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Biden’s acknowledgment of LGBTQ History Month ‘consequential’

Equality Forum honors 31 new ‘icons’ as annual commemoration kicks off

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Rep. Mark Pocan was honored with Equality Forum’s International Role Model Award. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

President Joe Biden signed a letter acknowledging Equality Forum’s LGBTQ History Month launch event held on Sunday, writing that, “by celebrating stories of bravery, resilience and joy, your example inspires hope in all people seeking a life true to who they are.”

Malcolm Lazin, Equality Forum executive director, said Biden’s letter is “consequential.” He noted that one year before the White House delivered a proclamation for Black History Month, it issued a letter signed by the president.

“It’s our hope that next year, our nation’s 47th president will issue that proclamation for LGBT History Month,” Lazin said.

Equality Forum is an LGBTQ civil rights organization with an educational focus based in Philadelphia. The group’s work includes coordinating LGBTQ History Month, producing documentary films and overseeing the application for and installation of government-approved queer historic markers.

When spearheading LGBTQ History Month for the first time back in 2006, Lazin said many pushed back against the idea. Some media outlets claimed it was trying to turn straight people gay or promote pedophilia. 

But Lazin said the homophobic reactions died down when people were educated on topics that typically weren’t taught in a widespread way.

“We were demonized, marginalized, and vilified,” Lazin said. “One of the certain principal ways you’re going to make headway is if you humanize who we are, and also educate people about the important contributions we make to our common society.”

Education has always been Equality Forum’s solution to societal backlash or controversy since its inception, Lazin said.

The organization got its start in 1993 under the name PrideFest Philadelphia. Lazin, who was the founder, said it was created during a time when Pride parades were the main focus of the LGBTQ community. 

In an effort to shift focus onto civil rights issues, PrideFest hosted its first LGBTQ summit that eventually transformed into an event featuring national and international organizations. Lazin said it was an effort to educate people on LGBTQ history as well as inform the community on queer rights around the world.

Though that event was terminated in 2020, Lazin is still focused on educating both queer and straight people on LGBTQ civil rights. Equality Forum honors 31 “LGBTQ icons” each year for every day in October.

This initiative began when Equality Forum started coordinating LGBTQ History Month back in 2006, but Lazin didn’t notice their efforts taking off until about five years in.

“In year one, people thought, ‘Oh yeah, those are like all the important names of the gay community,’” he said. “People paid a little bit more attention the following years, and all of a sudden they’re recognizing, ‘Oh, in a certain sense I was clueless about the role models that the gay community has.’”

This year’s icons being recognized include names like singers George Michael, Luther Vandross, and Sam Smith; pioneering drag queen William Dorsey Swann; “The Bachelor” star Colton Underwood; Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan; and longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff.

Pocan received the International Role Model Award during Sunday’s LGBTQ History Month launch event. It’s the longest-standing LGBTQ award in the nation, and has been presented to prominent figures like former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

He said accepting the award allowed him to reflect on the progress that’s been made in a relatively short time.

“I was preparing to make some remarks for the event, and I realized that I’ve been kind of in the front row of a lot of the history making in the country, because more of our history is in the last several decades,” Pocan told the Washington Blade. “There are significant moments in the past, but where the real improvements have happened have been more recent.”

In 1995, former President Bill Clinton invited Pocan, who is gay, and other LGBTQ elected officials to The White House for the first time. When they arrived and were going through security, Pocan said they noticed everyone was wearing blue gloves.

Initially assuming it was due to enhanced security following the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing, Pocan said they later discovered the Secret Service agents thought they could contract AIDS from out elected officials.

He said the Secret Service issued an apology letter and the Clinton administration made it clear that wasn’t their policy. Even more memorable for Pocan was when then-Vice President Al Gore made it a point to shake everyone’s hands at the event.

Comparing that memory to Biden’s recent letter puts the advancements of LGBTQ rights into perspective for Pocan. He said that’s the reason recognizing and remembering queer history is vital.

