News
DOJ touts anti-LGBT views, task force at ‘religious freedom’ summit
Sessions accused of ‘undermining LGBTQ rights’
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the creation of a Religious Liberty Task Force. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
A summit at the U.S. Justice Department on Monday ostensibly intended to promote religious freedom, including the creation of a Religious Liberty Task Force, often highlighted efforts to enable anti-LGBT discrimination.
At the summit in the Justice Department’s Great Hall, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the creation of the task force to implement “religious freedom” guidance he issued last year.
“The task force will help the department fully implement our religious liberty guidance by ensuring that all Justice Department components — and we got a lot of components around the country — are upholding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt and how we conduct our operations,” Sessions said.
According to the Justice Department, Sessions will serve as chair of the task force, which will be co-chaired by Acting Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio and Associate Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy Beth Williams.
Sessions said a primary mission of the Religious Liberty Task Force will be ensuring Justice Department employees “know their duty is to accommodate people of faith.”
“This administration is animated by the same American view that has led us for 242 years that every American has a right to believe and worship and exercise their faith in the public square,” Sessions added.
The underlying guidance on which the task force is based seeks to allow individuals and businesses to act in the name of religious freedom — often used as an exercise for anti-LGBT discrimination — without fear of government reprisal. Nowhere in the guidance is there a limiting principle assuring the right to free exercise of religion should be an excuse to engage in anti-LGBT discrimination.
Announcing the new task force, Sessions referenced the Masterpiece Cakeshop case in which a Colorado baker was sued after he refused to make a custom-made wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The U.S. Supreme Court narrowly ruled in his favor based on the facts of his case, citing anti-religion sentiment on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
Sessions commended Phillips for having endured an “ordeal faced so gravely,” touting an amicus brief the Justice Department filed on his behalf before the Supreme Court. U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco also argued in favor of Phillips before justices in oral arguments.
“Let’s be frank: A dangerous movement, undetected by many, but real, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom,” Sessions said at the start of his remarks. “There can be no doubt, it’s no little matter. It must be confronted intellectually and politically, and defeated.”
LGBT rights supporters said in response to the creation of the Religious Liberty Task Force its purpose was to further the Trump administration’s goal of compromising LGBT rights.
Louise Melling, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the agenda of the Religious Liberty Task Force “isn’t consistent with religious freedom.”
“Religious freedom protects our right to our beliefs, not a right to discriminate or harm others,” Melling said. “Jeff Session’s Department of Justice is again turning that understanding of religious freedom on its head.”
Lucas Acosta, director of LGBTQ media for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement the task force is “just the latest assault in this administration’s continued campaign against LGBTQ people and our civil rights.”
“By creating this task force, Sessions is establishing a unit dedicated to undermining LGBTQ rights and giving anti-LGBTQ far-right extremists like task force head Jesse Panuccio a taxpayer-funded platform to push their anti-equality agenda,” Acosta said. “Rather than ensuring every person has equal protections and opportunities, Sessions is shamefully doubling down on bigotry.”
But the creation of the Religious Liberty Task Force was just one portion of the summit, which also included the voices of participants who urged a commitment to religious freedom to advance anti-LGBT discrimination.
Archbishop of Louisville Joseph Edward Kurtz, who formerly served as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said religious freedom is facing challenges that amount to “power-seeking for the purpose of imposing one’s will on others.”
Kurtz cited as an example Catholic adoption agencies being “targeted for closure” for refusing to place children with LGBT families out of religious objections.
“One of the biggest concerns is the ability of our child welfare providers to continue to be able to place children with foster and adoptive families consistent with our teaching,” Kurtz said.
Although no government is actively seeking to close Catholic adoption agencies, they have threatened to shut their doors on their own in the wake of the legalization of same-sex marriage because they feel they’ll be forced to place children with gay couples who marry.
As a result, a growing number or states have enacted anti-LGBT adoption laws allowing taxpayer-funded agencies to refuse to place children with LGBT families over religious objections. House Republicans have inserted an amendment in a pending appropriations bill that would penalize states and localities for having policies barring anti-LGBT discrimination among adoption agencies.
Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, was himself present at the summit and took part in a panel of individuals who say they are facing challenges to their religious freedom.
