National
HRC launches ‘Reality Flag’ campaign to boost Equality Act
Removal of 29 stars symbolizes states that lack LGBTQ protections
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization, announced it is launching a nationwide multimedia campaign to promote the approval by Congress of the LGBTQ nondiscrimination legislation known as the Equality Act.
In a Feb. 23 statement HRC says the campaign, among other things, will include a series of “powerful” video ads for social media and TV created by Emmy Award-winning director Joey Soloway that tell stories of how individual LGBTQ people are adversely impacted by discrimination.
At the center of the campaign as depicted in the videos is an American flag with 29 of the 50 stars removed to draw attention to the 29 states that do not have comprehensive legal protections for LGBTQ people that HRC is calling the “Reality Flag.”
In its official launch of the campaign on Feb. 23 HRC unveiled an 85-foot-long version of the Reality Flag on the outer wall of its headquarters building in D.C. that HRC points out is located just six blocks from the White House.
“The Reality Flag campaign is designed to point out the inequalities LGBTQ+ individuals face every day – in our own voice,” said Joni Madison, HRC’s interim president. “From housing and educational discrimination to denial of government and health services, LGBTQ+ people are confronted by hurdles to simply exist every day,” Madison said in a statement.
“This needs to change,” she said. “The Reality Flag not only calls out the 29 states where basic freedoms are still missing for millions of people but stands as a symbol of hope that communities can rally behind to enact meaningful change.”
HRC’s Reality Flag campaign comes at a time when most political observers unaffiliated with the Equality Act’s staunch supporters and opponents believe the bill has no chance of passing in the U.S. Senate any time soon, even though it passed in the U.S. House in February 2021 by a vote of 224 to 206. In the House vote, only three Republicans joined all 221 Democrats in voting for the measure.
Observers note that although Democrats have a slim majority in the 50 Democrat-50 Republican Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris set to break a tie vote in favor of Democrats, the Senate’s longstanding filibuster rule that Democrats are unable to change means the Equality Act needs a 60-vote majority to pass.
Forty-nine of the 50 Senate Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors of the Equality Act. Maverick Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia emerged as the sole Senate Democrat saying he cannot support the Equality Act in its current version due, in part, to what Manchin says is its provisions related to transgender nondiscrimination in school sports and school bathroom use.
Sources familiar with the Senate told the Washington Blade last May that even if the filibuster rule is eliminated, other Democratic senators from swing states would likely join Manchin in withholding support for the Equality Act due to efforts by some Republicans to turn transgender rights into an inflammatory wedge issue.
The official congressional website Congress.gov states that the Equality Act calls for prohibiting “discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system.”
The Congress.gov site adds, “The bill prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.”
Several moderate GOP senators, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), have said they support the principle of protections against discrimination for LGBTQ people and would be willing to vote for a revised Equality Act that includes what they call religious rights protections and some changes in the transgender provisions.
Some Republican observers have said enough Republicans would likely join Democrats to reach the needed 60 votes to pass the Equality Act in the Senate if Democrats agree to the changes proposed by the moderate Republicans.
Other Republicans, however, including the national LGBTQ GOP group Log Cabin Republicans, have said the Equality Act should be discarded altogether following the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2020 known as Bostock v. Clayton County. The decision declares that Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans sex discrimination, also prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Equality Act supporters have argued that the legislation is still needed to ensure that LGBTQ people are fully protected from discrimination in other areas such as housing and public accommodations.
Representatives of both sides have said negotiations have been taking place over possible changes in the Equality Act since at least the beginning of last year, but nothing has emerged from those reported negotiations as of this week.
Many LGBTQ advocacy organizations, including HRC, have said the GOP suggested changes to the Equality Act related to “religious freedom,” which the bill’s supporters say means a right to discriminate against LGBTQ people based on religious grounds in a nonreligious setting such as a private business open to the public, are unacceptable.
Most LGBTQ advocacy groups have also declared as unacceptable GOP proposals to weaken or remove protections for transgender people in the legislation, saying such proposals are being promoted by people who have been misled or are themselves misleading others to believe cisgender women in sports and in public restrooms as well as in school bathrooms and showers would be adversely impacted by the current version of the legislation.
With both sides in what most Capitol Hill observers consider to be a complete deadlock, Senate Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), have not indicated a willingness to bring the Equality Act up for a vote in the Senate this year.
Schumer’s office didn’t reply to an inquiry from the Blade last week asking whether Schumer would consider bringing the Equality Act to the Senate floor for a vote this year or next year if Democrats retain control of the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections.
With that as a backdrop, David Stacy, HRC’s Government Affairs Director, told the Blade in a Feb. 25 statement that passage of the Equality Act remains a high priority for HRC and the LGBTQ+ community.
“Getting any legislation through the U.S. Senate is not easy,” Stacy said. “In the meantime, support continues growing for the bill, and we believe the Reality Flag campaign will continue to generate the awareness and education needed to continue growing support and pressure for action,” he said.
“We’ve already seen since our launch people coming out saying they had no idea LGBTQ+ people didn’t already have these protections, and that’s what we aim to do here: educate people and inspire them to take action at the grassroots level across the country – call their senators and make it clear that it’s time we need this done,” Stacy said. “Some people may be ready to give up. We are not,” he said.
In its three-page statement announcing the launch of its Reality Flag campaign, HRC says the campaign is being produced in partnership with a team of advertising and public relations agencies affiliated with the international marketing and communications company giant WPP.
“While the campaign seeks to galvanize public support for the Equality Act and driving audiences to take action at RealityFlag.com, it also underscores the importance of lifting up and showcasing the real stories and lived experiences of LGBTQ+ people impacted by discrimination,” the statement continues.
It says the stories about individual LGTQ people will primarily be featured in “video vignettes” created by TV writer and director Joey Soloway, the Emmy Award-winning creator of “Transparent,” an original Amazon Studios streaming television comedy-drama series about a transgender woman and her family. Soloway identifies as non-binary and gender non-conforming.
“These stories … will be amplified through both an advertising campaign, including partnerships with 20 national media platforms, achieving an anticipated 30 million-plus impressions during launch, including TV, print, display, video, audio, cinema, OOH, social, and search,” the HRC statement says.
Access to some of the video ads slated for the HRC Reality Flag campaign can be found at RealityFlag.com.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
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