National
Trump’s HHS appoints anti-trans activist to protect trans health
Severino a former staffer with the anti-LGBT Heritage Foundation
Roger Severino, director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity at the Heritage Foundation. (Image courtesy C-Span)
A series of statements from LGBT advocates came out Thursday over the appointment of Roger Severino, who until this week was director of the DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society for the Heritage Foundation.
Winnie Stachelberg, executive vice president for external affairs at the Center for American Progress, gave no quarter in a statement over the Severino’s appointment and its implications for transgender health.
“Frankly, it is sick that President Trump would appoint Roger Severino to lead OCR – putting a man who made his career opposing healthcare non-discrimination laws in charge of enforcing those very same protections,” Stachelberg said. “Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies routinely denied equal treatment to same-sex couples and more than half of private insurance plans explicitly discriminated against transgender patients, with more than a quarter of transgender people reported being denied medical care by a provider. Severino’s writing makes it clear that he wants to take us back to the days when 1 in 4 transgender people was refused medical care outright.”
Among the posts Severino wrote for The Daily Signal, the blog for the Heritage Foundation, were in opposition to LGBT people, especially transgender rights. After the White House came out against a provision in a congressional defense spending package that would have allowed anti-LGBT discrimination among federal contractors, Severino wrote a post called “Obama Threatens to Veto Military Bill Because It Protects Religious Groups.” After the Pentagon lifted its ban on openly transgender service, Severino wrote a post called “Pentagon’s Transgender Policy Defies Common Sense.”
Severino also defended North Carolina’s anti-LGBT House Bill 2, which prohibits transgender people from using the restroom in schools and government buildings consistent with their gender identity. Decrying the “unrelenting and coordinated attacks” against the state for enacting the law, Severino criticized former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch for filing a federal lawsuit against the measure, which he said amounted to progressives “using government power to coerce everyone, including children, into pledging allegiance to a radical new gender ideology.”
Marguerite Bowling, a spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation, defended Severino in response to concerns he’d seek to undermine transgender health in his role at HHS.
“Roger Severino has a distinguished record of fighting for the civil rights and freedoms of all Americans,” Severino said. “We have no doubt that Roger in his new role at HHS will protect the civil rights of all Americans.”
As head of the HHS civil rights division, Severino would be charged with enforcing Section 1557 of Obamacare, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability and age in health programs. The Obama administration interpreted the prohibiting on sex discrimination to bar discrimination against transgender people in health care, including the refusal of gender reassignment surgery.
Wade Henderson, outgoing CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, said in a statement the office of civil rights at HHS requires “strong and experienced leadership” to enforce Section 1557, and Severino is “not that leader.”
“Since enactment of the ACA seven years ago today, members of The Leadership Conference have strongly advocated for the full and complete implementation of Section 1557,” Henderson said. “In his previous position at the Heritage Foundation, Mr. Severino repeatedly denounced and actively worked to oppose OCR’s implementation of Section 1557. These actions call into question his ability to fully enforce the ACA and protect communities of color and other underserved populations, who are most at risk for unequal access to health and health care.”
It should be noted U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor has enjoined the enforcement of the Obamacare regulation interpreting Section 1557 to apply to transgender people. The Trump administration missed a deadline to appeal the decision to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to intervene to defend the regulation.
Harper Jean Tobin, policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said Severino could still do “a number of things” to impact transgender protections under Section 1557 as litigation proceeds.
“The government will now have to make a decision, and OCR is ostensibly the client DOJ in this decision, as to whether to ensure, as the government normally would in a case like this, that federal law and the federal regulation interpreting it and applying the federal law is defended, that a rule overturning it is reviewed by a higher court,” Tobin said. “I think the fear is that OCR and DOJ could sort of work together to have this injunction made permanent without any review by a higher court, which would be highly unusual and really inappropriate.”
After a rule-making process consisting of many years and with two separate comment periods, Tobin said letting the injunction against the regulation stand would be “tantamount to repealing the regulation without going the required rule-making process and instead just acceding to a fringe legal position by one district court judge.”
Tobin added OCR has other responsibilities related to transgender health, such as the federal health care privacy law, or HIPAA, which assures privacy for transgender people in health care settings.
“Up until now, OCR has in cases involving transgender people, just as it does for everybody else, acted to enforce the laws to protect their privacy, but given Mr. Severino’s aggressively hostile work to dismantle any kind of legal protections for transgender people, we’re worried about what kind of direction the agencies would take on those bedrock protections,” Tobin said.
Caitlyn Oakley, an HHS spokesperson, had no comment in response to concerns from LGBT advocacy groups that Severino wouldn’t protect transgender health in his new role.
“We aren’t commenting on personnel at this time,” Oakley said.
Matt McTighe, executive director of Freedom for All Americans, said in a statement Severino appointment to HHS and his anti-trans history spells trouble for transgender health.
“Roger Severino has a proven track record of opposing fair and equal treatment for the transgender community,” McTighe said. “He is a dangerous pick for a position that is meant to enforce critical civil rights protections. This is yet another example of the Trump administration’s failure to live up to the president’s campaign promise of protecting LGBT people and it will have devastating consequences for transgender people across the country.”
National
213 House members ask Speaker Johnson to condemn anti-trans rhetoric
Letter cites ‘demonizing and dehumanizing’ language
The Congressional Equality Caucus has sent a letter urging Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to condemn the surge in anti-trans rhetoric coming from members of Congress.
The letter, signed by 213 members, criticizes Johnson for permitting some lawmakers to use “demonizing and dehumanizing” language directed at the transgender community.
The first signature on the letter is Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, the only transgender member of Congress.