“If you don’t know the history, it’s too easy to repeat it,” he said.

The fight to recognize the global work done toward advancing LGBTQ civil rights, however, isn’t over, Lazin said.

Many states are working to restrict LGBTQ topics from being taught in schools. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1069 last year, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, to prohibit lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The New College of Florida faced backlash when photos of hundreds of library books, many containing LGBTQ topics, overflowing a dumpster were shared online. A New College spokesperson said the books were “taken after discovering that the library did not follow all of the state administrative requirements while conducting the routine disposition of materials.”

Despite what the future may hold for LGBTQ content in schools, Lazin said the resources Equality Forum promotes, including the website featuring 31 queer icons in October, are always available.

“At least on this site, students, teachers, and guidance counselors have resources,” he said. “So if you’re an English teacher and you want to be celebrating LGBT History Month, click on poets, or click on authors. You’ve got a whole rich range of people to be able to bring into your curriculum.”

The reality of what LGBTQ History Month has become today is more than the work of one organization; Lazin said it’s the combined effort of local communities that are curious about their own history.

“While we could not possibly take on doing the history of all the cities around the country or in North America or around the world, it really has helped to encourage people to appreciate that history and to make sure that it is well documented,” Lazin said.

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National

Baldwin, Pocan named on alleged Minn. shooter’s target lists

Gunman killed state lawmaker, husband on Saturday

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U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, Democrats of Wisconsin, were named on lists of targets belonging to the man suspected of killing Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband and of injuring Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife.

The Hoffmans sustained multiple gunshot wounds and are reportedly in serious but stable condition.

Vance Boelter, the suspect, was apprehended on Sunday in connection with the shootings, which occurred on Saturday. He faces federal murder and stalking charges as well as state-level murder and attempted murder charges.

“Senator Baldwin was informed by law enforcement that she was included on the alleged shooter’s list of names,” Baldwin’s Communications Director Eli Rosen told Channel3000.com. “She is grateful for law enforcement’s swift action to keep the community safe and remains focused on the things that matter most here: honoring the legacy and life of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, praying for the other victims who are fighting for their lives, and condemning this abhorrent, senseless political violence.”

“I recently heard that my name was in one of the Minnesota shooting suspect’s notebooks and I’m appreciative that law enforcement apprehended the suspect,” Pocan said in a statement to Channel3000.com. “I will not back down in the face of terror, however, we as elected officials, must do better to lower the temperature. That said, my schedule remains unchanged.”

The news outlet reported on Monday that Baldwin’s name appeared on a list of 70 targets, while Pocan’s name was found on additional documents. The senator and congressman are both openly LGBTQ.

Democratic U.S. Reps. Greg Landsman (Ohio), Hillary Schotlen (Mich.), Veronica Escobar (Texas), and Joaquin Castro (Texas) also confirmed that their names appeared in notebooks recovered from Boelter’s vehicle.

Other Democrats who were reportedly targeted but whose offices have not yet provided confirmation as of Tuesday afternoon include LGBTQ congresswoman Angie Craig, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Attorney General Keith Ellison, all from Minnesota, along with U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski of Illinois, and U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri.

Walz called the shootings a “politically motivated assassination.”

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Trump anti-trans EO used to deny health care to Democrats, unmarried vets

Veterans warn impacts will be felt disproportionately by women and LGBTQ people.

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President Donald Trump (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

New rules would allow doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to deny care to unmarried veterans and Democrats at hospitals across the country, pursuant to President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

According to the Guardian, which was first to report the hospital guidelines on Monday, they apply also to psychologists, dentists, and other providers — allowing for individual staff to refuse care for veterans on the basis of characteristics not covered under federal law, which proscribes discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, and sex.

Doctors can also be barred from working on VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity, per documents reviewed by the Guardian. The agency confirmed changes to the rules came in response to Trump’s executive order.