Moderating his panel was Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec, formerly a spokesperson for the anti-LGBT Alliance Defending Freedom. At a time when that term is used as justification for anti-LGBT discrimination, Kupec said in her introduction of the panel religious freedom is often “housed in scare quotes, as if it’s not a real thing, or even worse, a bad thing, which is tragic.”
Much of Kupec’s questioning of Phillips sought to elicit sympathy for him, which meant his act of refusing to make a custom-made wedding cake for a same-sex couple who entered his store was glossed over as he explained his commitment to his religious views.
In addition to refusing to make a same-sex wedding cake, Phillips said his religious beliefs compel him to close on Sundays, refuse to service Halloween celebrations or make cakes with denigrating messages.
“It’s the message of the cake that I evaluate, not the person who ordered the cake,” Phillips said. “In one instance, I had a man who wanted me to make a cake basically telling his boss that he was a jerk, so I wouldn’t do that, but I’ve also had people asked me to do cakes that would disparage gay people, the gay lifestyle, but I wouldn’t do that either because they’re hurtful cakes.”
As the litigation went forward, Phillips said he received death threats as well as a threat over the phone against his daughter. As a result, Phillips said he wouldn’t allow employees to answer the phone at Masterpiece Cakeshop and would only take calls himself.
Noting the U.S. Supreme Court only takes a few select cases each year, Phillips became emotional when he recalled news that justices had agreed to take up his petition after the state of Colorado ruled against him.
Even though the result of the case was narrowly in his favor and didn’t open up a First Amendment right for anti-LGBT discrimination, Phillips said it was worth the effort.
“True tolerance has to be a two-way street,” Phillips said. “We’re thrilled that the United States ruled in our favor, this ruling solidifying religious freedom in our country, but it’s not just for me, it’s for all us, every American should now be able to live and work freely and according to their conscience without fear of punishment from the government.”
Other speakers at the summit expressed concerns about threats to religious minorities in a manner that progressives would likely agree is a threat to religious freedom.
Among them was Harpreet Singh, who works with Muslim, Arab, Sikh, South Asian and Hindu religions on behalf of the Justice Department, and Asma Uddin, senior scholar at the Religious Freedom Center of the Freedom Forum Institute, who talked about anti-Muslim sentiments.
Singh said his agency has found hate crimes against minority religions have been increasing, which he said is substantiated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual reports and studies from universities, although “there’s a lot of underreporting going on.”
But other speakers on the panel railed against efforts to uphold LGBT rights as they face compromise in the name of religious freedom, including Emilie Kao, director of the Richard & Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at the anti-LGBT Heritage Foundation.
Kao was critical of litigation filed by the ACLU against the Michigan law enabling Catholic adoption agencies to refuse placement to LGBT families over religious objections.
Asserting same-sex couples seeking to adopt face no problem in access to adoption, Kao said the plaintiff in the lawsuit drove past four other adoption agencies to reach St. Vincent’s Catholic Charities, which she said “still holds the belief that they should put every child with a mother and father.”
“The lesbian couple says they were personally offended by St. Vincent’s not placing a child with them,” Kao said. “I think it’s important for us to recognize that throughout the history of our country and the Supreme Court’s cases, we have always protected the right of people to follow their religious beliefs, and we’ve never protected the right not to have your feelings hurt.”
Michael McConnell, a law professor at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford University, warned of the growing compromise that religious liberty faces in the wake of growing “sexual freedom.”
“An extremely popular argument in religious circles has been that religious accommodations are necessarily unconstitutional if they lead to so-called third-party harm,” McConnell said. “If there’s anyone whose rights or interests…are interfered with, that that means the accommodation is simply unconstitutional. To my mind, that’s an extremely implausible argument because virtually every accommodation, and indeed, virtually any application of any constitutional right — free speech, property, due process — there’s always someone on the other side of ledger who’s interests are being harmed.”
The White House
Expanded global gag rule to ban US foreign aid to groups that promote ‘gender ideology’
Activists, officials say new regulation will limit access to gender-affirming care
The Trump-Vance administration has announced it will expand the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.”
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in a memo, titled Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance, the Federal Register published on Jan. 27 notes “previous administrations … used” U.S. foreign assistance “to fund the denial of the biological reality of sex, promoting a radical ideology that permits men to self-identify as women, indoctrinate children with radical gender ideology, and allow men to gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women.”
