€ said Secretary of State John Kerry as he unveiled the report in D.C. ā€œWe are seeing new laws like the Anti-Homosexuality Bill enacted by Uganda and signed into law by President Museveni earlier this week, which not only makes criminals of people for who they are, but punishes those who defend the human rights that are universal birthright.ā€

Kerry further stressed the aforementioned anti-gay laws ā€œcontribute to a global trend of rising violence and discrimination against LGBT persons and their supporters.ā€

ā€œThey are an affront to every reasonable conscience,ā€ he said.

Individual country reports also contain LGBT-specific information.

The report notes the Indian government challenged a December ruling from the countryā€™s highest court that recriminalized homosexuality. A Belizean LGBT advocacy group continued to challenge the Central American countryā€™s colonial-era sodomy law in 2013.

The State Department highlighted Chilean authorities ā€œappeared reluctantā€ to investigate and prosecute anti-LGBT attacks, even though the South American countryā€™s hate crimes law includes both sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.

The report also noted Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President RaĆŗl Castro, ā€œcontinued to be outspoken in promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) personsā€ in Cuba in 2013. Ignacio Estrada Cepero, founder of the Cuban League Against AIDS, and U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) are among those who continue to criticize Mariela Castro and her fatherā€™s government over the countryā€™s human rights record.

ā€œNon-government rights activists asserted that the government had not done enough to stop harassment of LGBT persons,ā€ reads the State Department report. ā€œSeveral unrecognized NGOs promoted LGBT issues and faced government criticism, not for their promotion of LGBT issues, but for their independence from official government institutions.ā€

Uzra Zeya, acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the State Department, on Thursday noted a group of partygoers stabbed a cross-dressing Jamaican teenager to death outside Montego Bay last July.

ā€œLGBT conduct is criminalized in nearly 80 countries worldwide,ā€ said Zeya. ā€œEven when these laws are not enforced, their mere existence creates a climate of fear and sends a message to the broader population that itā€™s permissible to discriminate against LGBT persons in housing, in employment, in education and that itā€™s permissible to beat or kill or torture someone simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.ā€

The State Department issued the report three days after the Obama administration announced it had begun a review of its relationship with Uganda after the countryā€™s president, Yoweri Museveni, signed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law.

The State Departmentā€™s Global Equality Fund since 2011 has spent more than $4 million in 25 countries to directly support LGBT advocates and underrepresented groups. USAID last April unveiled a public-private partnership with the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Institute and other groups that will $12 million over the next four years to LGBT activist organizations in Honduras and other developing countries ā€“ the initiativeā€™s first two trainings took place in the Colombian cities of BogotĆ” and Cartagena last May and August respectively.

Seven LGBT rights advocates from Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, PerĆŗ, Ecuador, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic recently visited D.C., New York, Texas and California as part of the State Departmentā€™s International Visitor Leadership Program. Activists from Latvia, Serbia, Russia, Georgia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and other countries have traveled to the U.S. over the last year.

ā€œWe agree when Kerry said, ‘the United States government best advances its national interests when its policy choices are rooted in consistent adherence to human rights principles,ā€ said Robyn Lieberman of Human Rights First after the State Department issued its report. ā€œAs the secretary (Kerry) said, ā€˜countries that deny human rights and human dignity threaten our interests, and countries that practice these rights create opportunities.ā€™ We agree and believe that the publication of the Country Reports should serve to inform the formation of policies that can contribute to solutions that the human rights violations described in the report are so badly in need of.”

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State Department

Transgender, nonbinary people file lawsuit against passport executive order

State Department banned from issuing passports with ‘X’ gender markers

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(Bigstock photo)

Seven transgender and nonbinary people on Feb. 7 filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s executive order that bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers.

Ashton Orr, Zaya Perysian, Sawyer Soe, Chastain Anderson, Drew Hall, Bella Boe, and Reid Solomon-Lane are the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the private law firm Covington & Burling LPP filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The lawsuit names Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as defendants.

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 ā€œXā€ gender marker. Zzyym in October 2021 received the first gender-neutral American passport.

The State Department policy took effect on April 11, 2022.

Trump signed the executive order that overturned it shortly after he took office on Jan. 20. Rubio later directed State Department personnel to ā€œsuspend any application requesting an ā€˜Xā€™ sex marker and do not take any further action pending additional guidance from the department.ā€  

ā€œThis guidance applies to all applications currently in progress and any future applications,” reads Rubio’s memo. “Guidance on existing passports containing an ā€˜Xā€™ sex marker will come via other channels.ā€

The lawsuit says Trump’s executive order is an “abrupt, discriminatory, and dangerous reversal of settled United States passport policy.” It also concludes the new policy is “unlawful and unconstitutional.”

