For generations, LGBTQ people have been forced to overcome discrimination, harassment, and violence just to find support networks and build community. Sadly, that remains true today. Anti-LGBTQ hate crimes are on the rise, and the Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency in response to the wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation passed in states across the country last year.

That is why it’s deeply troubling to see U.S. senators — including some Democrats who are historically allies of the LGBTQ community — still support a bill that could cut off LGBTQ people from the online resources, communities, and information they depend on, and give partisan anti-LGBTQ politicians one more avenue to persecute gay people and further their hateful agenda.  

The Kids Online Safety Act, also known as KOSA, has an alluring name and earnest intentions. We all want to support protecting kids online, but the unintended consequences would be devastating for the LGBTQ+ community and have serious implications for everyone else.

Despite its revamped rollout, KOSA still creates a vague “duty of care” requirement for online platforms “to prevent and mitigate harms to minors.” Sounds nice on the surface, but the harmful content is not adequately defined. You and I may be able to think of some obvious examples, but anti-LGBTQ politicians have their own ideas about what they believe is harmful. That’s where KOSA becomes even more troubling.

The authors of KOSA left enforcement of the bill up to state attorneys general — the same partisan politicians who have sent child protective services agents after the parents of trans minors and banned gender-affirming care. KOSA allows any state attorney general to sue an online platform if they believe the platform is showing harmful content to minors. Perhaps a reasonable idea in the past, we must now consider how a partisan politician might use that power to pursue their far-right ideological agenda. This provision would empower (and further embolden) the most fervent anti-LGBTQ politicians. Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could use their newfound authority under KOSA to sue an online platform for showing content about LGBTQ+ healthcare or hosting online message boards where LGBTQ people build community.

In fact, the lead Republican sponsor of KOSA, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, has previously not been shy about pointing to KOSA as part of her agenda of “protecting minor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture and that influence.” Her plan is clear: empower right-wing anti-trans attorneys general to force online platforms into censoring any content about LGBTQ people.

Faced with the threat of expensive lawsuits from partisan attorneys general, online platforms will almost certainly be forced to protect themselves by preemptively removing any LGBTQ content for the fear of the liability risks it creates for them. This threat of a lawsuit, or lawsuits, from an anti-LGBTQ attorney general will be enough to force an online platform to remove certain content.

Even still, there are a host of additional unintended consequences from KOSA that go beyond the threat of LGBTQ censorship. To comply with the law, online platforms will  be forced to verify the age of their users by collecting even more personal data than they do already, making data breaches that much more harmful. Online platforms would also have to eliminate any secure and private communication service, specifically end-to-end encryption, so they could monitor every message you send for potential content violations. This will end important security features we use daily across the Internet and set back important services like telemedicine. Any remaining anonymity we have online — something many LGBTQ people rely on to avoid harassment or violence — would go away.

I know the Democratic cosponsors of KOSA don’t want to create the disastrous consequences we would see from this bill. I know they don’t support the goals of Marsha Blackburn, Ken Paxton, and Ron DeSantis. The Democratic cosponsors of KOSA have good intentions, but despite their intentions, they cannot give this power to Republican attorneys general. It is just too risky to give them another tool to target LGBTQ people, which is why many LGBTQ organizations continue to express their strong opposition to the “updated” version of KOSA.

We can’t afford to make the world even less safe for LGBTQ people, and I hope Democrats will consider that before moving forward with this bill.

Shevrin Jones is a Democratic Florida state senator (D-35).

Whatever your view of the Israel/Hamas war, we must agree to provide food and medicine to the Palestinian people in Gaza. They are as much victims of Hamas as those who died in Israel, when Hamas began this current war on Oct. 7. 

Innocent women and children are dying in Gaza because Hamas uses them as shields. While Israel has every right to fight Hamas, they cannot continue to ignore the women and children who are suffering and dying. Israel should not compound what Hamas did to them, by pretending their bombs are not inflicting death and destruction on innocent people. The only way to a possible lasting peace, is if the Palestinian people reject Hamas, and the Israeli people reject Netanyahu and his government. 

But now we must focus on the starving people of Gaza. Israel must declare a pause in the war, and say to Hamas, “If you return the hostages, we will open the floodgates, allowing food and medicine to flow freely into Gaza.” 