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. It also threatens the wellbeing of children by encouraging them to undergo life-altering surgical and chemical interventions that carry serious risks of lifelong harms like infertility,” reads the memo. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women and children but, as an attack on truth and human nature, it harms every nation. It is the purpose of this rule to prohibit the use of foreign assistance to support radical gender ideology, including by ending support for international organizations and multilateral organizations that pressure nations to embrace radical gender ideology, or otherwise promote gender ideology.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 28, 2025, issued an executive order — Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation — that banned federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors.
President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services.
Trump reinstated the rule during his first administration. The White House this week expanded the ban to include groups that support gender-affirming care and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The expanded global gag rule will take effect on Feb. 26.
“None of the funds made available by this act or any other Act may be made available in contravention of Executive Order 14187, relating to Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, or shall be used or transferred to another federal agency, board, or commission to fund any domestic or international non-governmental organization or any other program, organization, or association coordinated or operated by such non-governmental organization that either offers counseling regarding sex change surgeries, promotes sex change surgeries for any reason as an option, conducts or subsidizes sex change surgeries, promotes the use of medications or other substances to halt the onset of puberty or sexual development of minors, or otherwise promotes transgenderism,” wrote Landau in his memo.
Landau wrote the State Department “does not believe taxpayer dollars should support sex-rejecting procedures, directly or indirectly for individuals of any age.”
“A person’s body (including its organs, organ systems, and processes natural to human development like puberty) are either healthy or unhealthy based on whether they are operating according to their biological functions,” reads his memo. “Organs or organ systems do not become unhealthy simply because the individual may experience psychological distress relating to his or her sexed body. For this reason, removing a patient’s breasts as a treatment for breast cancer is fundamentally different from performing the same procedure solely to alleviate mental distress arising from gender dysphoria. The former procedure aims to restore bodily health and to remove cancerous tissue. In contrast, removing healthy breasts or interrupting normally occurring puberty to ‘affirm’ one’s ‘gender identity’ involves the intentional destruction of healthy biological functions.”
Landau added there “is also lack of clarity about what sex-rejecting procedures’ fundamental aims are, unlike the broad consensus about the purpose of medical treatments for conditions like appendicitis, diabetes, or severe depression.”
“These procedures lack strong evidentiary foundations, and our understanding of long-term health impacts is limited and needs to be better understood,” he wrote. “Imposing restrictions, as this rule proposes, on sex-rejecting procedures for individuals of any age is necessary for the (State) Department to protect taxpayer dollars from abuse in support of radical ideological aims.”
Landau added the State Department “has determined that applying this rule to non-military foreign assistance broadly is necessary to ensure that its foreign assistance programs do not support foreign NGOs and IOs (international organizations) that promote gender ideology, and U.S. NGOs that provide sex-rejecting procedures, and to ensure the integrity of programs such as humanitarian assistance, gender-related programs, and more, do not promote gender ideology.”
“This rule will also allow for more foreign assistance funds to support organizations that promote biological truth in their foreign assistance programs and help the (State) Department to establish new partnerships,” he wrote.
The full memo can be found here.
Council for Global Equality Senior Policy Fellow Beirne Roose-Snyder on Wednesday said the expansion of the so-called global gag rule will “absolutely impact HIV services where we know we need to target services, to that there are non-stigmatizing, safe spaces for people to talk through all of their medical needs, and being trans is really important to be able to disclose to your health care provider so that you can get ARVs, so you can get PrEP in the right ways.” Roose-Snyder added the expanded ban will also impact access to gender-affirming health care, food assistance programs and humanitarian aid around the world.
“This rule is not about gender-affirming care at all,” she said during a virtual press conference the Universal Access Project organized.
“It is about really saying that if you want to take U.S. funds — and it’s certainly not about gender-affirming care for children — it is if you want to take U.S. funds, you cannot have programs or materials or offer counseling or referrals to people who may be struggling with their gender identity,” added Roose-Snyder. “You cannot advocate to maintain your country’s own nondiscrimination laws around gender identity. It is the first place that we’ve ever seen the U.S. government define gender-affirming care, except they call it something a lot different than that.”
The Congressional Equality Caucus, the Democratic Women’s Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus also condemned the global gag rule’s expansion.
“We strongly condemn this weaponization of U.S. foreign assistance to undermine human rights and global health,” said the caucuses in a statement. “We will not rest until we ensure that our foreign aid dollars can never be used as a weapon against women, people of color, or LGBTQI+ people ever again.”
