Los Angeles Blade, Volume 07, Issue 08, February 24, 2023

Shooting death of LA bishop being investigated as homicide

LOS ANGELES - An auxiliary bishop with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles discovered shot in his home in the1500 block of Janlu Avenue in Hacienda Heights Saturday afternoon is being investigated as a homicide.

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said that Bishop David O’Connell was found deceased from gunshot wound to the upper torso. Deputies were dispatched to O’Connell’s residence after a call for medical assistance was received.

After the determination that suicide was not a factor and ruled out overnight, LASD investigators launched a homicide investigation.

Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez released a statement Sunday morning after the declaration that the death was now considered a homicide:

“We learned early this morning from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office that they have determined that the death of Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell yesterday was a homicide. Weare deeply disturbed and saddened by this news.

Let us continue to pray for Bishop Dave and his family. And let us pray for law enforcement officials as they continue their investigation into this terrible crime.

We ask Our Blessed Mother Mary to intercede and be a mother for all of us in this moment ofsadness and pain.”

The office of Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna also released a statement to reassure parishioners and others that his department was actively searching for those responsible although the LASD has not released information regarding a suspect or suspects.

“We can only imagine how the community is suffering because of this senseless murder. Bishop O’Connell was a guiding light for so many, and his legacy will continue to live on through the community that he helped build,” the statement from the LASD read adding, “Please know that you are not alone in your grief and that @lasdhq is here to support you. Our thoughts and prayers are with you, and we are working diligently to seek those responsible.”

KABC 7 Eyewitness News reported that devastated parishioners gathered by the crime scene Saturday as deputies investigated.

“It broke me and I was scared to tell my wife because my wife loved him so much,” said parishioner Johnny Flores. Glendy Perez, another parishioner, told KABC: O’Connell “was an humble soul.”

“He was not the type that would have confrontations with nobody,” she said. “He was very loving, and he had like a gift of healing. When you would attend his ceremonies, it was like a gift of healing.”

O’Connell was born in County Cork, Ireland, and studied for the priesthood at All Hallows College in Dublin. He was ordained to serve in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 1979. Pope Francis named O’Connell an auxiliary bishop in 2015. After being ordained O’Connell was a pastor at a number of parishes in Los Angeles and several surrounding communities. He worked on efforts to curb violence in the city, and many of his congregants were minorities and immigrants.

“It’s been the great joy of my life to be the pastor of these people, especially the ones who are suffering or in need or facing difficulty,” O’Connell told Angelus News in 2015. Additionally he was the chairman of the Interdiocesan Southern California Immigration Task Force, helping coordinate the church’s response to immigrant children and families from Central America.

In 2018, Bishop O’Connell was censored for acknowledging the reality that LGBTQ+ families exist. Mount Rainier, Maryland-based New Ways Ministry  reported in its online newsletter that O’Connell had participated in the “Amoris: Let’s Talk Family! Let’s Be Family!” video series produced in anticipation of the 2018 World Meeting of Families (WMF) scheduled for Ireland that August.

Connell’s recognition of lesbian and gay families was removed from the video series, part of catechetical materials created for parish discussion groups ahead of the event.

The  Irish Independent reported on how part of his comments in the videos were censored:

“In the original video clip, [O’Connell] stated: ‘Pope Francis, he gets it. He gets it that our society has changed so much in the last couple of generations.’

“‘We have all sorts of configurations of families now, whether it’s just the traditional family of mum and dad together, or it’s now mum on her own or dad on his own, or a gay couple raising children, or people in second marriages. No matter what the configuration of the family is, the call is still to adults to think about how to provide the best, most loving, faithful environment for children possible.’

“However, people accessing the video clip now will no longer be able to hear these words because they have been removed.”

New Ways Ministry noted that removing O’Connell’s recognition that lesbian and gay couples exist and are raising children came after right-wing critics successfully pressured WMF organizers to  remove LGBT-related photos and a reference to same-gender relationships from print materials.

By BRODY LEVESQUE

Shake Shack pays trans employee $20K to settle harassment case

OAKLAND - The New York City-based fast-food chain Shake Shack, known for its premium burgers and shakes, has settled a case in the Bay Area brought by a former trans male employee who filed the complaint with the help of California’s state Civil Rights Department, (CRD).

In a press release issued earlier this week by CRD, the former employee, who was not named, said that the alleged harassment started after he was trained in San Francisco and assigned to work in a store in Oakland, California in 2020. He alleged he was “repeatedly misgendered by co-workers and that when he complained, management failed to take reasonable steps to correct the behavior.”

According to CRD: “Management told him repeatedly that he would have to explain his gender to co-workers rather than rely on management to correct discriminatory behavior. Frustrated by management’s failure to address his concerns, after only a month the complainant left the company.”

Shake Shack will pay the former employee $20,000 as

part of the announced settlement. The company also agreed to update its policies and training relating to retaliation, harassment, discrimination, and bullying in the workplace, CRD’s press release noted.

In an interview with Business Insider CRD director Kevin Kish told the news outlet that California law prohibits “intentional misgendering” in the workplace.

“Creating a welcoming and fulfilling environment for all our employees and guests is critical,” a Shake Shack spokesperson told Insider in a statement. “We are constantly taking steps to ensure our policies and culture reflect our commitment to diversity and inclusion in the workplace.”

“Intentional misgendering and other forms of discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression can be stressful and traumatic,” Kish told Business Insider. “CRD appreciates Shake Shack’s acknowledgement of its responsibility to provide a discrimination-free environment to its workforce.”

By BRODY LEVESQUE

Bishop DAVID O’CONNELL with LINDA DAKIN-GRIMM and client (Dakin-Grimm/Twitter)

SHAKE SHACK West Hollywood Calif. location

(File Photo by Paulo Murillo for WEHO TIMES)

Mayor London Breed tackles hate crimes in San Francisco

The sudden spike of all hate crimes inspired Breed to create a street violence intervention program to respond to violence

By SIMHA HADDAD

SAN FRANCISCO – Mayor London Breed has invested a large amount of financial resources and support in fighting hate crimes in the City by the Bay.

In 2021, hate crimes against Asians represented 53% of all hate crimes. The sudden spike inspired Breed to create a street violence intervention program to respond to violence, including shootings. Responders act quickly to not only aid the victims and their families but also to help prevent retaliation which might then lead to a never ending cycle of violence.

Breed also partnered with the Community Youth Center to help train and cultivate young Asian people by providing job opportunities and leadership opportunities and helping support one another within the community. She also created a senior escort program to provide seniors with help getting home safely and running errands.

“We are going to support the community,” Breed told The Blade explaining her mission. “We are going to band together against anyone, no matter what their race is, when they attack. We are going to bring Black and Asian communities together to create solidarity and support and to address public safety in the community. Most importantly, we are going to implement restorative justice by getting to the heart of people, trying to understand why these people are committing these crimes, and how to address it and prevent it in the future.”

Already, Breed’s programs and initiatives have produced positive change. According to a study shared with The Blade by the Mayor’s office, In 2022, hate crime cases went down significantly (68%) when compared to 2021. Hate crimes went up 81% in 2021 when compared to the average for the previous three years (2018-2020). Hate crimes against AAPI people contributed to this increase. In 2022, the number of hate crimes against the AAPI community went down tenfold compared to 2021(from 60 to 6 cases)

Unfortunately, hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals are high as a proportion of all cases (including gay males, trans individuals, and lesbians). In 2022, 28% of hate crimes targeted LGBTQ+ individuals.

On average, 22% of recorded hate crimes in the last five years (2018-2022) targeted LGBTQ+ individuals.

The Mayor’s office also shared the following list of efforts to tackle hate crimes in San Francisco:

Examples of main efforts to tackle hate crimes in San Francisco

• Creation of the  SFPD Community Liaison Unit to focus on hate crimes and incidents. The unit, comprised of five dedicated officers from the SFPD’s Community Engagement Division, has been supporting San Francisco’s diverse communities, improving reporting of crime, and supporting victims of hate crimes and prejudice-based incidents.

