National
UPDATED: GLAAD’s communication breakdown; Barrios voted out
Media watchdog group dogged by allegations of dishonesty, incompetence
UPDATE: According to Politico, the Executive committee of GLAAD’s Board of Directors has voted to remove Jarrett Barrios as President of the organization.
UPDATE 2: According to both Michelangelo Signorile and the Bilerico Project, Rich Ferraro is confirming that Jarrett Barrios has stepped down as GLAAD’s President.
A former GLAAD board chair has called for the resignation of its president, Jarrett Barrios. (Photo courtesy GLAAD)
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation raised eyebrows last week when the media watchdog group released a statement supporting the merger of telecom giants AT&T and T-Mobile. It marked the second time the organization, which was founded in 1985 as a grassroots action network, had weighed in on major business news. The prior statement had been released a year earlier objecting to the NBC-Comcast merger, due to concerns about negative portrayals of LGBT characters in the media.
The AT&T statement was curious, but attracted little media attention.
That changed on Tuesday, when former GLAAD board of directors co-chair Laurie Perper appeared on Michelangelo Signorile’s Sirius-XM OutQ show to sound the alarm on other alleged improprieties at the organization and questions facing its leader, Jarrett Barrios.
Since then, Barrios — who has been at the helm of GLAAD for 23 months — has granted a flurry of interviews to counter Perper’s claims. His responses, however, have only served to attract more scrutiny of the organization.
While speaking with Perper, Signorile pressed about why she left her position as board chair early. “You stepped down because you just thought he was not qualified. Obviously, as the months went on, others agreed with that assessment,” Signorile summarized. “I believe that over 14 board members have left, [since Barrios took over],” Perper relayed to the radio host.
Signorile continued, “Is it fair to say that most of these people stepped down because of the direction the organization was going, because of Jarrett Barrios?”
“Absolutely,” Perper said.
Reached by phone last week along with GLAAD director of communications Richard Ferraro and GLAAD board member and Florida PR consultant Gary Bitner, Barrios insisted that his short time working with Perper — only five weeks — was marked by a positive working relationship, and was focused on solving the organization’s financial problems.
“It’s perplexing and disappointing, considering that she worked for many years to help build this organization, but this happens sometimes,” Barrios told the Blade. “We form in our movement a circular firing squad, and we for whatever reason feel it’s necessary to hurt somebody else in the movement. [Laurie Perper and I] worked well together. Frankly the time we interacted was the time I was getting my feet wet, learning that the org at the time was running a rather large deficit.”
After booking Perper on the Signorile show, the producers reached out and arranged to have Barrios on the following day to respond to the statements that had been made. However, when GLAAD later attempted to arrange to have Bitner join him on the Signorile show, the show’s producers refused and the GLAAD team pulled out of the arrangement, opting to contact other media outlets and bloggers instead.
Barrios insists that the financial figures that Perper presented on the Signorile show were inaccurate and misleading, including a quote about a $14 million discrepancy after 2008, which Barrios says is the result of an IRS reporting requirement of a major multi-million dollar bequest by the late Ric Weiland of Microsoft that was dispersed over seven years. GLAAD insists that it has righted its financial footing thanks to cuts made early in Barrios’ term, though Ferraro also disputes Perper’s claim that six senior staff members left the organization since Jarrett’s start. GLAAD insists it was only three, with another just having left a few months ago.
“In 2009, there was a substantial deficit — I think it was like $1.2 million,” Barrios said. “Last year, we cut the operating deficit to $300,000 — shrunk it by about $900,000 — and this year, I’m happy to say, we’re running ahead of budget … most notably, our national presenting sponsor has already renewed for next year. That typically doesn’t happen until January. It’s already happened for next year. We’re very pleased. Our corporate revenues this year are substantially higher than last year, which were higher than the year before.”
Perper’s main purpose for appearing on Signorile’s show, however, was to question the reasoning behind GLAAD’s unexpected statement voicing support for the AT&T/T-Mobile merger. GLAAD joined unions, advocacy organizations and other LGBT-specific organizations like the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and Out At Work in supporting the merger. These three organizations joined the NAACP, and the National Education Association in pushing the FCC for the merger.
Perper points to this as evidence that AT&T may have “bought influence with these” non-profits to advocate for the merger with the FCC.