Advocacy groups are demanding the Trump-Vance administration not to deport two gay men to Iran.
MS Now on Jan. 23 reported the two men are among the 40 Iranian nationals who the White House plans to deport.
Iran is among the countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death.
The Washington Blade earlier this month reported LGBTQ Iranians have joined anti-government protests that broke out across the country on Dec. 28. Human rights groups say the Iranian government has killed thousands of people since the demonstrations began.
Rebekah Wolf of the American Immigration Council, which represents the two men, told MS Now her clients were scheduled to be on a deportation flight on Jan. 25. A Human Rights Campaign spokesperson on Tuesday told the Blade that one of the men “was able to obtain a temporary stay of removal from the” 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the other “is facing delayed deportation as the result of a measles outbreak at the facility where they’re being held.”
“My (organization, the American Immigration Council) represents those two gay men,” said American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick in a Jan. 23 post on his Bluesky account. “They had been arrested on charges of sodomy by Iranian moral police, and fled the country seeking asylum. They face the death penalty if returned, yet the Trump (administration) denied their asylum claims in a kangaroo court process.”
“They are terrified,” added Reichlin-Melnick.
My org @immcouncil.org represents those two gay men. They had been arrested on charges of sodomy by Iranian moral police, and fled the country seeking asylum. They face the death penalty if returned, yet the Trump admin denied their asylum claims in a kangaroo court process.
They are terrified.
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 8:26 AM
Reichlin-Melnick in a second Bluesky post said “deporting people to Iran right now, as body bags line the street, is an immoral, inhumane, and unjust act.”
“That ICE is still considering carrying out the flight this weekend is a sign of an agency and an administration totally divorced from basic human rights,” he added.
Deporting people to Iran right now, as body bags line the street, is an immoral, inhumane, and unjust act. That ICE is still considering carrying out the flight this weekend is a sign of an agency and an administration totally divorced from basic human rights. www.ms.now/news/trump-d…
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 8:27 AM
HRC Vice President of Government Affairs David Stacy in a statement to the Blade noted Iran “is one of 12 nations that still execute queer people, and we continue to fear for their safety.” Stacy also referenced Renee Good, a 37-year-old lesbian woman who a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, and Andry Hernández Romero, a gay Venezuelan asylum seeker who the Trump-Vance administration “forcibly disappeared” to El Salvador last year.
“This out-of-control administration continues to target immigrants and terrorize our communities,” said Stacy. “That same cruelty murdered Renee Nicole Good and imprisoned Andry Hernández Romero. We stand with the American Immigration Council and demand that these men receive the due process they deserve. Congress must refuse to fund this outrage and stand against the administration’s shameless dismissal of our constitutional rights.”
Maryland
Expanded PrEP access among FreeState Justice’s 2026 legislative priorities
Maryland General Assembly opened on Jan. 14
FreeState Justice this week spoke with the Washington Blade about their priorities during this year’s legislative session in Annapolis that began on Jan. 14.
Ronnie L. Taylor, the group’s community director, on Wednesday said the organization continues to fight against discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS. FreeState Justice is specifically championing a bill in the General Assembly that would expand access to PrEP in Maryland.
Taylor said FreeState Justice is working with state Del. Ashanti Martinez (D-Prince George’s County) and state Sen. Clarence Lam (D-Arundel and Howard Counties) on a bill that would expand the “scope of practice for pharmacists in Maryland to distribute PrEP.” The measure does not have a title or a number, but FreeState Justice expects it will have both in the coming weeks.
FreeState Justice has long been involved in the fight to end the criminalization of HIV in the state.
Governor Wes Moore last year signed House Bill 39, which decriminalized HIV in Maryland.
The bill — the Carlton R. Smith Jr. HIV Modernization Act — is named after Carlton Smith, a long-time LGBTQ activist known as the “mayor” of Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood who died in 2024. FreeState Justice said Marylanders prosecuted under Maryland Health-General Code § 18-601.1 have already seen their convictions expunged.
Taylor said FreeState Justice will continue to “oppose anti anti-LGBTQ legislation” in the General Assembly. Their website later this week will publish a bill tracker.
The General Assembly’s legislative session is expected to end on April 13.
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