• San Francisco contributed over $3 million in the last two budget cycles to supporting the creation of the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice (CCSJ). This Coalition, formed in response to long-standing incidents of violence, crime, ra-

cial tensions, and the surge in COVID-19 related anti-Asian racism, was founded by five Asian organizations which work to identify and develop community-centered programmatic solutions to mitigate violence and hate across all communities of color.

• The City allocated over $400,000 in the FY 22-23 budget to expand trauma recovery services for Cantonese speaking victims of crime.

• Expansion of the Street Violence Intervention Program (SVIP) to dense neighborhood commercial corridors with a high volume of Asian pedestrian traffic.

• Over $1 million investments for transgender violence prevention and community services for Black, Latinx, and transgender communities of color and re-entry services for transgender community members, and case management for formerly incarcerated transgender residents.

• LYRIC Center for LGBTQ Youth and the Office of Transgender Initiatives started convening local LGBTQ+ organizations to work on initiatives to tackle LGBTQ hate, including digital harassment and threats of physical violence.

GROWING UP WITH VIOLENCE

Breed is the 45th Mayor of San Francisco and the first African-American woman elected to the position, previously having served as president of the Board of Supervisors from 2015-2018. She is well known for her immediate and effective response to COVID-19 as well as her devotion to helping underprivileged youth, ending homelessness, advancing public safety, and advocating for the Asian, Black, and LGBTQ+ communities’

In Breed’s childhood San Francisco community, violence and fear were a way of life.

“People I grew up with had a lot of conflict with other people I grew up with like close family and friends,” Breed told The Blade, “so in that type of situation, there was a lot of fear. For example, with the African-American men in

my family, my brothers, my cousins, my uncles, there was fear because of where you lived or whose family member might have killed or had beef with another family member. I grew up concerned about my community, concerned about someone dying. I went to sadly more funerals than I can count.”

Breed was raised in poverty primarily by her grandmother in a house of five, often taking random jobs like delivering elderly people’s groceries for one dollar per store run to scrape together some extra cash.

As Breed got older, she began to take an active role in bettering her community and advocating for those in similar underprivileged states. For a long time, financing the type of change she was trying to implement proved to be her biggest challenge.

“As a community advocate and someone who worked with young people to help address these types of challenges, it was a constant battle to get resources to invest in the kind of programs that would help turn people’s lives around.”

The Mayor has come a long way from her early struggles to finance programs as she recently signed a $14 billion dollar budget that prioritizes economic recovery, public safety, workers and families, homelessness, and behavioral health needs.

Breed also told The Blade that her experience growing up surrounded by fear is what inspired her to become a politician.

“When I first ran for the Board of Supervisors, I did it unfortunately because there was a lot of violence in my community,” said Breed. “So, there was a lot of need to not only help prevent violence but to respond to it. I really felt like there was a voice needed at City Hall that actually understood what it was like to live in that situation every single day, and in some cases to live in fear because of the issues around gun violence. A big reason why I ran was wanting to do better for my community.”

HATE SPEECH AND PREJUDICE

As a woman of color and the first Black woman to be elected to her position, Breed has faced a backlash of racism, threats, and discrimination throughout her career.

“When I got into the political arena, that is when sadly a lot of the real nastiness started to take shape --the name calling, the threats, the various kind of attacks on me based on being either a woman or because of my race,” Breed said.

Some of these attacks even escalated to protests in front of her residence.

“I do remember someone with a pitchfork,” recalled Breed, “like a real pitchfork outside, and some of the language used like ‘tar feather.’”

The expression to Tar and feather a person is an expression that alludes to a former brutal punishment in which a person was smeared with tar and covered with feathers. It is a form of public humiliation that has been used for centuries to take revenge or to punish someone. It was used during the American Revolution and throughout American

San Francisco Mayor LONDON BREED (Photo courtesy of the Office of Mayor London Breed)

history to harm people with certain political or religious beliefs.

Scarily, these types of ignorant attacks have even come from well-educated and respected individuals in the community Breed said.

“I just remember this one individual who worked for one of the lawyer’s groups, I forget which one it is, he went on this rampage and basically called me a coon. He was a white man who worked with lawyers to address civil rights-related issues, and yet this was the kind of language that he used at me.

It is unfortunate that it gets to that point, but sadly when you are an elected official, that is something you have to be prepared for, even though it’s still hurtful when it happens,” she noted.

The word Coon is an extremely disparaging and offensive contemptuous term used to refer to a Black person. The use of this term as an ethnic slur derives from the practice of using coonhounds (dogs trained to hunt raccoons) to recapture escaped black slaves prior to the end of the Civil War and later adopted by extremist white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, intolerant individuals or other groups.

Selflessly, in these moments, Breed said she feared more for the well-being of her community than for her own personal safety.

“I kind of feared more what would happen if people from my community decided to respond to these kinds of attacks, which they also took offense to, or what would happen if the police responded. I was always more so concerned about someone getting hurt or some sort of altercation or anything that could happen as a result of a lot of this hate speech.”

When asked why this type of bigotry is still so common, Breed said she believes there are a number of reasons, listing mental illness and lack of proper education both in schools and in homes.

“I was fortunate to grow up in a household with a grandmother who made me feel that I needed to treat everybody right,” said Breed. “That stemmed from her growing up in Jim Crow south with segregation just one generation removed from slavery and how she felt the way she was treated was wrong. That was really embedded in me.”

“I think that if you have the kind of people in your life who make you understand from day one that that type of thinking is wrong, it makes a difference.”

“Also, we need to think about what we are teaching in our schools. Are we teaching kids as they come up how to treat one another? Are we teaching ethical behavior? I just think that to a certain extent, we have gotten away from all that.”

Breed also shared her desire for other social change, mainly in the way schools are addressing gendered bathrooms, as she feels this debate is emblematic of the same lack of empathy that leads to hate speech and hate crimes.

“I would like to see a change, for example, in this whole debate around bathrooms and the, ‘I don’t want my kids in the bathroom with this other person’ perspective. Why is this made into such a big deal? Why can’t we figure out a better way to allow people to grow up in a society where there is no stigma attached to who uses the restroom based on what they feel their gender is? How do we change that? How do we maybe change the bathroom options that we have? How do we naturally create as kids grow up more of a congregant society around that? And I think we have to think about how there are different kids with different experiences, and we need to learn how to be respectful of one another and not feel like we deserve something more than someone else. Everyone deserves to have the right to use the restroom based on the restroom of their choosing, and how we address that is by making sure that we make it a part of what we do in our public schools and our school systems in general.”

When asked for her opinion on why online hate speech can turn to violent hate crime, much like with the recent Club Q shooting, Breed said she believed some people might take cyber hate speech as a call to action.

“I do think we have a responsibility to be very careful about what we put out there because it definitely can imply that you were asking people to go after someone because of their stance on their race, gender, or their political stance.”

“I just think that social media has really damaged our society,” said Breed. “I remember when the kids at the Cultural Center started using Myspace. At first, the kids were on Myspace, and they were just showing pictures of each other and talking about each other, and saying nice things like telling each other they looked nice. I thought this was kind of a cool thing, and then all of a sudden, it became a tool that the kids started using to figure out people’s whereabouts. Then people started attacking one another to the point where all of a sudden, there were shootings between communities because of battles on social media. It went from being what was meant to be this positive way of communicating and staying in touch with one another to being used as a tool to push for fights and violence.”

