Multi-generational LGB study underway
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Jewel City
Darren Criss
The
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Vol. 45 • No. 43 • October 22-28, 2015
Agencies urge states to ban conversion therapy
Courtesy Human Rights Campaign
Vice President Joe Biden
Biden out in ’16 by Cynthia Laird
V
ice President Joe Biden Wednesday said he would not run for president in 2016, saying that the “window” for such a run has closed. Biden, who made the statement during an appearance in the Rose Garden with President Barack Obama looking on, referred to the death of his son, Beau, earlier this year. “As my family and I have worked through the grieving process, I’ve said all along what I’ve said time and again to others, that it may very well be that the process by the time we get through it closes the window ... I’ve concluded it has closed,” Biden said. Biden, whose wife, second lady Jill Biden, and other family members also attended the news conference, said he felt he was out of time to mount a successful presidential campaign. “Beau is our inspiration,” he added. “Unfortunately, I believe we’re out of time. The time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination. But while I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent. I intend to speak out clearly and forcefully.” The news likely comes as a relief to Hillary See page 14 >>
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Remember to vote on November 3!
Courtesy NCLR
by David-Elijah Nahmod
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wo LGBT rights organizations have joined together urging states that don’t already do so to ban conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth, following a federal report that said the practice is not appropriate for minors. Both the National Center for Lesbian Rights, based in San Francisco, and the Human Rights Campaign, based in Washington, D.C., issued sample legislation for state lawmakers and equality groups that want to protect LGBTQ youth from conver-
sion therapy, which has been widely discredited by medical groups in recent years. California banned the practice three years ago for state-licensed therapists. NCLR and HRC’s action followed the release last week of a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which supports the abolition of conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy. This practice is used by a variety of conservative religious denominations as a “cure” for homosexuality. Conversion therapy techniques
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9th Circuit case aids trans Latinas by Heather Cassell
for transgender people, Barnes told the B.A.R., pointing to Transgender Europe’s Trans Murder Monitoring Project’s annual report. “That’s why sometimes many of us make the sacrifice to flee that violence and turn ourselves in at the border only to be detained by immigration officials and wait our turn before the judge,” Gutierrez said.
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recent decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has helped one undocumented transgender woman from Mexico stay in the U.S. and attorneys hope the ruling will aid others, both in California and other states. Carey Edin Avendano-Hernandez, a 35-yearold transgender Latina, spent nearly three years in the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention center in Santa Ana, California rather than be deported to Mexico for a second time before she won a historic decision last month when the 9th Circuit granted her deferral relief, allowing her to remain in the U.S. Trans Latinas tell stories over and over again about what is happening in Mexico, a country that, on paper, is safe for LGBTs. Stories about bodies tossed into street gutters, down hillsides, or in a river only to be found so decomposed they are unrecognizable, said Jennicet Eva Gutierrez, a 29-year-old undocumented Mexican transgender woman who knows first-hand the reality of the lives of trans Latinas in Mexico. “The crimes are just really bad,” Gutierrez told the Bay Area Reporter. “It’s just a very, very horrific experience in our country.” Gutierrez, an immigrant activist with the Familia Transgender Liberation Movement, is best known for heckling President Barack Obama at a June White House event and being escorted out of the building by security.
Seeking safety
UPI
Transgender advocates held a “die-in” in protest outside an immigration detention facility in Santa Ana, California.
Nielan Barnes, an associate professor in the sociology department at California State University, Long Beach, agreed. Barnes, a 47-year-old queer-identified woman, is an expert in the migration of LGBT people from Latin America, particularly Mexico. She has testified about the lives of trans Latinas and the reasons for migration for 30 cases, half of which are for transgender women escaping Mexico, and 15 of which are still active, she said. In spite of Mexico accepting LGBT people in recent years, the culture has remained unchanged, clinging to the traditional machismo, making it one of the most dangerous countries in the world
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have included prayer, electro-shock treatments, and a variety of brainwashing techniques. There have been extreme cases that have included beatings. “This important sample legislation comes at a critical time in our fight to protect LGBTQ youth from the dangerous practice of conversion therapy,” HRC legal director Sarah Warbelow said in a statement, who referred to conversion therapy as “junk pseudoscience” and “child abuse.” “This so-called therapy has been de-
Avendano-Hernandez crossed over the border from Mexico after years of abuse from her family and authorities, including being raped while in custody, she said. Escaping the violence, she first came to the U.S. in 2000 and began building her life in Fresno. The Central Valley city is where she found home and family. It’s where she returned when she re-entered the country in 2008 after her first deportation in 2007. In 2011, she was arrested for violating her parole because she returned to the U.S. after being convicted and serving time in jail for two DUIs, according to court documents. “I feel like my life was in danger. I feel like I’m afraid to get killed,” Avendano-Hernandez told the B.A.R. about her decision to risk the return to the states rather than go to another country or stay in Mexico. However, it came with a price: more than a decade of being in and out of immigration custody fighting to stay in the U.S. rather than returning to Mexico. “She chose to sit in jail instead of going back See page 13 >>
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