Hours after his conversation with the Blade, Barrios appeared on Chicago’s “Feast of Fun” podcast with Marc Felion and Fausto Fernos. The issue of GLAAD’s curious support of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger and Perper’s statements regarding that merger soon came up, and Barrios seemed to change his story on a long-forgotten episode from more than a year ago when GLAAD released two letters regarding the principles of “net-neutrality” and expressed support for expanding Internet access. The second letter was later retracted.
At the time, Barrios wrote the FCC asking the letter to be removed from the public record, stating that he’d not given his permission for the letter to be submitted and that the signature is “not in my hand.” However, while speaking with “Feast of Fun,” his story seemed to change.
“It was like January of 2010. And it, it sort of supported the telecom industry’s position on net neutrality, which was not GLAAD’s position,” Barrios said. “In fact, GLAAD, at the time and still, doesn’t endorse bills and doesn’t endorse regulatory actions. So, it would have been impossible for us to do that.”
When reached by phone last week, Richard Ferraro explained why GLAAD cannot take a position on net neutrality.
“As a 501(c)3 there’s a question about whether or not we can,” Ferraro told the Blade. “It’s obvious where we stand [on universal access] … mergers are different.”
On “Feast of Fun,” Barrios shifted his story about the letter’s submission, after taking the position a year earlier that the organization had no knowledge of the letter prior to its submission.
“After an investigation, we determined that it was an administrative error, internally at GLAAD, and I’ll own that, and we withdrew the letter. At the time we withdrew the letter, we didn’t know that, so I was — you can imagine reading a letter in a public submission with your name on it that you had never seen, and it wasn’t your signature — after we did an internal investigation, we realized it was an internal error, an administrative error.”
“[The letter] was pulled, one, because it’s an anti-net-neutrality letter,” Ferraro clarified for the Blade. “Two, because at that point and currently, GLAAD does not take positions on legislation or regulation.”
In January, when the letter had been submitted and subsequently retracted, the narrative that emerged was that the letter had been forged. However, after the Feast of Fun statements, Bil Browning of Bilerico Project sought a clearer explanation about the letter.
In an interview last week with Browning, Barrios revealed his personal assistant — a woman Bilerico identified as Jeanne Christiano who has worked for Barrios consistently for seven years, and goes back to his days as a Massachusetts state senator — had called him while he was on the road, and in a hurry, he gave the letter his approval thinking that the two were discussing the previous letter with language Barrios had approved.
“We made a mistake. I authorized my assistant over the phone to sign and submit a letter that I understood to be a re-filing of the October letter in support of broadband proliferation,” Barrios told Browning. “When I realized she had inadvertently submitted an anti-net neutrality letter, I withdrew it … at the time, I had never seen the letter that was filed, and did not recognize the signature.”
Last week, after the story broke of the retracted letter to the FCC supporting the telecom’s position on net-neutrality, the Blade again spoke with Ferraro, this time about the new information emerging about the FCC letter.
“There’s an October letter that Jarrett wrote to the FCC that’s on the FCC site,” Ferraro told the Blade, “that very broadly talks about broadband proliferation, and speaks to our statement Friday about net-neutrality, which is that we don’t currently have a position, but we support universal access … we support the ideas behind, the principles behind net-neutrality – that we can do.”
According to Ferraro, GLAAD board member and communications law professor at American University, Anthony Varona, noticed the subtle pro-telecom messages in the letter after having served as a lawyer at the FCC in the past and immediately contacted the organization’s leadership asking why GLAAD was supporting the telecom industry’s anti-net-neutrality stance.
“When Tony Verona — who speaks FCC language — read this,” Ferraro explained, “he said ‘Why the heck did you send in a letter anti-net-neutrality?’ Jarrett of course said, ‘I never read that letter, I never said I’m against net-neutrality.’”
According to Ferraro, the suggested language is believed to have come directly from AT&T, and was copied verbatim by Barrios’ assistant, Jeanne Christiano.
Ferraro explained, “He was traveling, as he still does [a lot] … she’s more than an assistant — they’ve worked together for seven years. … I was not on the call, so can’t speak with certainty, but he said she called him and said something along the lines of ‘so I have the letter on broadband. They want the letter, do you want me to go forward with it?’ and he said, ‘yeah yeah,’ thinking it was the October letter.”
Ferraro agreed there must have been a major communication breakdown at GLAAD.
“He never saw the letter, and he said, ‘yeah, send it in.’ And obviously he didn’t mean to send it in, because as soon as the board member [questioned the letter], he said, ‘huh? I never saw that letter. I didn’t sign that letter. That’s not my signature.’ and he didn’t authorize it. The thing that he’s been trying to do is he doesn’t want to throw her under the bus. This was his mistake. He should have read the letter — he didn’t.”
