National
Arizona LGBTQ leaders call on HRC to end support for Sinema
Angry over the filibuster, activists urge donors to cut funding
In a little-noticed development, more than 100 LGBTQ community leaders and allied supporters in Arizona sent a joint letter in January to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights group, demanding that it withdraw its political and financial support for U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) unless and until Sinema ends her support for the Senate filibuster.
The letter points out that by continuing to refuse to join efforts by Senate Democratic leaders to end the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass legislation, Sinema is helping Republicans block progressive legislation already approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, including the Equality Act, the LGBTQ nondiscrimination bill stalled in the Senate.
The LGBTQ leaders, who drafted the letter in partnership with the Arizona Coalition to End the Filibuster, told HRC they will call on HRC’s supporters to stop funding the group unless it backs away from its support for Sinema.
“The toll of Sinema’s obstruction – which HRC continues to tacitly support and thus enable – for your constituents is growing each day,” the letter states, adding, “with the filibuster blocking popular legislation, backed by all or nearly all Democrats, to address the urgent issues of reproductive justice, immigrant rights, gun violence, police reform, workers’ right to organizing, raising the minimum wage, and more.”
In a statement released shortly after sending their Jan. 19 letter to HRC, the Arizona LGBTQ leaders said HRC’s Interim President Joni Madison sent them a letter on Jan. 24 saying that HRC had privately “made it clear” to Sinema’s staff that HRC disagrees with her pro-filibuster positions, especially her vote against temporarily suspending the filibuster to enable the Senate to pass two voting rights bills.
But the statement says Madison’s letter “did not commit to any public statement toward Sinema, to a strong public position in favor of ending the filibuster, or to withdraw support from Sinema if she maintains her obstructionist stance that blocks passage of the Equality Act, critical voting rights legislation, and so much more.”
HRC, along with many other LGBTQ organizations, has supported Sinema since the time of her election in 2018, when she became the nation’s first openly bisexual U.S. senator. At the time of her election, Sinema expressed strong support for the Democratic Party’s progressive agenda. She also signed on as a co-sponsor of the Equality Act and has since said she would vote for the LGBTQ rights measure.
But since 2020, she has stated she supports the filibuster because she, like other supporters of the controversial Senate rule, claim it fosters bipartisanship by requiring both parties to compromise as a means of passing controversial legislation.
Nearly all political observers in Washington believe the Equality Act, which passed in the House last year, is dead in the Senate without the lifting of the filibuster.
A spokesperson for Sinema’s office in Washington did not respond to a request from the Washington Blade for comment and a possible interview with the Arizona senator to obtain her thoughts on the growing opposition to her continued support of the Senate filibuster.
In response to a request from the Blade for comment on the Arizona LGBTQ leaders’ criticism of HRC’s actions toward Sinema, an HRC spokesperson referred the Blade to an updated statement on Sinema that HRC released on Feb. 9, which it attributes to the “HRC staff.”
The statement says HRC strongly supported efforts by Senate Democratic leaders to suspend the filibuster to enable the two voting rights bills to pass, which supporters said were needed to counter the numerous laws enacted by GOP-controlled state legislatures to restrict voting rights of minorities. The statement says HRC was especially troubled that Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) joined Republicans in voting against the temporary suspension of the filibuster, which resulted in the two voting rights bills dying on the Senate floor.
“We must hold politicians accountable,” the HRC statement says. “We have been working diligently to make sure we hold Senator Sinema accountable now and, in the future,” it says.
“Prior to the vote, HRC directly called on her to enable the Senate to change its rules to allow voting rights reform to pass; and then we directly let her know that we felt betrayed by her actions after the vote,” the statement continues.
The statement says HRC will use the vote by senators on the two voting rights bills, along with votes on other bills, to rate senators in HRC’s Congressional Scorecard, which rates all members of Congress on issues deemed important to the LGBTQ community.
HRC assigned Sinema a rating of 100, its highest possible rating, during the 114th Congress when Sinema served in the U.S. House. It gave her a 94 rating for the 115th Congress while she was also in the House. HRC assigned her a rating of 89 for the 116th Congress during her first two years as a U.S. senator.
To the disappointment of the Arizona LGBTQ leaders, the HRC statement does not commit to publicly denouncing Sinema or ending its political or financial support for the Arizona senator. Instead, the statement says HRC “is structured differently than the organizations that publicly condemned the Senator.”
According to its statement, HRC “endorses candidates, supports them through their election, works with them to pass legislation and policy, and holds them accountable for their commitments and actions.” It notes that with three years left in Sinema’s term in office, “we still have much work to do,” adding that HRC will be working on a wide range of pending legislation and judicial nominations, including the Voting Rights Act and the Equality Act.
“Strategically, we have to consider the long-range view and the impact of the work ahead,” the statement says. “With that in mind, we will continue to work with the current Senate to advance equality for our community in all of our intersecting identities. And as part of that work, we will continue to be honest with those who fall short of their commitments to us and our community,” the statement concludes.
In their joint letter to HRC, the Arizona LGBTQ leaders stated, “[W]e call on Human Rights Campaign to publicly disavow any future endorsement or financial support for Senator Sinema if she does not reverse her position on the filibuster.” The statement adds, “And we call on all donors to HRC to withhold further contributions until this is done.”
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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