It also includes signatures from Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08), Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (MA-05), House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (CA-33), every member of the Congressional Equality Caucus, and members of every major House Democratic ideological caucus.
Some House Republicans have used slurs to address members of the transgender community during official business, including in committee hearings and on the House floor.
The House has strict rules governing proper language—rules the letter directly cites—while noting that no corrective action was taken by the Chair or Speaker Pro Tempore when these violations occurred.
The letter also calls out members of Congress—though none by name—for inappropriate comments, including calls to institutionalize all transgender people, references to transgender people as mentally ill, and false claims portraying them as inherently violent or as a national security threat.
Citing FBI data, the letter notes that 463 hate crime incidents were reported due to gender identity bias. It also references a 2023 Williams Institute report showing that transgender people are more than four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, despite making up less than 2% of the U.S. population.
The letter ends with a renewed plea for Speaker Johnson to take appropriate measures to protect not only the trans member of Congress from harassment, but also transgender people across the country.
“We urge you to condemn the rise in dehumanizing rhetoric targeting the transgender community and to ensure members of your conference are abiding by rules of decorum and not using their platforms to demonize and scapegoat the transgender community, including by ensuring members are not using slurs to refer to the transgender community.”
The full letter, including the complete list of signatories, can be found at equality.house.gov. (https://equality.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/equality.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/letter-to-speaker-johnson-on-anti-transgender-rhetoric-enforcing-rules-of-decorum.pdf)
The White House
EXCLUSIVE: Garcia, Markey reintroduce bill to require US promotes LGBTQ rights abroad
International Human Rights Defense Act also calls for permanent special envoy
Two lawmakers on Monday have reintroduced a bill that would require the State Department to promote LGBTQ rights abroad.
A press release notes the International Human Rights Defense Act that U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) introduced would “direct” the State Department “to monitor and respond to violence against LGBTQ+ people worldwide, while creating a comprehensive plan to combat discrimination, criminalization, and hate-motivated attacks against LGBTQ+ communities” and “formally establish a special envoy to coordinate LGBTQ+ policies across the State Department.”
“LGBTQ+ people here at home and around the world continue to face escalating violence, discrimination, and rollbacks of their rights, and we must act now,” said Garcia in the press release. “This bill will stand up for LGBTQ+ communities at home and abroad, and show the world that our nation can be a leader when it comes to protecting dignity and human rights once again.”
Markey, Garcia, and U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) in 2023 introduced the International Human Rights Defense Act. Markey and former California Congressman Alan Lowenthal in 2019 sponsored the same bill.
The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s overall foreign policy.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded dozens of advocacy groups around the world, officially shut down on July 1. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year said the State Department would administer the remaining 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled.
Then-President Joe Biden in 2021 named Jessica Stern — the former executive director of Outright International — as his administration’s special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights.
The Trump-Vance White House has not named anyone to the position.
Stern, who co-founded the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice after she left the government, is among those who sharply criticized the removal of LGBTQ- and intersex-specific references from the State Department’s 2024 human rights report.
“It is deliberate erasure,” said Stern in August after the State Department released the report.
The Congressional Equality Caucus in a Sept. 9 letter to Rubio urged the State Department to once again include LGBTQ and intersex people in their annual human rights reports. Garcia, U.S. Reps. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who chair the group’s International LGBTQI+ Rights Task Force, spearheaded the letter.
“We must recommit the United States to the defense of human rights and the promotion of equality and justice around the world,” said Markey in response to the International Human Rights Defense Act that he and Garcia introduced. “It is as important as ever that we stand up and protect LGBTQ+ individuals from the Trump administration’s cruel attempts to further marginalize this community. I will continue to fight alongside LGBTQ+ individuals for a world that recognizes that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.”
National
US bishops ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals
Directive adopted during meeting in Baltimore.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week adopted a directive that bans Catholic hospitals from offering gender-affirming care to their patients.
Since ‘creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift,’ we have a duty ‘to protect our humanity,’ which means first of all, ‘accepting it and respecting it as it was created,’” reads the directive the USCCB adopted during their meeting that is taking place this week in Baltimore.
The Washington Blade obtained a copy of it on Thursday.
“In order to respect the nature of the human person as a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” reads the directive. “This includes, for example, some forms of genetic engineering whose purpose is not medical treatment, as well as interventions that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body.)”
“In accord with the mission of Catholic health care, which includes serving those who are vulnerable, Catholic health care services and providers ‘must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria’ and to provide for the full range of their health care needs, employing only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body,” it adds.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2024 condemned gender-affirming surgeries and “gender theory.” The USCCB directive comes against the backdrop of the Trump-Vance administration’s continued attacks against the trans community.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming medical interventions for minors.
Media reports earlier this month indicated the Trump-Vance administration will seek to prohibit Medicaid reimbursement for medical care to trans minors, and ban reimbursement through the Children’s Health Insurance Program for patients under 19. NPR also reported the White House is considering blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“The directives adopted by the USCCB will harm, not benefit transgender persons,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, in a statement. “In a church called to synodal listening and dialogue, it is embarrassing, even shameful, that the bishops failed to consult transgender people, who have found that gender-affirming medical care has enhanced their lives and their relationship with God.”
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D.C. LGBTQ bars ‘hanging in there’ amid tough economy
Japan’s first female prime minister reluctant to advance LGBTQ rights
Rep. Grijalva reiterates LGBTQ support at swearing in
PHOTOS: Whitman-Walker Gala
Activist hosts Diwali celebration in D.C.
Harford school board appeals state’s book ban decision to circuit court
Calendar: November 14-20