“I do think we have a responsibility to monitor social media to the best of our ability. If we are a company responsible for the platform, we need to ensure that when we see something getting out of hand, we are dealing with it. Because when you are on the computer typing, you are not looking at a person face-to-face. You are talking to a computer, and you may have all these things on your mind that you want to get out, but then that information goes to the public to a whole other arena and kind of takes on a life of its own. For some people, that’s empowering, and they feel like people are finally paying attention to them when they weren’t before. And then they continue to push the envelope. So I really think it can be very dangerous, and I do think we have a responsibility to provide a lot more regulation, especially around hate speech.”

Of all the social media platforms, Breed takes the most issue with San Francisco-based Twitter, which has become increasingly controversial and toxic since billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the company.

“Twitter is pretty horrible. It’s toxic, and it’s sad because, again, a tool that should be used for good has turned into just a place where it is really all about attacking somebody and coming up with the most creative or clever way to go after somebody. I really think Twitter is the most dangerous of them all. I just would like to see it become more responsible,” she said.

“I do think that when the rise of hate crimes elevates to violence, there have to be consequences. People need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Breed added.

POSITIVE CHANGE

When asked about her most proud accomplishment thus far in elected office, the mayor named her Opportunities for All (OFA), program which provides paid internships for high school students in the city.

“No matter what school you go to, no matter where you live, we will not turn any kid away. Even if we don’t have a place to fit them, we will still make sure they have some sort of paid opportunity for the summer so that no one gets left out. I never want money to be a barrier to someone’s desire to be successful in their life.”

“When I was 14, I was able to get a work permit and be part of the Mayor’s Youth Employment and Training program,” said Breed. “The problem with that was there were only so many spaces.”

While Breed was able to secure a spot in the program, seeing what happened to some of her peers as a result of the program’s limited space deeply affected her.

“I remember a whole lot of people not getting a space in the program, and all I could think about were some of the kids who I went to school with who went from being not so bad to being actually really terrible. They were involved in a lot of drug dealing in violent crime. I just felt like there was a really critical moment where I realized that if we were not going to send these people on the right path, they were going to go in a very different direction. I just want to make sure we never miss out on an opportunity to turn someone’s life around.”

Thanks to her policy of never turning any child away from OFA, Breed is able to boast of the program’s positive impact on San Francisco’s youth. Some participants in the program have learned valuable skills like leadership and coding. Some now work for nonprofits, tech companies, and city government, to name a few. Many go off to college and return to help manage and run the program for other youths.

“I feel like this program is really going to, and has already transformed lives, and will continue to do so,” said Breed.

Finally, she shared some words of encouragement for future leaders:

“I would say to any young person looking to become a leader, one day, number one, just believe in yourself. You know what’s in your heart. Stay true to who you are. Do good work in the community, and feel good about what you are doing. When opportunities present themselves, don’t be afraid to take advantage of them. Sometimes it can feel scary and overwhelming, but at the end of the day, if you feel it in your heart and you want to go for it, I say go for it.”

San Francisco’s City Hall, lit up in rainbow hues in 2018.

(Photo courtesy of Western Business Alliance)

Bill to reduce recidivism by providing therapy in prisons introduced

SACRAMENTO – Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced SB 513, the Reducing Recidivism Through Therapy Act. SB 513 would help rehabilitate California’s incarcerated population and reduce California’s high recidivism rate by providing access to therapy to all incarcerated Californians, regardless of security level, sentence length, or mental health disorder classification.

Currently, a large majority of California state prison inmates have no access at all even to the most minimal mental health treatment. As a result, rehabilitation is more difficult, and recidivism is more likely. SB 513, by providing therapy services to inmates, will help prepare them for release.

There are approximately 97,000 people incarcerated in California’s prisons. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) currently provides therapy to only the most severe cases of mental illness – those assigned to one of four classifications:

1. Core Clinical Case Management System (Triple-CMS): the lowest classification level. Patients are supposed to receive therapy at least once every 90 days.

2. Enhanced Outpatient Program (EOP): the highest level of outpatient mental care. Patients whose symptoms impact their ability to function and live in separate housing.

3. Mental Health Crisis Bed (MHCB): patients who are in acute psychiatric distress and typically stay for less than 10 days when deemed a danger to themselves or others.

4. Psychiatric Inpatient Programs (PIP): patients who need acute or immediate care and are often experiencing suicidal ideation.

Currently, around 30,000 incarcerated people fall into one of these classifications. Though they technically have access to therapy,  their sessions are often as short as 15 minutes, and they are often cycled through different therapists sporadically. These constraints make it impossible for them to build rapport with their therapist and establish consistency - both key to the success of any mental health

treatment program.

The other 67,000 incarcerated Californians who are not classified have no access to any mental health care at all.

Experts have concluded that these numbers do not reflect the true need for mental health treatment among incarcerated people. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), about 3 in 5 people (63%) with a history of mental illness do not receive mental health treatment while incarcerated in state and federal prisons. In 2013, the California Journal of Politics and Policy found that of the majority of incarcerated persons with mental health or substance use issues, less than 10% receive treatment.

In addition, the experience of incarceration is itself often traumatic enough to warrant mental health treatment. The Prison Policy Initiative found that people’s experiences in jails and prisons correlate to the development of adverse mental health effects.

California pays the price for this lack of treatment in its

recidivism rate, which is among the highest in the country. According to the California State Auditor, it has averaged at around 50% over the past ten years. Research shows that programs and services provided within prisons can reduce recidivism by helping change incarcerated people’s behavior.

SB 513 will ensure that mental health therapy is accessible to all incarcerated people, regardless of security level, sentence length, or mental health classification.

It requires CDCR to increase virtual or in-person therapy opportunities to all incarcerated people, to the greatest extent possible. The bill redefines “mental health therapy” as 50-minute sessions offered up to two times per month by a psychiatrist, psychologist, licensed social worker, or licensed therapist. The bill will also require CDCR to provide incarcerated people with a mental health appointment within two weeks of the patient requesting care and will ensure patients are seen on schedule and on time.

“If we’re serious about reducing California’s abominable recidivism rate, we have to do something about the mental health crisis in our prisons,” said Senator Wiener. “Incarcerated persons need to be rehabilitated, but our outdated system for classifying mental health need is providing poor care to some and no care to tens of thousands of others. Providing access to therapy for all prisoners, regardless of classification, security level, or sentence length is a compassionate step that will improve public safety.”

SB 513 is sponsored by the Anti-Recidivism Coalition.

“Mental health care should be available to everyone seeking it— especially those navigating trauma and depression behind the walls of California’s prisons,” said Esteban Nunez, Chief Strategy Consultant, Anti-Recidivism Coalition. “Therapeutic care was a major factor in my rehabilitation; it provided me a space to process my traumas, better understand the harm I caused, and reenter society ready to move forward as an engaged member of my community. Unfortunately, most incarcerated Californians don’t have that opportunity. SB 513 is long overdue in ensuring that they do.”

By LA BLADE STAFF

LA County Sheriff: Arrest in murder of Bishop David O’Connell

LOS ANGELES - Monday afternoon in a press conference Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna told reporters that a 65-year-old Torrance resident has been arrested in the shooting death of  Bishop David O’Connell Saturday afternoon.

Sheriff Luna noted that his investigators were able to develop Carlos Medina, 65, as the primary suspect after surveillance video from the area was collected and a tipster gave critical details that alerted LASD detectives to the fact that the suspect was the husband of the bishop’s housekeeper who had complained according to the tipster that O’Connell owed Medina money.

Luna said that initial contact with Medina and his refusal to surrender to detectives, barricading himself in his home, led to deployment of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Bureau. Luna said that the unit was able to effect an arrest at 8:15 AM Monday without further incidence. The Sheriff added his detectives recovered two firearms and other evidence possibly linking Medina to the crime.

Luna added that due to the ongoing investigation, he was unable to reveal further information about the case.