The controversy raises the question: will GLAAD start weighting in on other FCC-related matters if a business has any ties to the LGBT community?
“One thing that has happened since Jarrett came on board, is that we’ve been more engaged with the FCC, which is a government agency that needs to hear more from the LGBT community … since then, you did hear us weigh in on the NBC merger, you did hear us weigh in on AT&T and we did file an FCC complaint about ‘Jose Luis Sin Censura,’ which is the most anti-gay program on television today,” Ferraro said.
Some activists argue there are larger issues at play than GLAAD’s support of the AT&T merger, or whether or not GLAAD can take a position on net-neutrality. Some leaders in the community are wondering if GLAAD is ready to unravel. Laurie Perper herself called for the dissolution of GLAAD, and discussed it with Signorile when she appeared on his show.
When the Blade asked Perper if GLAAD could survive this controversy, she said it would require a massive change in personnel and makeup of the board.
“One of the things that has come forward is GLAAD’s brand name has been heavily tied to the media awards and people feel that GLAAD is owned by the broadcasters,” Perper said. “The word transparency gets thrown around a lot and unfortunately I found in trying to manage Jarrett that he was far from transparent. So I was actually there for five months with him, and that was long enough for me to see that he was going to make decisions against the board, without consulting the board, the co-chairs and against their will.”
Perper also believes a narrower focus would help GLAAD recover.
“I think that they’ve expanded their programmatic work too much and therefore don’t have a solid impact in any one area, so I think they need to retract a little bit in this difficult economy, decide where they want to make an impact, and truly come out with thoughtful statements, rather than the flip-flopping I’ve seen them do with Adam Lambert, with the AT&T situation. … So they just need a consistent message and vision that they can put forth, that people can understand, and then they need to act on it as hard as they can.”
She continued, “I’ve had a lot of discussions with people who happen to be aware of a lot of the situation that’s going on with GLAAD and a lot of the controversy,” she continued, “and they all feel very strongly about the GLAAD brand name and that it still has tremendous value in the marketplace. So when I talk about the dissolution of it, I do it with a really heavy heart, not ‘how do you ever rebuild a brand name like that,’ but thinking ‘how do you get rid of a president and half of the board members who have helped enable him to bring such tarnish to the name?’”
Barrios, however, sees the organization heading in the right direction.
“We’ve enjoyed some of our highest profile victories ever in the last 18 months,” said Barrios. “So where we’re going is down that path … we’ve had some major victories with the ‘Today’ show, the marriage contest last year. A number of victories with our ‘no two sides’ campaign last year … Mostly that work is happening behind the scenes.”
When members of the media continued to pursue answers to the questions left unanswered at the onset of last weekend, GLAAD tried to shift attention to the Tracy Morgan scandal on Friday. GLAAD backed off from a promise to have Barrios chat on the phone with the Blade in regard to the new confusion brought about by the Friday morning Bilerico report and the Thursday morning Feast of Fun interview.
What’s still unclear is how the suggested language ended up in an official letter on GLAAD letterhead. GLAAD would not comment on whom from AT&T delivered the suggested language, noting only that “AT&T is the source.” However, with a former AT&T lobbyist on the board of directors, who now consults for telecom companies including AT&T, some wonder if Troupe Coronado was the conduit for this “suggested language” that turned GLAAD into an anti-net-neutrality advocate for the telecom industry.
Also unanswered is how unauthorized language was allowed to be submitted by an assistant to a government agency. If this specific language was not approved, why was there no protocol in place to prevent a scenario where an employee of the organization can sign the president’s name to an official document and send it as an agent of the entire group?
There are also nagging questions about Troupe Coronado’s influence and role in the controversy. In January 2006, the Washington Post’s Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Thomas B. Edsall investigated Coronado for allegedly exceeding the gift-giving limits on lobbyists when schmoozing lawmakers. He was still with BellSouth at the time. BellSouth is now part of AT&T. In addition, OpenSecrets.org lists him as a “revolving door personnel,” someone who has bounced from industry lobbying jobs, to government jobs and back again.
Coronado’s connections to the telecom industry and GLAAD’s subsequent misfires in the field of telecom regulation and corporate dealings is troubling for many activists, even if those connections are tenuous and possibly only coincidental.
