A transgender woman from Honduras has traveled to Pennsylvania several times in recent weeks to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democratic candidates.

Monserrath Aleman traveled to York on Aug. 31 and Lancaster on Sept. 21 with a group of other volunteers from CASA in Action. 

They door-knocked in areas where large numbers of African Americans, Black, and Latino voters live. Aleman and the other CASA in Action volunteers urged them to support Harris, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and other down ballot Democratic candidates.

Aleman will be in Harrisburg on Nov. 2, and in York on Election Day.

“We achieved the goal that we had in mind and that we wanted to achieve,” she told the Washington Blade on Oct. 22 during a Zoom interview from Baltimore. “We knocked on doors, passed out flyers.”

Aleman cited Project 2025 — which the Congressional Equality Caucus on Thursday sharply criticized — when she spoke with the Blade.

“We know that there is a Project 2025 plan that would affect us: The entire immigrant Latino community, the LGBTI community, everyone,” said Aleman. “So that’s why I’m more motivated to go knocking on doors, to ask for help, for support from everyone who can vote, who can exercise their vote.”

She told the Blade that she and her fellow volunteers “did not have any bad response.”

Aleman grew up in Yoro, a city that is roughly 130 miles north of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.

She left Honduras on Nov. 25, 2021.

Aleman entered Mexico in Palenque, a city in the country’s Chiapas state that is close to the border with Guatemala. The Mexican government granted her a humanitarian visa that allowed her to legally travel through the country.

Aleman told the Blade she walked and took buses to Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican border city that is across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas.

She scheduled her appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection while living at a shelter in Ciudad Juárez. Aleman now lives in Baltimore.

“Discrimination against the LGBTI community exists everywhere, but in Honduras it is more critical,” said Aleman.

Aleman added she feels “more free to express herself, to speak with someone” in the U.S. She also said she remains optimistic that Harris will defeat former President Donald Trump on Election Day.

“There is no other option,” said Aleman.

The Democratic-controlled Pennsylvania House of Representatives on July 2 passed a bill that would repeal the state’s same-sex marriage ban.

The marriage bill passed by a 133-68 vote margin, with all but one Democrat voting for it. Thirty-two Republicans backed the measure.

The bill’s next hurdle is to pass in the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Senate.

State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-Philadelphia), a gay man who is running for state auditor, noted to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review the bill would eliminate a clause in Pennsylvania’s marriage law that defines marriage as “between one man and one woman.” The measure would also change the legal definition of marriage in the state to “a civil contract between two individuals.”

Kenyatta did not return the Washington Blade’s requests for comment.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges extended marriage rights to same-sex couples across the country. 

Justice Clarence Thomas in the 2022 decision that struck down Roe v. Wade said the Supreme Court should reconsider the Obergefell decision and the Lawrence v. Texas ruling that said laws that criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations are unconstitutional. President Joe Biden at the end of that year signed the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires the federal government and all U.S. states and territories to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages.

Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin earlier this year signed a bill that codified marriage rights for same-sex couples in state law. Pennsylvania lawmakers say the marriage codification bill is necessary in case the Supreme Court overturns marriage rights for same-sex couples in their state and across the country.

Editor’s note: The Philadelphia Gay News originally published this story.

BY TIM CWIEK | Prosecutors are pledging justice for Pauly Likens, a 14-year-old transgender girl from Sharon, Pa., who was brutally killed last month. Her remains were scattered in and around a park lake in western Pennsylvania.

“The bottom line is that we have a 14-year-old, brutally murdered and dismembered,” said Mercer County District Attorney Peter C. Acker in an email. “Pauly Likens deserves justice, her family deserves justice, and we seek to deliver that justice.”

On June 23, DaShawn Watkins allegedly met Likens in the vicinity of Budd Street Public Park and Canoe Launch in Sharon, Pa., and killed her. Watkins subsequently dismembered Likens’s corpse with a saw and scattered her remains in and around Shenango River Lake in Clark Borough.

On July 2, Watkins was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, aggravated assault, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. He’s being held without bail in the Mercer County jail.

The coroner’s office said the cause of death was sharp force trauma to the head and ruled the manner of death as homicide.

Cell phone records, social media and surveillance video link Watkins to the crime. Additionally, traces of Likens’s blood were found in and around Watkins’s apartment in Sharon, Pa., authorities say.

A candlelight vigil is being held Saturday, July 13, in remembrance of Likens. It’s being hosted by LGBTQIA+ Alliance Shenango Valley. The vigil begins at 7 p.m. at 87 Stambaugh Ave. in Sharon, Pa.

Pamela Ladner, president of the Alliance, mourned Likens’s death. 

“Pauly’s aunt described her as a sweet soul, inside and out,” Ladner said in an email. “She was a selfless child who loved nature and wanted to be a park ranger like her aunt.”

Acker, the prosecutor, said Likens’s death is one of the worst crimes he’s seen in 46 years as an attorney. But he cautioned against calling it a hate crime. “PSP [Pennsylvania State Police] does not believe it in fact is one [hate crime] because the defendant admitted to being a homosexual and the victim was reportedly a trans girl,” Acker asserted.

Acker praised the criminal justice agencies who worked on the case, including the Pennsylvania State Police, the Hermitage Police Department, the Sharon Police Department, park rangers from the Shenango Reservoir, Mercer County Coroner John Libonati, and cadaver dog search units.

“The amount of hours dedicated to the identification of the victim and the filing of charges against the defendant is a huge number,” Acker added. “We take the murder of any individual very seriously, expressly when they are young and brutally killed and dismembered.”

Acker also noted that all criminal defendants are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

This is a developing story.