By BRODY LEVESQUE

California Medical Facility and California State Prison, Solano (Photo Credit: California Department of Corrections)

LA County Sheriff LUNA, press conference on murder of Bishop O’Connell February 20, 2023 (Screenshot/KABC7)

New York Times called out for its biased coverage of trans people

By

NEW YORK CITY - In a one-two punch aimed directly at the New York Times, more than 100 contributing writers, fellow journalists, celebrities and advocacy organizations today joined GLAAD in demanding change in how the newspaper covers transgender issues and trans people.

First, GLAAD hired a billboard truck to circle the newspaper’s Manhattan headquarters this morning with signs saying, “Dear New York Times: Stop questioning trans people’s right to exist & access to medical care,” among other messages.

“I think what what’s most upsetting here is the damage this is doing,” Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD CEO and president of the world’s largest LGBTQ+ media advocacy organization, told the Blade in her first phone interview on the topic Tuesday. “Every day they’re not stopping is doing more damage. Every time a new article comes out that debates whether or not trans people should receive board-approved healthcare is damaging. And so I feel really strongly that their coverage is dangerous.”

Then, to protest what GLAAD calls the Times’ “irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender people,” representatives of the organization joined contributors for the Times outside the paper’s building this morning, as they delivered two open letters and issued a joint statement, calling out a “pattern of inaccurate, harmful trans coverage.”

The coalition demands the Times immediately “stop printing biased, anti-trans stories,” meet with members and leaders in the trans community within two months, and within three months hire at least four trans writers and editors as full-time members of the Times staff.

Joining GLAAD are HRC, PFLAG, the Transgender Law Center, Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, the Women’s March, director Judd Apatow, comedian Margaret Cho, actor Wilson Cruz, actresses Tommy Dorfman, Lena Dunham, Jameela Jamil, drag superstar Peppermint, activist Ashlee Marie Preston, Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider, writer/director/actress Shakina, actress, Instagram influencer and stepmom to Zaya, Gabrielle Union-Wade, TV personality Jonathan Van Ness, activist Charlotte Clymer and more.

“This has been an effort at GLAAD for over a year now,” Ellis told the Blade. “We’ve had several off-the-record meetings with the New York Times to share with them our concerns about the coverage and the reporting that they’ve been doing on the trans community.”

But those concerns fell on deaf ears, said Ellis, and the conversations were unfruitful.  “We wouldn’t be going out with a public letter in coalition if they were fruitful. You know, for us going public, it’s always the last resort.”

Times Journalists Speak Out

As GLAAD worked toward publishing its letter, the organization was contacted by Times contributors already in the process of composing their own. A core team of eight journalists collaborated to condemn what they called the

newspaper’s anti-trans bias and the real-world impact of that transphobic coverage.

The authors are Times freelancers Harron Walker, Eric Thurm, who is also campaigns coordinator at the National Writers Union and a steering committee member of the Freelance Solidarity Project, Sean T. Collins, who is also a member and organizer of the Freelance Solidarity Project, Cecilia Gentili, a longtime trans activist, Jo Livingstone, Muna Mire, and Chris Randle, a member of the steering committee at the Freelance Solidarity Project.

They were joined by Olivia Aylmer, a member of the steering committee at the Freelance Solidarity Project who is not a freelancer for the Times.

Not only did other contributing writers sign-on, but so did journalism colleagues, both cisgender and transgender, as well as members of the Trans Journalists Association.

“A diverse group of people came together to bring you this complaint,” they wrote. ”Some of us are trans, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming, and we resent the fact that our work, but not our person, is good enough for the paper of record. Some of us are cis, and we have seen those we love discover and fight for their true selves, often swimming upstream against currents of bigotry and pseudoscience fomented by the kind of coverage we here protest.”

Those signing that letter include Ashley P. Ford, Roxane Gay, Carmen Maria Machado Thomas Page McBee, Andrea Long Chu, Carmen Maria Machado, John Cameron Mitchell, Zach Stafford, Raquel Willis, Maia Monet, among others.

Their letter, addressed directly to Times Standards editor Philip Corbett, calls out the country’s third most-read paper for executing what it says is “poor editorial judgment,” repeated lack of context in its reporting on trans issues and following “the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy, warranting new, punitive legislation.”

“There is in fact an unethical bias against trans people and transnesss within its coverage of trans issues, by and large,” said Walker, one of the organizers of the contributors’ letter. “There is a pattern of bias, and it’s a violation of the standards own policy as laid out by the standards

desk.”

States that have seized upon this anti-trans reporting and opinion pieces by the Times include Alabama, Arkansas and Texas. Already, those states have joined Florida, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah in enacting discriminatory legislation.

Of these, Utah and South Dakota have passed healthcare bans that journalist Erin Reed calls “exceedingly cruel.” For example, South Dakota’s ban is one of those providing specific provisions on how to medically detransition transgender teenagers, a practice now state law in Alabama and Arkansas.

“The New York Times coverage is feeding into defending these laws, by virtue of the fact that it’s the so-called paper of record,” Walker told the Blade. “It has one of the largest reaches of any newspaper in the world, it is respected. Even if people on the far right may dismiss it as the ‘failing New York Times,’ it still holds a legitimacy in a process that, you know, means something.”

“Pattern of Bias”

“Plenty of reporters at the Times cover trans issues fairly,” the contributing writers’ letter states. “Their work is eclipsed, however, by what one journalist has calculated as over 15,000 words of front-page Times coverage, debating the propriety of medical care for trans children published in the last eight months alone.”

GLAAD notes that officials in Texas quoted Emily Bazelon’s June 2022 report to go after families of trans youth in court documents over their private, evidence-based healthcare decisions.

Former Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge cited three Times articles in her amicus brief supporting an Alabama law that criminalizes doctors and parents for ensuring trans youth can access necessary medical care: Bazelon’s 2022 story, Azeen Ghorayshi’s January 2022 piece, and Ross Douthat’s April 2022 op-ed.

The Times’ reporting on trans youth and its reputation as the “paper of record” was cited just last week to justify a bill in a Nebraska legislative hearing, that would criminalize healthcare for trans youth.

Scores of other bills are in the works. Missouri Republicans are once again pushing for healthcare bans. Anti-trans bills in Montana, West Virginia, and Mississippi have passed an entire chamber.

But by far the worst anti-transgender legislation and existing laws against transgender community are already on the books in Texas, which Reed calls “home to the weaponization of [Department of Protective Family Services] against transgender people.”

New restrictive bathroom laws are in place in Oklahoma, Alabama and Tennessee. Oklahoma’s healthcare ban restricts even adults, up to the age of 26, from accessing gender-affirming care. Florida has banned Medicaid coverage for trans-related healthcare for adults and is banning

“We won’t stand for the Times platforming lies, bias, fringe theories, and dangerous inaccuracies,” says GLAAD. “We demand fair coverage”

DAWN ENNIS

(Photo Credit: Sarah Kennedy/GLAAD)

gender affirming care for trans teens. And as mentioned earlier, Utah, South Dakota, Arkansas and Alabama have targeted trans teens as well.

“Britification” of American Media

For the most part over the last two decades, U.S. media had reliably shared a positive view of transgender people, especially youth, highlighting the stories of out trans celebrities like Chaz Bono, Laverne Cox, Caitlyn Jenner and Jazz Jennings. But since the Obergefell decision at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015, trans people have become the religious right’s handy-dandy political boogeyman, to scare the flocks, rally the base and get out the vote. That’s a shift that was preceded by all-out negative coverage of trans issues in the United Kingdom, where with rare exception the mainstream media is in lockstep with what is called the “Gender Critical” movement, opposing trans rights.

Ari Drennen is the LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, and has been tracking coverage of trans issues at the Times.

“I think it’s good to see people speaking up and talking about the really troubling pattern of coverage coming out of the Times, just because the Times is seen as the kind of gold standard for a lot of mainstream liberals,” Drennen told the Blade. “That pattern is especially notable at the Times. But there has been a sort of, you know, Britification, for lack of a better word, of the American media’s approach to trans people.”