Florida
AIDS Healthcare Foundation sues Fla. over ‘illegal’ HIV drug program cuts
Tens of thousands could lose access to medications
Following the slashing of hundreds of thousands of dollars from Florida’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program, AIDS Healthcare Foundation filed a lawsuit against the Florida Department of Health over what it says was an illegal change to income eligibility thresholds for the lifesaving program.
The Florida Department of Health announced two weeks ago that it would make sweeping cuts to ADAP, dramatically changing how many Floridians qualify for the state-funded medical coverage — without using the formal process required to change eligibility rules. As a result, AHF filed a petition Tuesday in Tallahassee with the state’s Division of Administrative Hearings, seeking to prevent more than 16,000 Floridians from losing coverage.
The medications covered by ADAP work by suppressing HIV-positive people’s viral load — making the virus undetectable in blood tests and unable to be transmitted to others.
Prior to the eligibility change, the Florida Department of Health covered Floridians earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level — or $62,600 annually for an individual. Under the new policy, eligibility would be limited to those making no more than 130 percent of the federal poverty level, or $20,345 per year.
The National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors estimates that more than 16,000 patients in Florida will lose coverage under the state’s ADAP because of this illegal change in department policy. Florida’s eligibility changes would also eliminate access to biktarvy, a widely used once-daily medication for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Under Florida law, when a state agency seeks to make a major policy change, it must either follow a formal rule-making process under the Florida Administrative Procedure Act or obtain direct legislative authorization.
AHF alleges the Florida Department of Health did neither.
Typically, altering eligibility for a statewide program requires either legislative action or adherence to a multistep rule-making process, including: publishing a Notice of Proposed Rule; providing a statement of estimated regulatory costs; allowing public comment; holding hearings if requested; responding to challenges; and formally adopting the rule. According to AHF, none of these steps occurred.
“Rule-making is not a matter of agency discretion. Each statement that an agency like the Department of Health issues that meets the statutory definition of a rule must be adopted through legally mandated rule-making procedures. Florida has simply not done so here,” said Tom Myers, AHF’s chief of public affairs and general counsel. “The whole point of having to follow procedures and rules is to make sure any decisions made are deliberate, thought through, and minimize harm. Floridians living with HIV and the general public’s health are at stake here and jeopardized by these arbitrary and unlawful DOH rule changes.”
AHF has multiple Ryan White CARE Act contracts in Florida, including four under Part B, which covers ADAP. More than 50 percent of people diagnosed with HIV receive assistance from Ryan White programs annually.
According to an AHF advocacy leader who spoke with the Washington Blade, the move appears to have originated at the state level rather than being driven by the federal government — a claim that has circulated among some Democratic officials.
“As far as we can tell, Congress flat-funded the Ryan White and ADAP programs, and the proposed federal cuts were ignored,” the advocacy leader told the Blade on the condition of anonymity. “None of this appears to be coming from Washington — this was initiated in Florida. What we’re trying to understand is why the state is claiming a $120 million shortfall when the program already receives significant federal funding. That lack of transparency is deeply concerning.”
Florida had the third-highest rate of new HIV infections in the nation in 2022, accounting for 11 percent of new diagnoses nationwide, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization.
During a press conference on Wednesday, multiple AHF officials commented on the situation, and emphasized the need to use proper methods to change something as important as HIV/AIDS coverage availability in the sunshine state.
“We are receiving dozens, hundreds of calls from patients who are terrified, who are confused, who are full of anxiety and fear,” said Esteban Wood, director of advocacy, legislative affairs, and community engagement at AHF. “These are working Floridians — 16,000 people — receiving letters saying they have weeks left of medication that keeps them alive and costs upwards of $45,000 a year. Patients are asking us, ‘What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to survive?’ And right now, we don’t have a good answer.”
“This decision was not done in the correct manner. County health programs, community-based organizations, providers across the state — none of them were consulted,” Wood added. “Today is Jan. 28, and we have just 32 days until these proposed changes take effect. Nearly half of the 36,000 people currently on ADAP could be disenrolled in just over a month.”
“Without this medication, people with HIV get sicker,” Myers said during the conference. “They end up in emergency rooms, they lose time at work, and they’re unable to take care of their families. Treatment adherence is also the best way to prevent new HIV infections — people who are consistently on these medications are non-infectious. If these cuts go through, you will have sicker people, more HIV infections, and ultimately much higher costs for the state.”
“Patients receiving care through Ryan White and ADAP have a 91 percent viral suppression rate, compared to about 60 percent nationally,” the advocacy leader added. “That’s as close to a functional cure as we can get, and it allows people to live healthy lives, work, and contribute to their communities. Blowing a hole in a program this successful puts lives at risk and sets a dangerous precedent. If Florida gets away with this, other states facing budget pressure could follow.”