Specifically, per the paper:

Until the recent changes, VA hospitals’ bylaws said that medical staff could not discriminate against patients “on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, national origin, politics, marital status or disability in any employment matter”. Now, several of those items — including “national origin,” “politics” and “marital status” — have been removed from that list.

Similarly, the bylaw on “decisions regarding medical staff membership” no longer forbids VA hospitals from discriminating against candidates for staff positions based on national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, membership in a labor organization or “lawful political party affiliation.”

Experts warn that changes to the guidelines may lead to situations where, for example, doctors may question patients about whether they attended a rally for a political candidate or in support of gay rights, potentially denying care on those bases or because of the reasons given for seeking care, such as cases where the patient may report a rape or sexual assault.

Veterans warn impacts will be felt disproportionately by women and LGBTQ people.

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National

New LGBTQ+ Archive to save scrubbed federal resources

Trump’s anti-DEI crusade seeks to erase entire communities

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President Trump’s attacks on DEI have led government agencies to scrub their sites of LGBTQ content. A new initiative aims to preserve the information. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Generally, when someone says, “The internet is forever,” it is not a positive statement. 

But for Shae Gardner, policy director at LGBT Tech, it has become a lifeline as she and her team have spent the last couple of months tracking down documents removed from government websites.

After a series of anti-DEI and LGBTQ executive orders, thousands of pages across the federal government have been removed or altered—with LGBTQ topics taking a big hit.

The LGBTQ+ Archive, launched by LGBT Tech last month, aims to restore lost resources about the LGBTQ community into a centralized hub. They have tracked down approximately 1,000 documents—all available as downloadable PDFs and sorted by agency—but know that more are missing. Users can submit missing documents or requests for missing documents. 

Archived resources range from the 2023 Equity Action Plans mandated under Biden to HIV resource sheets. 

Sid Gazula, LGBT Tech’s Google Policy Fellow said reviewing the documents scrubbed from the Department of Health and Human Services was striking. “You have these important documents related to people’s health. Health isn’t subjective,” he said, “The fact that an executive order could take away all this information was very eye-opening.”

For Gazula it made an already urgent project more urgent. “We, as a community, need access to these resources,” he said, “The archive presents a mechanism to get that access out there.”

The LGBT community has a long history of engaging in archival work, explained K.J. Rawson, professor at Northeastern University and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, in an email. He described archives as “key avenues for preserving and making accessible queer and trans history.”

Since mainstream archives often erase or misrepresent the LGBTQ community, Rawson pointed out that LGBTQ archives “fight against this trend and wrest control back into LGBTQ+ hands,” citing Cait McKinney’s phrase “information activism.” 

Gardner feels appreciative of the history of LGBTQ preservation, which guided their work: “I want to make it abundantly clear that we are not the first or only organization doing this sort of preservation work.” She also mentions the Internet Archive, a non-profit library of web pages, which was invaluable during their research.

When the Blade asked about the LGBT Archive, Rawson described it as “crucial!” He elaborated that, “the overt erasure of LGBTQ+ people––but especially trans people––from federal websites has been a hostile move that’s one part of larger efforts to strip us of our humanity and our history.”

Beyond creating a record for the future, the archive is also useful in fighting for LGBTQ representation today. Gardner explained that numerous journalists and advocacy groups have already been using it. Gazula, who is a student, shared that some of their professors said it was an important resource for academic work. 

To access it, users have to create an account. Gardner said this is not for marketing. Instead, they want to “put a stop gap between us and malicious actors and attacks on the site” and have a basic understanding of who is using the site. She assures users that the data is backed up on servers globally, but encourages folks to download freely from the archive. 

“We decided that we wanted every document and resource on it to be a PDF that they would be able to save it themselves,” said Gardner, “This is not only meant to be very user-friendly, but is also meant to help with those resources being dispersed and being kept.”

“It is the history of our community,” Gardner continued, “we deserve to have continued access to it.”

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