Drennen cites a Reuters article from October about gender-affirming care for transgender children that featured an extreme close-up photograph of a child wearing braces with a hormone pill on their tongue. “That was really just clearly intended to scare parents,” she said.

Also keeping a close watch on the Times and this Britification effect is Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, where she works to advance the civil rights of LGBTQ+ people in a variety of civil legal contexts such as healthcare access, immigration, and family law.

“In the U.K., the far right, particularly the religious far right, is almost a non-entity. They just don’t have the kind of cultural power and political power that they do in the United States,” Caraballo told the Blade, noting that the Gender Critical movement has taken a a more secular approach to its opposition to trans people, rather than a religious angle.

“In the United States, it’s always been the religious far right, but they are now trying to launder those narratives through these kind of secular outlets, to try to make it seem that the concerns aren’t just inherently based on religious ideology,” she said. “Part of it is this concerted strategy that I think a lot of the Gender Criticals have of particularly appealing to narratives that upper middle class white women would often be more amenable to, especially this idea that women have fought for rights, and somehow the existence of trans people is undermining those rights, because it’s hard to just oppose rights for people if it doesn’t impact you, so you have to create a sense of scarcity, and that’s what they do there. They say that ‘This is erasing women,’ ‘This is erasing women’s rights.’”

Racial Bias

Caraballo noted that the people who are writing these stories at the Times are almost universally upper middle class, middle-aged white women, which speaks to the lack of racial diversity at the newspaper.

“I think what’s interesting is the kind of subject of every panic about over-medicalization in mainstream media tend to be white, and then the subject of the panic about kids and sports tend to be Black,” said Drennen. “I don’t need to have a Ph.D to see what’s going on.”

“I think part of it speaks to the lack of racial diversity,” echoed Caraballo. “I’m not surprised that one of the first really positive, outspoken editorials in the opinion column in the New York Times was by a Black man. I think there’s a sense of solidarity and understanding of how these things work, and I think when you have no trans people in the newsroom and no trans people as opinion columnists, and you have a newsroom that’s almost entirely stocked with a demographic that is particularly being targeted by Gender Criticals for pushing their views. I think it’s not a surprise.”

Anti-trans Agenda

Caraballo said her conversations with people who work at the Times leads her to suspect this shift toward anti-trans narratives is not the writers or reporters themselves, but the result of an agenda set by their editors.

“For some people like Katie J.M. Baker, who has written extensively about how the media actually works to push transphobic narratives, to then write an article like she did about forcibly outing trans students, it just speaks to either opportunism, not really having a deeply-held belief about this, or just being pushed by the editors. I mean, this was her first major story,” she said. “I worry that what happens is the New York Times often times gives those kinds of views credibility. And you see this with the anti-trans people celebrating every one of these articles, because they view that they’re trans eliminationist and anti-trans positions are being laundered into the mainstream.”

Anti-trans Tipping Point

In 2014, Time Magazine put Laverne Cox on its cover and declared that trans Americans had achieved a tipping point in acceptance. But at the Times, a shift in who writes opinion pieces has tipped the balance the other way, noted Drennen.

“The New York Times has never been perfect in their coverage, of course. But over the last year, Jennifer Finney Boylan departed from the Times’s opinion section,” she said. While Boylan is still a freelancer for the Times, the bestselling author and scholar’s byline now regularly appears in the Washington Post.

“In the interim, they’ve added two incredibly anti-trans regular columnists, Pamela Paul and David French, the former lawyer for the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group, the Alliance Defending Freedom. This has a really troubling pattern of anti-trans sentiment. So, any perceived balance there was just got totally blown out the window over the last year.”

“I’m proud of the work I did for Times Opinion from 2007 to 2022, on hundreds of topics from presidential dogs to the history of the Negroni,” Boylan told the Blade. “As a freelancer, I felt lucky to have a regular slot on the page and was grateful for the trust the editors placed in me. I also wrote many essays about trans identity and trans politics, and was proud to be, for many years, the only ongoing voice on the page representing the wide range of trans identities. I am hoping all those stories put a human face to trans issues for readers of the Times, and opened some hearts.”

Boylan’s name does not appear alongside other Times freelancers in the open letter or the GLAAD letter, but iron-

ically, the Times has been publishing her name in its Bestsellers list for 18 weeks in a row. Her novel, Mad Honey, co-written with Jodi Picoult, has yet to be reviewed in the newspaper or covered in any way, despite it being the most successful book co-written by any transgender person, ever. Is that more evidence of bias, or just a coincidence?

The Science “Debate”

“I am really disappointed that it’s come to this,” said Ellis. “The science is settled on transgender health care. As far as the New York Times is concerned, it is not settled science and they want to use their pages to debate it.”

“It’s so dehumanizing,” added Caraballo, “because you have people debating your rights who have no stake in it whatsoever. They’re not the ones that are going to be denied healthcare. They’re not the ones who are going to be denied housing. They’re not the ones who are going to be kicked out of their homes when they’re forcibly outed to their parents. They have no stake in this. And that is particularly what’s so upsetting, to see all these people that literally will never feel the effects of these policies, constantly talking about how they have ‘concerns.’”

Will the Times Agree to their Demands?

Drennen said it’s hard to say whether these open letters will have any impact, because “so much of their decision-making is internal.”

For her part, Walker said she remains excited by the coalition that’s been assembled and optimistic, but also realistic.

“Ideally what happens is the New York Times says, ‘Okay, yeah, let’s stop debating whether trans people should be allowed,’ and they start hiring a bunch of trans people. It’s the end of the story. I’m also realistic. I think it’s important to keep some idealism and some optimism in place and also realistic at the same time, which I also think is important. And I fully expect them to do their best to ignore it.”

“We’re too loud to ignore. If you ignore our letter, we’ll find some other way. If you ignore that, we’ll find another way,” Ellis said. “We’re not going to quit until the New York Times acknowledges our demands. And our demands are not outrageous. Within the letter, we’re just talking about stopping your irresponsible reporting, meeting with the trans community and hiring trans writers and editors. These are not outrageous demands that we’re making.”

Charlie Stadtlander, the Director of External Communications, Newsroom, for the New York Times responded Wednesday afternoon in an email to the Blade addressing the controversy:

“We received the open letter delivered by GLAAD and welcome their feedback. We understand how GLAAD and the co-signers of the letter see our coverage. But at the same time, we recognize that GLAAD’s advocacy mission and The Times’s journalistic mission are different.

As a news organization, we pursue independent reporting on transgender issues that include profiling groundbreakers in the movement, challenges and prejudice faced by the community, and how society is grappling with debates about care.

The very news stories criticized in their letter reported deeply and empathetically on issues of care and well-being for trans teens and adults. Our journalism strives to explore, interrogate and reflect the experiences, ideas and debates in society – to help readers understand them. Our reporting did exactly that and we’re proud of it.”

‘I love Ukraine’

MICHAEL

Anna Sharyhina, co-founder of the Sphere Women’s Association, a group that promotes LGBTQ and intersex rights in Ukraine, on Sept. 25, 2022, led a Pride march in a subway station in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city that is less than 30 miles from the Russian border in eastern Ukraine.

Kharkiv Pride took place during the Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive against Russian troops in Kharkiv Oblast. Sphere Fundraising Manager Ruslana Hnatchenko on Tuesday told the Washington Blade during a Zoom interview the subway was the only safe place for the event to happen, but she said it was “very important for us to have it in Ukraine and have it in Kharkiv.”

“Kharkiv carries a significance of being at the frontline and it is so close to Russia,” said Hnatchenko. “It was great to have it there.”

Friday marks one year since Russia launched its war against Ukraine.

Dmitry Shapoval, a gay man with HIV from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and Anastasiia Baraniuk and her partner, Yulia Mulyukina, who were living together from Dniptro, a city on the Dnieper River in central Ukraine, are among the millions of people who have left Ukraine over the last year.