The lawsuit comes days after the Save HIV Funding campaign pressed Congress to build bipartisan support for critical funding for people living with or vulnerable to HIV. In May of last year, President Donald Trump appeared to walk back his 2019 pledge to end HIV as an epidemic, instead proposing the elimination of HIV prevention programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and housing services in his budget request to Congress.
House appropriators, led by the Republican majority, went further, calling for an additional $2 billion in cuts — including $525 million for medical care and support services for people living with HIV.
While Senate appropriators ultimately chose to maintain level funding in their version of the spending bills, advocates feared final negotiations could result in steep cuts that would reduce services, increase new HIV infections, and lead to more AIDS-related deaths. The final spending package reflected a best-case outcome, with funding levels largely mirroring the Senate’s proposed FY26 allocations.
“What the state has done in unilaterally announcing these changes is not following its own rules,” Myers added. “There is a required process — rule-making, notice and comment, taking evidence — and none of that happened here. Before you cut 16,000 people off from lifesaving medication, you have to study the harms, ask whether you even have the authority to do it, and explore other solutions. That’s what this lawsuit is about.”
National
Federal authorities arrest Don Lemon
Former CNN anchor taken into custody two weeks after Minn. church protest
Federal authorities on Thursday arrested former CNN anchor Don Lemon in Los Angeles.
CNN reported authorities arrested Lemon after 11 p.m. PT while in the lobby of a hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., while he “was leaving for an event.” Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, in a statement said his client was in Los Angeles to cover the Grammy Awards.
Authorities arrested Lemon less than two weeks after he entered Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., with a group of protesters who confronted a pastor who works for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (An ICE agent on Jan. 7 shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman who left behind her wife and three children. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on Jan. 24 shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs, in Minneapolis.)
Lemon insists he was simply covering the Cities Church protest that interrupted the service. A federal magistrate last week declined to charge the openly gay journalist in connection with the demonstration.
“Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy awards,” said Lowell in his statement. “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done. The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”
“Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case,” Lowell added. “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi on X confirmed federal agents “at my direction” arrested Lemon and three others — Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy — “in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.”
Fort is also a journalist.
At my direction, early this morning federal agents arrested Don Lemon, Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy, in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
More details soon.
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) January 30, 2026
Lemon, who CNN fired in 2023, is expected to appear in court in Los Angeles on Friday.
“Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of a free society; it is the tool by which Americans access the truth and hold power to account. But Donald Trump and Pam Bondi are at war with that freedom — and are threatening the fundamentals of our democracy,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson on Friday in a statement. “Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were doing their jobs as reporters. Arresting them is not law enforcement it is an attack on the Constitution at a moment when truthful reporting on government power has never been more important. These are the actions of a despot, the tactics of a dictator in an authoritarian regime.”
The White House
Expanded global gag rule to ban US foreign aid to groups that promote ‘gender ideology’
Activists, officials say new regulation will limit access to gender-affirming care
The Trump-Vance administration has announced it will expand the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.”
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in a memo, titled Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance, the Federal Register published on Jan. 27 notes “previous administrations … used” U.S. foreign assistance “to fund the denial of the biological reality of sex, promoting a radical ideology that permits men to self-identify as women, indoctrinate children with radical gender ideology, and allow men to gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women.”
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. It also threatens the wellbeing of children by encouraging them to undergo life-altering surgical and chemical interventions that carry serious risks of lifelong harms like infertility,” reads the memo. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women and children but, as an attack on truth and human nature, it harms every nation. It is the purpose of this rule to prohibit the use of foreign assistance to support radical gender ideology, including by ending support for international organizations and multilateral organizations that pressure nations to embrace radical gender ideology, or otherwise promote gender ideology.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 28, 2025, issued an executive order — Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation — that banned federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors.
President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services.
Trump reinstated the rule during his first administration. The White House this week expanded the ban to include groups that support gender-affirming care and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The expanded global gag rule will take effect on Feb. 26.
“None of the funds made available by this act or any other Act may be made available in contravention of Executive Order 14187, relating to Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, or shall be used or transferred to another federal agency, board, or commission to fund any domestic or international non-governmental organization or any other program, organization, or association coordinated or operated by such non-governmental organization that either offers counseling regarding sex change surgeries, promotes sex change surgeries for any reason as an option, conducts or subsidizes sex change surgeries, promotes the use of medications or other substances to halt the onset of puberty or sexual development of minors, or otherwise promotes transgenderism,” wrote Landau in his memo.
