National
Post-Olympic concerns over Russia LGBT rights record remain
Russian brothers and sisters ‘will not be forgotten’
Several gay rights advocates gathered at Dupont Circle on Feb. 22 to bring attention to the treatment of LGBT people in Russia. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
More than 20 activists gathered in Dupont Circle on Feb. 22 to protest anti-LGBT violence and discrimination in Russia. Nearly three dozen Queer Nation members protested the U.S. Olympic Committee’s final “Road to Sochi Tour” event at New York City’s Grand Central Terminal on the same day the games ended.
Bob Costas criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin over his government’s gay rights record and a host of other issues during NBC’s primetime coverage of the Olympics on Feb. 21. These include the Kremlin’s support of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who remains in hiding after pro-government snipers last week killed dozens of protesters in Kiev, the country’s capital.
“The Sochi games are Vladimir Putin’s games from their inception to their conclusion and all points in between,” said Costas. “If they are successful on their own as appears to be the case, than at least in some corners it will help to burnish the image of a regime with much of the world takes significant issue. No amount of Olympic glory can mask those realities; any more than a biathlon gold medal, hard-earned and deeply satisfying as it is, can put out the fires in Kiev.”
Anti-gay lawmakers disrupt Moscow gay games
A number of Russian LGBT rights advocates with whom the Blade has spoken in recent weeks remain concerned authorities will expand their enforcement of the country’s controversial law banning gay propaganda to minors now that the Olympics have ended.
Elena Kostynchenko is among the 10 LGBT activists who were detained just before the games’ Feb. 7 opening ceremony as they tried to sing the Russian national anthem holding rainbow flags near Moscow’s Red Square. She told the Blade during a brief interview from the Russian capital on Tuesday she is “sure” the Kremlin will further crackdown on LGBT rights now that the games are over.
“I’m sure of it,” said Kostynchenko, adding she feels authorities will also target others who speak out against the Russian government. “They are all going to have to [worry] about something after the Olympics.”
More than 300 people from across Russia and 11 other countries are expected to take part in the Russian Open Games that are scheduled to take place in Moscow through March 2.
Elvina Yuvakaeva of the Russian LGBT Sports Federation, which organized the event alongside other Russian LGBT advocacy groups, said four venues that had agreed to host the games suddenly cancelled their agreements. The hotel where the Russian LGBT Network had planned to hold a forum also abruptly cancelled the scheduled event.
St. Petersburg Legislative Assemblyman Vitaly Milonov, who spearheaded his city’s gay propaganda ban that inspired the law Putin signed last June, denounced the Russian Open Games. The lawmaker also urged Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin to cancel the event.
Retired Olympic diver Greg Louganis is among those who attended the opening of the Russian Open Games on Wednesday, but reports indicate a bomb threat disrupted them. Moscow police reportedly refused to investigate the incident and local restaurants refused to serve the participants.
“It is far beyond attempts to disrupt events by homophobic groups, but a targeted and strong decision of the authorities to not let public LGBT events happen through exerting pressure on venue owners,” said Anastasia Smirnova, an LGBT activist whom St. Petersburg police arrested alongside three others on Feb. 7 as they tried to march with a banner in support of a campaign to add sexual orientation to the Olympic charter’s anti-discrimination clause.
The Federation of Gay Games has posted a petition to Change.org that urges Sir Philip Craven, president of the International Paralympic Committee, not to attend next month’s 2014 Sochi Paralympic Games if authorities do not allow the Russian Open Games to take place.
“The Russian Open Games do not violate the [gay propaganda] law in any way,” Marc Naimark of the Federation of Gay Games told the Blade on Tuesday. “But there is clearly pressure from political sources to prevent the event from happening.”
Shawn Gaylord of Human Rights First told the Blade earlier this month during an interview from Sochi that Russian LGBT advocates also remain concerned lawmakers will once again consider a proposal that would allow authorities to take children away from their gay parents because of their sexual orientation. He met with Smirnova, Russian LGBT Network Chair Igor Kochetkov and Maria Kozlovskaya of “Coming Out” on Feb. 6 before traveling to the Black Sea resort city.
“Everyone’s always anticipated that coming back after the Olympics,” Gaylord told the Blade from Sochi. “We haven’t really heard much about that specifically. We’re still operating under the assumption it’s still something we go to be thinking about.”
LGBT Russians ‘will not be forgotten’
Gaylord told the Blade the Russian LGBT rights advocates with whom he and his Human Rights First colleagues have met remain “worried” their U.S. and European counterparts will forget about their plight because the Olympics are over. Ulrika Westerlund of the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights, who was detained alongside Kostynchenko and other activists in Moscow on Feb. 7, said she has “also heard this concern from many of our Russian contacts.”
The Human Rights Campaign last December announced a $100,000 donation to the Russia Freedom Fund. HRC also raised money for the Russian LGBT Sports Federation during an opening ceremony viewing party it hosted in Northwest Washington.
“Our plan is to proceed in conjunction with the activists on the ground in Russia with whom we’ve been working,” HRC spokesperson Michael Cole-Schwartz told the Blade on Monday.
COC Nederland, a Dutch LGBT advocacy group, has organized a number of events over the last year to highlight the Kremlin’s gay rights record. These include a protest against Putin that took place outside his meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in Amsterdam last April.
The organization was also critical of the International Olympic Committee’s decision to award the 2014 Winter Olympics to Russia in spite of the Kremlin’s controversial human rights record.
“We have been able to generate a lot of support in the solidarity actions we have organized in the run up to Sochi,” COC Nederland Executive Director Koen van Dijk told the Blade on Wednesday. “We are confident that the plight of our brothers and sisters in Russia will not be forgotten.”
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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