Hnatchenko was in Budapest, Hungary, studying for her master’s degree when the war began, and she spoke with the Blade from there. She visited her family over the Christmas holidays, but they met in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine that is close to the country’s border with Poland, because it was safer than Kharkiv.

“It was unsafe for me to come to Kharkiv,” said Hnatchenko. “It would be better for everyone to meet in the west.”

A Russian airstrike on March 1, 2022, killed Elvira Schemur, a 21-year-old law school student who was a volunteer for Kharkiv Pride and Kyiv Pride. Schemur was volunteering inside Kharkiv’s regional administration building when she was killed.

Hnatchenko said activists in Kherson, a city that Ukrainian forces liberated last November, told her Russian soldiers “were aware of where people from vulnerable groups (LGBTQ and intersex people and Roma people) lived.” Hnatchenko told the Blade people who identified as LGBTQ, intersex or nonbinary did not go outside during the occupation because they were afraid of being forcibly conscripted, attacked or sexually assaulted.

“A lot of LGBT people just tried not to go outside ... and obviously not to expose anything about their identity,” she said.

Hnatchenko also told the Blade women and girls in Kherson tried to dress in a “non-attractive way” in order “to make themselves look ugly, so the troops would take less interest in them.”

‘We help our soldiers’

Activists and advocacy groups remain defiant. They also continue to support LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians who remain inside the country and servicemembers.

Hnatchenko said Sphere has provided humanitarian

assistance and psychological support to more than 1,500 people.

Outright International, RFSL (the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Rights), Hivos and private donors inside Ukraine and elsewhere have donated funds that have allowed Sphere to purchase generators, clothes and blankets that it has distributed to Kharkiv’s LGBTQ and intersex residents during blackouts that Russia’s attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure has caused.

The U.S. Agency for International Development and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief over the last year have delivered millions of doses of antiretroviral drugs for Ukrainians with HIV/AIDS. Then-Kyiv Pride Executive Director Lenny Emson last month during a photo exhibit at Ukraine House in D.C. that highlighted Ukrainian LGBTQ and intersex servicemembers noted the organization continues to purchase basic supplies for them.

“We buy shoes. We buy underwear. We buy socks. We buy heaters,” said Emson. “We help our soldiers.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the last year has indicated his support of LGBTQ and intersex rights.

Zelenskyy last summer said he supports a civil partnerships law for same-sex couples.

Ukrainian lawmakers late last year unanimously approved a media regulation bill that will ban hate speech and incitement based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The measure passed days before Zelenskyy, a former actor and comedian, met with President Joe Biden at the White House and addressed Congress.

Zelenskyy last month made a broad reference to LGBTQ and intersex rights in a virtual Golden Globes appearance. Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova during the Jan. 26 event in D.C. applauded Kyiv Pride and other LGBTQ and intersex rights groups in her country.

“Thank you for everything you do in Kyiv, and thank you for everything that you do in order to fight the discrimination that still is somewhere in Ukraine,” said Markarova. “Not everything is perfect yet, but you know, I think we are moving in the right direction. And we together will not only fight the external enemy, but also will see equality.”

Biden on Feb. 20 met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

Hnatchenko told the Blade she thinks Zelenskyy “does believe in human rights.”

“Maybe he’s not a full-blown ally, yet, but I think he believes in human rights,” she said, while noting she was sharing her personal thoughts about Zelenskyy. “He’s not only doing that because of the pressure from partners, but there’s pressure from within Ukraine to not do that.”

Hnatchenko further acknowledged conservative politicians, prominent figures within the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches and many Ukrainians themselves remain opposed to LGBTQ and intersex rights.

“He (Zelenskyy) is kind of between a rock and a hard place in that sense, but I believe that human rights in Ukraine will overcome, especially after our victory,” said Hnatchenko. “We will make progress.”

Helen Globa, co-founder of Tergo, a support group for parents and friends of LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians, on March 2, 2022, left her apartment in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. She lived in New York with her son, Bogdan Globa, and his husband until she returned to Ukraine last August.

Helen Globa, like Hnatchenko, acknowledged many Ukrainians remain opposed to LGBTQ and intersex rights, but she said Zelenskyy’s support of civil unions for samesex couples and LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians in the country’s armed forces are two tangible results of activists’ work in the country. Helen Globa also said one of the reasons she decided to return to Ukraine was to continue her support of these efforts.

“I love Ukraine and my life, my activities,” she told the Blade on Wednesday. “I do believe in our victory and further opportunities to finish my LGBTQ human rights activities by pushing our government to adopt same-sex partnership and marriages.”

Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, a transgender woman from Las Vegas who enlisted in the Ukrainian military after she covered the war, echoed Helen Globa.

“This act of war by Putin has set in motion a timely and irreversible civil rights movement in Ukraine, one that has been extraordinarily beneficial to the LGBTQ community,” Ashton-Cirillo told the Blade on Tuesday from the frontlines where she is fighting with the 209th Battalion of the 113th Brigade in the Donbas. “From hundreds of openly queer men and women serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine to President Zelenskyy’s positive statement about civil partnerships and human rights as applied to the community, what Putin has done has allowed freedom to bloom in Ukraine.”

Country’s activists remain defiant as they mark war’s first anniversary

By

K. LAVERS

ANNA SHARYHINA, co-founder of the Sphere Women’s Association, center, leads a Pride march in a subway station in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 25, 2022. (Photo courtesy of Sphere Women’s Association)

HELEN GLOBA, co-founder of Tergo, a support group for parents and friends of LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians, speaks at a rally for LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians on April 3, 2022. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

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J. LESTER FEDER

is Outright’s Senior Fellow for Emergency Research. He researches the situation of LGBTIQ people in significant crises. He is a journalist and photographer who has reported in more than 40 countries, whose work has appeared in outlets including Rolling Stone, the New York Times and Vanity Fair. From 2013-2020, Lester was a senior world correspondent at BuzzFeed News, where he pioneered a first-of-its-kind international LGBTQ rights beat. Lester was named Journalist of the Year in 2015 by NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists and received a GLAAD Media Award in 2016. Lester holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an M.A. from the Columbia Journalism School.

Taliban persecution against LGBTIQ Afghans heightens

Extremist group regained control of country in 2021

When Pari, a 48-year-old gay man in Afghanistan, was beaten and forced into sex by Taliban officials, his body was so badly bruised that he told his family he had been in a car crash.

Pari had tried to lay low after the Taliban captured control of Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021. He is a 48-year-old gay man who worked at a health clinic before the Taliban’s return to power, providing services to men who have sex with men. The clinic shut its doors and laid off its staff as the Taliban retook power, worried that some of its former clients would report their work to the Taliban. They were right to worry. A few weeks into Taliban rule, fighters showed up to the empty building and beat the security guards.

But the immediate months after the Taliban’s return to power was not the worst time for Pari and many other lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) Afghans. Nine months later, Pari was identified on the street by a group of Taliban who appeared to know who he was. “You are ‘izak’ and promote gay sex,” they said, using a local homophobic slur. Taliban members beat him and detained him at a checkpoint, demanding the names of his former clients.

Eighteen months after the Taliban takeover, the lives of LGBTIQ Afghans are increasingly in danger. A new Outright report demonstrates the scale and scope of violence against LGBTIQ people, who live in complete insecurity as Taliban persecution becomes increasingly systematic. In the early days after the Taliban takeover, Outright found that most threats and violence came from family members or in chance encounters with Taliban when queer people were spotted based on their appearance or identified when checkpoint guards searched their cell phones. Premeditated targeting was rare.

But Afghanistan’s de facto rulers have stepped up their persecution of LGBTIQ people over the last year.  In December, Afghanistan’s Supreme Court announced individuals had been punished for homosexuality in Kabul, and public floggings for homosexuality have also been reported in other parts of the country.