Landau wrote the State Department “does not believe taxpayer dollars should support sex-rejecting procedures, directly or indirectly for individuals of any age.”
“A person’s body (including its organs, organ systems, and processes natural to human development like puberty) are either healthy or unhealthy based on whether they are operating according to their biological functions,” reads his memo. “Organs or organ systems do not become unhealthy simply because the individual may experience psychological distress relating to his or her sexed body. For this reason, removing a patient’s breasts as a treatment for breast cancer is fundamentally different from performing the same procedure solely to alleviate mental distress arising from gender dysphoria. The former procedure aims to restore bodily health and to remove cancerous tissue. In contrast, removing healthy breasts or interrupting normally occurring puberty to ‘affirm’ one’s ‘gender identity’ involves the intentional destruction of healthy biological functions.”
Landau added there “is also lack of clarity about what sex-rejecting procedures’ fundamental aims are, unlike the broad consensus about the purpose of medical treatments for conditions like appendicitis, diabetes, or severe depression.”
“These procedures lack strong evidentiary foundations, and our understanding of long-term health impacts is limited and needs to be better understood,” he wrote. “Imposing restrictions, as this rule proposes, on sex-rejecting procedures for individuals of any age is necessary for the (State) Department to protect taxpayer dollars from abuse in support of radical ideological aims.”
Landau added the State Department “has determined that applying this rule to non-military foreign assistance broadly is necessary to ensure that its foreign assistance programs do not support foreign NGOs and IOs (international organizations) that promote gender ideology, and U.S. NGOs that provide sex-rejecting procedures, and to ensure the integrity of programs such as humanitarian assistance, gender-related programs, and more, do not promote gender ideology.”
“This rule will also allow for more foreign assistance funds to support organizations that promote biological truth in their foreign assistance programs and help the (State) Department to establish new partnerships,” he wrote.
The full memo can be found here.
Council for Global Equality Senior Policy Fellow Beirne Roose-Snyder on Wednesday said the expansion of the so-called global gag rule will “absolutely impact HIV services where we know we need to target services, to that there are non-stigmatizing, safe spaces for people to talk through all of their medical needs, and being trans is really important to be able to disclose to your health care provider so that you can get ARVs, so you can get PrEP in the right ways.” Roose-Snyder added the expanded ban will also impact access to gender-affirming health care, food assistance programs and humanitarian aid around the world.
“This rule is not about gender-affirming care at all,” she said during a virtual press conference the Universal Access Project organized.
“It is about really saying that if you want to take U.S. funds — and it’s certainly not about gender-affirming care for children — it is if you want to take U.S. funds, you cannot have programs or materials or offer counseling or referrals to people who may be struggling with their gender identity,” added Roose-Snyder. “You cannot advocate to maintain your country’s own nondiscrimination laws around gender identity. It is the first place that we’ve ever seen the U.S. government define gender-affirming care, except they call it something a lot different than that.”
The Congressional Equality Caucus, the Democratic Women’s Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus also condemned the global gag rule’s expansion.
“We strongly condemn this weaponization of U.S. foreign assistance to undermine human rights and global health,” said the caucuses in a statement. “We will not rest until we ensure that our foreign aid dollars can never be used as a weapon against women, people of color, or LGBTQI+ people ever again.”
This queer comedy show will warm you up
Catherine O’Hara, ‘Schitt’s Creek’ star and celebrated queer ally, dies at 71
AIDS Healthcare Foundation sues Fla. over ‘illegal’ HIV drug program cuts
Calendar: January 30-February 5
Two Chinese men detained over AI-generated picture of pandas engaging in same-sex behavior
Task Force urges renewed organizing amid growing political threats
Russia designates ILGA World an ‘undesirable’ group
Top Democrats reintroduce bill to investigate discrimination against LGBTQ military members
From the Pentagon to politics, Bree Fram fighting for LGBTQ rights
Gay men, ketamine, and trauma. A therapy or a trap?
-
LGBTQ Non-Profit Organizations5 days agoTask Force urges renewed organizing amid growing political threats
-
Federal Government4 days ago
Top Democrats reintroduce bill to investigate discrimination against LGBTQ military members
-
Russia5 days ago
Russia designates ILGA World an ‘undesirable’ group
-
Virginia4 days ago
From the Pentagon to politics, Bree Fram fighting for LGBTQ rights