Clearly the United States has a long and complicated relationship with Israel. We have always supported Israel as the only democracy in the region, one that will stand with us if we need them. I strongly support President Biden’s plan to drop food and supplies into Gaza, while at the same time working to move Israel to declaring an immediate pause in the fighting. 

I would also like to see people educated on the history of Palestine. How for thousands of years it was a land considered home to Jews, Christians, and Arabs. The 1947 UN partition of the land was not the first time Jews were in Palestine. Yes, the State of Israel was founded with United Nations Resolution 181, in 1947. It called for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states with the City of Jerusalem to be governed by a special international regime. It passed the general assembly with a vote of 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstentions. That came about when Britain wanted to leave the land called Palestine they had governed since 1922. Since that time, Jewish immigration to the region had increased, and tensions between Arabs and Jews had grown. In April 1947, after World War ll, Britain referred the issue of Palestine to the UN. According to the History website, “Scholars believe the name “Palestine” is derived from the name of the people — the Philistines — who occupied part of the region in the 12th century B.C.

Over the centuries, Jews, Muslims and Christians, and followers of other religions, have all claimed special connections to the region. The Hebrew Bible contains narratives of ancient Israelites’ presence in the land, including the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, established by King David and his descendants around 1000 B.C. Those kingdoms’ rivals included other Canaanite groups like the Philistines, whose territory encompassed the ancient city of Gaza. The word Palestine derives from ancient Greek (Philistia), but ancient Egyptian, Assyrian and Hebrew languages also included similar-sounding words to describe the region or its people. Following the 1918 fall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Palestine typically referred to the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Much of this land is now part of present-day Israel. That is why when Hamas, and others say, they want the land from the “river to the sea,” it is assumed they mean to eradicate Israel. 

In 1947, the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was made up of members from 11 countries. UNSCOP delivered two proposals: that of the majority, which recommended two separate states joined economically, and that of the minority, which supported the formation of a single binational state made up of autonomous Jewish and Palestinian areas. The Jewish community approved of the first of these proposals, while the Arabs opposed them both. This then led to the first Arab/Israel war in 1948 and what some call the Israel fight for liberation. In that war Israel won some land, as did the Egyptians, the Jordanians, and other Arab states. None of the surrounding Arab nations fought for the Palestinian people, and didn’t want them as immigrants. So today this fight continues. 

None of this can take away from the dire need of the Palestinian people in Gaza today, for food and medical care. Every nation, including the United States, who should lead, must join together to see the women and children of Gaza have what they need. If we don’t, their deaths will be on all our hands.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.

We are care activists. As care activists, we are involved with social justice movements in this country and globally. 

It almost defies language what Israeli forces have perpetrated upon the Palestinian people since Oct. 7, 2023; in their disproportionate and vengeful retaliation against millions of Gazan civilians in response to the Hamas attack on thousands of Israeli citizens. We call out the loss of innocent Israeli lives in the same breath that we call for the survival of the Palestinian people. Months into this genocide, carnage and atrocity, we join with millions across the planet who bear witness to and protest the devastation of  human and environmental life. There must be a permanent ceasefire, NOW.

What we bear witness to in Palestine and Israel has a deeply rooted history. For almost a century, the Naqba and the Israeli occupation in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem has wrought devastating consequences, including murder, imprisonment, suspension of basic civil rights, exile, land theft, restrictions on movement and access to water, electricity, and healthcare. In Gaza, this devastation has been the most extreme. Generations of refugees have struggled to survive blockades and prison-like conditions. Those of us who have worked for the end of Israeli occupation over the past decades feared an explosive response to this inhumanity that would impact civilians regardless of ethnic and religious identity.  

The United States is an avowed ally of the Israeli government and allocates billions of dollars in direct military aid. We call upon our government to stop funding a war machine with our tax dollars; tax dollars that could improve the lives of the unhoused, the poor, working families and everyday people who are struggling each day to survive. We add our voices to support the South African case at the International Court of Justice, whose ruling requires Israel to take all steps within its power to prevent acts of genocide. We raise our voices with those locally and globally who are working for a permanent ceasefire. We stand with growing numbers of U.S. cities and towns that have passed “Ceasefire Now” resolutions and with the Palestinian and Israeli ceasefire coalitions that stand together.   

As voters, we demand to be heard by the present U.S. administration. And we will be heard.

Alexis De Veaux, of Richmond, Va., and Amy Horowitz, of Alexandria, Va., are social justice activists.