Outright’s documentation suggests that much of the targeting by state agents primarily affects queer men and trans women so far. In one case, a gay activist was found dead outside a police station; a medical examiner found evidence of sexual assault, according to a family member. In another, a trans woman arrived for a dancing gig at a party to discover it was a trap, and she was handed over to Taliban officers.

For queer women and trans men, family members remain a primary source of danger, especially male relatives. One trans man we interviewed was savagely beaten by his uncle who then threatened to hand him over to the Taliban. An intersex woman who’d entered into an arranged marriage reported being beaten by her husband and forced to sleep in a cowshed. He, too, threatened to hand her over to the Taliban.

Violence against LGBTIQ people runs counter to Afghanistan’s obligations under international law and could quite possibly constitute crimes against humanity. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) stated in December that Taliban officials could be prosecuted for  “gender persecution” for targeting LGBTIQ people. (Afghanistan is under the ICC’s jurisdiction, having  signed onto the treaty authorizing the court in 2003.)

But the international community is doing far too little to protect queer Afghans, or to ensure that their persecutors are brought to justice. It’s almost impossible for queer Afghans to flee to safety. Foreign governments have provided far fewer visas to persecuted Afghans than are needed, and the process of resettlement requires refugees to spend months in Pakistan and other countries where LGBTIQ people are criminalized. Rainbow Railroad, an organization that help LGBTIQ refugees get to safety, has received requests for assistance from nearly 4,000 queer Afghans since August 2021. By the end of 2022, only 247 had managed to reach safe countries. While many continue to try to leave, most queer Afghans cannot or don’t want to leave Afghanistan. They fall under the protection mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). But UNAMA has not made any public statements regarding LGBTIQ Afghans’ human rights and safety, even omitting reference to such abuses against LGBTIQ people in a human rights report issued in July 2022.

Creating safe space for queer people to connect with UNAMA and other international organizations will require a long process of trust building with the community in a country where being LGBTIQ is so stigmatized. Afghanistan is so dangerous for LGBTIQ people that many fear leaving their homes; the idea of outing themselves to an international agency is terrifying, especially if it requires the involvement of an Afghan interpreter who may share widely held anti-LGBTIQ attitudes.

But the U.N. tasked UNAMA to protect all Afghans when it was created in 2002, and UNAMA must find ways to fulfill that obligation, including by recruiting staff trusted by LGBTIQ people and beginning the crucial work of documenting violence against a deeply marginalized community.

For now, Pari has nowhere to turn for help. He ultimately escaped Taliban detention after agreeing to have sex with a man in exchange for his freedom. He thought about leaving Afghanistan, and secured a passport. But even if he could find a way out, he doesn’t want to abandon his children. To survive, he does everything possible to avoid leaving the house.

Stories like Pari’s are far too common in the Taliban’s Afghanistan. They will only grow more common unless the international community takes action. And with no safe way for most LGBTIQ Afghans to report these abuses, their stories may never be known at all.

Republican states target drag performers

Bills seek to restrict shows, label venues as ‘adult-oriented businesses’

A number of bills targeting drag performers are popping up in majority-Republican states across the nation.

At least 14 states have introduced bills that would restrict drag queens from performing in public spaces and in venues viewable by minors. Some of the proposed legislation would require venues that host drag events to register as “adult-oriented businesses.”

These bills are the latest legislative attempts targeting LGBTQ rights, particularly transgender rights. Other proposed legislation across the country includes access to gender-affi rming health care and banning kids from being able to play gender-affi rming sports.

Shawn Stokes, a drag queen who performs as Akasha Royale and is based in St. Louis, said he’s “embarrassed” these bills have been introduced in his home state and across the country.

“We have plenty of other things to do. We have a failing educational system,” he said. “We are just wasting a lot of time.”

In Missouri, legislators are considering several bills, including one described as changing “the defi nition of a sexually oriented business to include any nightclub or bar that provides drag performances.” Another bill would classify “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest” as adult cabaret performances. Performances on public property or viewed by minors could result in a misdemeanor punishable by jail time and a hefty fi ne.

Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has endorsed a similar bill in her state.

In Tennessee, a bill would classify “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest” as adult cabaret performances and would ban performances on public property. Shows would also be banned where minors could be present.

A rural county in Tennessee has already approved regulations on drag performances — the Giles County Agri-Park Board Committee passed a slew of restrictions in early January, including banning “male or female impersonators” from the park, the Tennessean reported.

Steven Raimo, a Nashville-based drag queen who performs as Veronica Electronika, said legislators are trying to “eliminate the art of drag.”

“They want to put fear in entertainers,” Raimo said. Raimo predicts venues will stop hosting drag performers because of the risk of retribution.

“One of the restaurants that I do our brunch and bingo show has big glass windows that look onto a public street,” he said. “I could potentially be arrested in violation of this law because anybody of any age could walk past the windows and see the show.”

Raimo added he would be much more careful in choosing where he performs because of the ambiguity of the bill as it stands.

And it’s likely the bill will pass in Tennessee, according to Kathy Sinback, the executive director of American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee. The Tennessee Senate passed the bill Feb. 9, and the state House of Representatives also has a companion bill in motion that would

By KAELA ROEDER

require drag performers to obtain a permit.

“It is moving so quickly,” Sinback said. “These [anti-drag bills] are their top priorities this session.”

Bills could target trans people

Because of the vagueness of the bills and classifying drag performers as “male or female impersonators,” advocates fear this proposed legislation could attack transgender people.

“This is in fact a transphobic bill, even more so than it is a drag-phobic bill,” Raimo said. It’s a very important piece of this story that I don’t want to be lost.”

Trans people in Tennessee could be viewed as “male or female impersonators” by law enforcement because people cannot change the gender marker on their birth certifi cate, Raimo said.

“So if someone’s singing karaoke in the bar, and they do a little twerking, maybe that’s harmful to minors all of a sudden. It can be interpreted so broadly,” Sinback said.

‘It’s 100 percent fearmongering’

The Arizona Senate is considering legislation that would prohibit federal or state funds from being allocated to places where drag shows are hosted. Another bill, similar to those in Tennessee and Missouri, would classify drag as “adult cabaret performances,” and would ban shows on public property.

It’s unlikely the bills will be passed into law in Arizona given Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is in power, according to Richard Stevens, a Phoenix-based drag queen who performs as Barbra Seville. But still, “even if it’s not made into law, damage has been done,” he said.

“Their mission in a lot of ways is accomplished,” Stevens explained. “They’ve now connected grooming and pedophilia and attacks on children to drag. People who weren’t thinking about drag a year ago are now paranoid of drag.”

Stevens was once friends with Kari Lake, a Republican who continues to claim she won last November’s Arizona’s gubernatorial election. Stevens subsequently became a vocal Lake critic after she criticized drag queens and claimed they are “grooming” children.

The classifi cation of drag performances as “sexual” is also an archaic perspective, Stokes said.

“This narrative that drag queens are predators or groomers is absolutely false,” Stokes said. “Going to a drag show with your kid in a public place is no diff erent than taking your 12-year-old kid to a PG-13 movie.”

“It’s 100 percent fearmongering. It’s demonization,” Stevens said.

This is a common thread in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric — the false narrative that all LGBTQ people are out to get children, said Misty Eyez, the director of the women’s program and transgender services, and the manager of LGBTQ competency training at SunServe, an LGBTQ services organization based in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

“It’s not a new story that LGBTQ individuals are stereotyped as … a threat to traditional values or morality,” she said.

STEVEN RAIMO (Photo courtesy of Steven Raimo)

RICHARD STEVENS (Photo courtesy of Richard Stevens)

Goldin doc captures both ‘Beauty’ and ‘Bloodshed’

Laura Poitras produced and directed Oscar-nominated documentary

By JOHN PAUL KING

As the yearly Hollywood awards cycle heads into its final weeks before culminating with the Oscars on March 12, most of the public attention is — as always — focused on the movies in the so-called “major” categories, while the ones in the others are, if not completely overlooked, placed lower on the priority list for film fans looking to catch up on all the nominees before the big night.