“It discriminates against individuals based on their sex and, as to some, their transgender status,” reads the lawsuit. “It is motivated by impermissible animus. It cannot be justified under any level of judicial scrutiny, and it wrongly seeks to erase the reality that transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people exist today as they always have.”

Solomon-Lane, who lives in North Adams, Mass., with his spouse and their three children, in an ACLU press release says he has “lived virtually my entire adult life as a man” and “everyone in my personal and professional life knows me as a man, and any stranger on the street who encountered me would view me as a man.”

ā€œI thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety and ease,” he said. “Now, as a married father of three, Trumpā€™s executive order and the ensuing passport policy have threatened that life of safety and ease.”

“If my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used my passport for travel or identification, causing potential risk to my safety and my familyā€™s safety,ā€ added Solomon-Lane.

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Federal Government

Education Department moves to end support for trans students

Mental health services among programs that are in jeopardy

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The U.S. Department of Education headquarters in D.C. (Photo courtesy of the GSA/Education Department)

An email sent to employees at the U.S. Department of Education on Friday explains that “programs, contracts, policies, outward-facing media, regulations, and internal practices” will be reviewed and cut in cases where they ā€œfail to affirm the reality of biological sex.ā€

The move, which is of a piece with President Donald Trump’s executive orders restricting transgender rights, jeopardizes the future of initiatives at the agency like mental health services and support for students experiencing homelessness.

Along with external-facing work at the agency, the directive targets employee programs such as those administered by LGBTQ resource groups, in keeping with the Trump-Vance administration’s rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the federal government.

In recent weeks, federal agencies had begun changing their documents, policies, and websites for purposes of compliance with the new administration’s first executive action targeting the trans community, ā€œDefending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.ā€

For instance, the Education Department had removed a webpage offering tips for schools to better support homeless LGBTQ youth, noted ProPublica, which broke the news of the “sweeping” changes announced in the email to DOE staff.

According to the news service, the directive further explains the administration’s position that ā€œThe deliberate subjugation of women and girls by means of gender ideology ā€” whether in intimate spaces, weaponized language, or American classrooms ā€” negated the civil rights of biological females and fostered distrust of our federal institutions.”

A U.S. Senate committee hearing will be held Thursday for Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for education secretary, who has been criticized by LGBTQ advocacy groups. GLAAD, for instance, notes that she helped to launch and currently chairs the board of a conservative think tank that “has campaigned against policies that support transgender rights in education.”

NBC News reported on Tuesday that Trump planned to issue an executive order this week to abolish the Education Department altogether.

While the president and his conservative allies in and outside the administration have repeatedly expressed plans to disband the agency, doing so would require approval from Congress.

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State Department

Protesters demand US fully restore PEPFAR funding

Activists blocked intersection outside State Department on Thursday

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HIV/AIDS activists block an intersection outside the State Department on Feb. 6, 2025. They were demanding the Trump-Vance administration to fully restore PEPFAR funding. (Photo courtesy of Housing Works)

Dozens of HIV/AIDS activists on Thursday protested outside the State Department and demanded U.S. officials fully restore President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding.

The activists ā€” members of Housing Works, Health GAP, and the Treatment Action Group ā€” blocked an intersection for an hour. Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell told the Washington Blade that police did not make any arrests.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Jan. 24 directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days in response to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed after his inauguration. Rubio later issued a waiver that allows PEPFAR and other ā€œlife-saving humanitarian assistanceā€ programs to continue to operate during the freeze.

The Blade on Wednesday reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of a lack of U.S. funding.

ā€œPEPFAR is a program that has saved 26 million lives and changed the trajectory of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic,” said Housing Works CEO Charles King in a press release. “The recent freeze on its funding is not just a bureaucratic decision; it is a death sentence for millions who rely on these life-saving treatments. We cannot allow decades of progress to be undone. The U.S. must immediately reaffirm its commitment to global health and human dignity by restoring PEPFAR funding.” 

ā€œWe demand Secretary Rubio immediately reverse his deadly, illegal stop-work order, which has already disrupted life-saving HIV services worldwide,” added Russell. “Any waiver process is too little, too late.”

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