As the shrewdest fans know, of course, some of the best filmmaking often goes unsung because it happens in the kind of films that win awards in categories deemed irrelevant by most of the people in the mainstream. Unfortunately, that description most frequently seems to apply to documentaries — and this year, a standout among the crop of potential Oscar winners comes from within that eternally underappreciated genre.

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature, producer/director Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” is a movie that tells two stories. In part, it’s a chronicle of the remarkable personal history of photographer and artist Nan Goldin, who rose to prominence in the “respectable” art world through the images that she took of herself and her friends — often in candidly intimate situations — in the post-Stonewall queer underground of ‘70s and ‘80s lower Manhattan; told in Goldin’s voice and through her own vast archive of images, it charts her life and career from emotionally traumatic childhood to esteemed artist, while reminding us that she was as much a participant in the heady lifestyle she documented as she was a witness.

While Goldin’s life and career would be more than ample as the singular focus of a documentary, though, Poitras’ movie has an even bigger purpose in mind. In service of that goal, it interweaves its subject’s personal narrative around the saga of P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) — an organization she founded in 2017 after revealing she was in recovery from an addiction to prescribed opioids which almost led to her death from an overdose of fentanyl — and its high-profile protest campaign against the Sackler family, a billionaire pharmaceutical dynasty known internationally for its generous art patronage, who through its company Purdue Pharma were principle architects of America’s staggering opioid crisis. Moving back and forth between these two threads throughout the film, Poitras frames Goldin’s struggle to hold the Sacklers accountable within the context of the formative life experiences that shaped her into an activist, while making sure to give her subject due acknowledgment for the then-shocking celebration of queer life and sexuality in her work at a time when such things were still seen through the cold filter of anthropological distance or simply being denounced outright for violating social taboos.

As to that, many viewers will undoubtedly be drawn to “Bloodshed” by the prospect of revisiting the fabled era of Goldin’s early heyday through her up-close-and-personal pictures and footage, and they will not be disappointed. The film includes plenty of both, illuminated by the artist as she recounts the memories behind them; it offers poignant glimpses at a few future icons and fallen stars (lost-but-not-forgotten queer icons from her circle, like Cookie Mueller and David Wojnarowicz, are among those lovingly profiled by Goldin as she narrates her reminiscences), gives us an inside look at a seminal time and place in counterculture history, tantalizes us with provocative images of a sexually liberated lifestyle and throws us into the front lines of AIDS activism and the political battle over government funding of the NEA. For those more interested in direct biography, there is also copious material on Goldin’s

personal life. These sequences cover her memories of a dysfunctional childhood growing up with an older sister who would later die by suicide, her delinquent youth in and out of foster homes, her battery at the hands of a jealous lover, the horror of watching her community ravaged by AIDS while the rest of the world stood by and watched, and the crushing devastation of her opioid addiction.

Yet while these various parts of Goldin’s story may carry weight of their own, “Bloodshed” ultimately transfers it all into its saga about her effort to exact palpable retribution against the Sacklers — something her position as a world-renowned artist made her uniquely situated to do. Following her organization through a series of brilliantly orchestrated actions in which — borrowing a page from ACT UP — they staged dramatic protests at museums who had taken donations from the disgraced philanthropic dynasty, the movie deploys footage from these events to capture the raw sense of danger experienced within them with the kind of thrilling immediacy unachievable through journalistic observation or dramatic recreation. It’s this Robin Hood-esque story of taking back from the rich and amoral that drives Poitras’ movie and gives it an emotional structure, making it more than just another profile of an influential artist.

That doesn’t mean it relegates Goldin’s work as a photographer into the background. On the contrary, the bulk of the imagery we see comes from Goldin herself; even the footage of the protests was shot by P.A.I.N. for documentary purposes before Poitras had even become involved. Still, the filmmaker deserves full credit for assembling these photos and home movies into a finished product, and while it’s clear that “Bloodshed” is the result of intense collaboration between documentarian and subject, it’s also clear that her understanding of the material and her nuance in presenting it are essential elements in creating the cumulative power— and the surprising sense of urgency — that it delivers.

As for her subject, Goldin’s importance as both an artist and as activist come across plainly, but those were never in doubt. The film’s biggest surprise, perhaps, is the compassion visible at the heart of her activism, manifesting through her desire to use the privilege and influence her art has given her to help balance the scales between the powerful elite and the marginalized masses they exploit — a compassion reflected even in the revelation of her former life as a sex worker, which she discusses publicly for the first time here out of solidarity with other sex workers and to help reduce the stigma around sex work.

While juggling two separate-but-complementary stories might come at the risk of a disjointed focus, “Bloodshed,” thanks to Poitras’ seemingly symbiotic alignment with her subject’s aesthetic and sympathies, manages to weave its dual threads together in a way which not only makes sense, but uses them in concert to convey a fiercely radical worldview — one which resonates deeply in a contemporary social environment not too different from the one in which Goldin and her fellow sexual “outlaws” were flaunting their defiance of repressive, bigoted cultural norms not just in their work but in their everyday lives. Now, as then, a younger generation confronted with unbridled corporate greed and widening economic inequity, not to mention a conservative strategy of reverse cultural engineering through backlash and legislation, has been triggered to reevaluate its priorities.

It’s not surprising. After all, as Goldin says in the film, “When you think of the profit off people’s pain, you can only be furious about it.”

(Photo courtesy of NEON)

By TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER

Everybody has a story.

The experiences might be similar, but never the same. One person can relate their experiences, someone else can share, and a third person had totally a diff erent viewpoint, even if they were all in the same place at the same time. In “Waterfalls, The Moon and Sensible Shoes” by Jill P. Strachan, you’ll read about “One Lesbian Life.”

For most of her life, Strachan was a child of the world: Her father was a diplomat, and she spent most of her childhood in Pakistan, playing with the children of other diplomats, embassy staff , and workers. Strachan says they “amused themselves” with games they made up, and she liked to write in her diary.

When she was almost 12 years old, she was sent to a boarding school in Virginia, and while it was fun at fi rst, “the shine of being on my own wore off within one month,” she says. Getting along with teachers was not easy; “loneliness, diff erence, and angst” were also issues she had to tackle. She joined the basketball team, learning to her chagrin that the rules of play stateside were diff erent for boys and for girls.

Other things were diff erent, too: She began dating boys and suff ering heartbreak from it – until college, when a younger, “vibrant,” outspoken, brave and brassy girl asked Strachan if she’d ever “’thought about being a Lesbian.”

Strachan says she “sensed danger” and waived the girl away, but by 1974, the two of them were in a relationship that they had to keep hidden, furtively sneaking in and out of one another’s rooms to avoid detection.

“What we were doing was illegal and we, ourselves, were illegal for loving each other,” says Strachan. “To be together, we were forced to be clandestine, but this hardly diminished our individual desires.”

Everybody has a story.

Stepping back six decades or more, author Jill P. Strachan tells hers, through diary entries, letters, and notes. Anecdotal memories also feature strongly in “Waterfalls, The Moon and Sensible Shoes,” giving readers a large sense of what it was like for one woman to come to terms with her sexuality at a time when societal acceptance was nil.

While readers may struggle with the non-linear telling of this life story, Strachan entertains with her tales of travel and of meeting people who would impact her life. She writes of the men and women she loved, including men she helplessly watched die of AIDS; she also writes of the activists she knew, and of the partner she loves now.

“Waterfalls, The Moon and Sensible Shoes” is a widespread book that may be a challenge to follow but Strachan’s experiences can’t be missed. Find this book, because everyone has a story and this one’s fascinating.

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