TAKE ACTION: 2020 PFLAG INCLUSION GRANTS

In 2020, with the generous support of the Walmart Foundation and Bank of America, PFLAG National is offering $1,500 - $5,000 grants to support the work of chapters eager to develop resources, tools, and strategies for better serving marginalized and underserved communities, with a focus on communities of color and people with disabilities.

We will also be offering micro-grants of $500 to support chapters that would like to attend, participate in, and sponsor community-specific Pride celebrations (e.g. Black Pride, Latinx Pride, Diné Pride), events, and conferences. Application materials will be available in January and additional information will be available soon. In the meantime, if you have questions please contact Jean-Marie Navetta at [email protected].

FEDERAL MATTERS

Pentagon Ordered to Turn Over Documents Cited in Transgender Ban Decision. A federal judge ordered the Pentagon to turn over thousands of documents that the Defense Department has refused to release to the public but has said it used to justify its decision to ban most transgender people from military service.

Navy vessel named for gay rights icon Harvey Milk begins construction. The Navy began to construct the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet oiler that will provide fuel to ships and aircraft. The Navy announced in 2016 that Milk’s name would appear on the ship, along with other civil rights leaders, including abolitionist Sojourner Truth and suffragist Lucy Stone.

Proposal: 988 is the new national Suicide Prevention Hotline. The Federal Communications Commission issued a ‘Notice of Proposed Rulemaking’ commencing the requisite process to require American telecommunication carriers and and interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers to establish 988 as the new, nationwide, 3-digit number hotline for suicide prevention and mental health crisis.

Federal study confirms racial bias of many facial-recognition systems, casts doubt on their expanding use. Facial-recognition systems misidentified people of color more often than white people, a landmark federal study released on December 19th shows, casting new doubts on a rapidly expanding investigative technique widely used by law enforcement across the United States. Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search. Native Americans had the highest false-positive rate of all ethnicities, according to the study, which found that systems varied widely in their accuracy.

COURT MATTERS

SCOTUS decisions on three LGBTQ+ workplace discrimination cases coming soon--meanwhile, research bears out the harm of such discrimination. A research team at the What We Know Project, an initiative of Cornell University’s Center for the Study of Inequality, spent two years conducting the largest known review of the peer-reviewed scholarship on the relationship between anti-LGBT discrimination and health harms. They found a consistent conclusion that discrimination harms LGBTQ+ people in far-reaching and life-threatening ways.

Supreme Court Justices to Weigh Scope of Religious Defense in Job Bias Suits. While not LGBTQ+-focused, these remain worthy of our attention for any prospective impact on the LGBTQ+ cases in queue.

More than one-third of Trump Administration’s appeals judges have a record of anti-LGBTQ+ biases, according to this new report from our colleagues at Lambda Legal. "When it comes to judges, we're looking at 20, 30 or 40 years of impact that will extend far beyond however long this administration lasts," Sharon McGowan, Lambda Legal's legal director, told Newsweek. "There's a risk to the integrity of the courts, and the length of time that there is this potential for harm to be done is so long."

STATE MATTERS

Southern United States - LGBTQ+ people are poorer in the South than anywhere else in the U.S. A new report from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law showed that in a majority of U.S. states, LGBT people experience higher rates of poverty than cisgender straight people.

District of Columbia - Restaurant hit with death threats vows to continue drag events. The manager of the D.C. restaurant Taqueria del Barrio said the LGBTQ-friendly establishment will continue to hold events despite a barrage of threatening phone calls the restaurant received earlier in December.

Georgia - Georgia bill would make transgender youth compete as gender assumed at birth. A recently-elected lawmaker has filed legislation that would ban teams from using public facilities if transgender children are competing in single-gender sporting events that don’t align with their sex assigned and gender assumed at birth. Similar bills have been introduced in Tennessee and Washington state.

Illinois - Illinois State Prisons Must Overhaul Medical Care For Transgender Prisoners. A federal judge has ordered Illinois state prisons to immediately overhaul their policies for providing medical care to transgender inmates. Prisoners named in the lawsuit testified that current practices jeopardized their health and drove them to harm themselves. The ruling requires the department to update its policies to be consistent with internationally accepted standards of care, as defined by WPATH, for medically treating gender dysphoria.

Massachusetts - Fenway Hosts Session For State’s Commission On LGBT Aging. LGBTQIA+ older adults expressed concerns about growing older in Massachusetts at a listening session of the Massachusetts Commission on LGBT Aging. Questions and comments ranged from wondering whether staff at assisted living and nursing care facilities have the experience necessary to meet their healthcare needs to descriptions of what it’s like to deal with racism in addition to anti-LGBTQ+ bias.

New York - New York City’s first affordable LGBTQ-friendly senior housing complex has opened in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Dubbed “Stonewall House,” the building comprises 145 apartments that will be available to seniors 62 years and older who make 50 percent or less of the area median income, with 25 percent of the units set aside for formerly homeless tenants.

Ohio - Ohio University Names New LGBT Center Director. The university announced Micah McCarey as the new director. The LGBT Center has been without a permanent director since January when the university removed the former director from the position.

Oregon - Man Convicted of Hate Crime for Punching Transgender Woman. An Oregon man convicted of punching a transgender woman has been sentenced to probation. Dominick Gonzales, 38, changed his plea Friday and was convicted of first-degree bias crime for punching the woman in Northwest Portland in September, Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill said in a news release.

GLOBAL MATTERS

Canada - Canada moves to ban so-called conversion therapy. In a letter to the country’s justice secretary the prime minister stated that banning the controversial practice of attempting to forcibly change people’s gender identity or sexuality must be a “top priority.”

Colombia - Bogota’s First Woman And Lesbian Mayor-Elect Marries Girlfriend In Colombia. The couple’s union has become a rallying cause among supporters promoting LGBT rights in the traditionally conservative, Catholic country – though Colombia has permitted gay marriage since a landmark Constitutional Court ruling in 2016.

European Union - European Assembly “blasts” anti-LGBTQ+ zones in Poland. As reported in Policy Matters earlier this year, regional officials from Poland’s ruling party began declaring cities and even entire provinces in the country’s conservative southeast “LGBT-ideology free” zones. In response, the European Assembly voted through by 463 votes to 107 a motion calling on Warsaw to "revoke all resolutions" by dozens of municipal authorities targeting LGBTQ+ people.

Indonesia - A Test for Foreign Teachers in Indonesia: Are You Gay? The goal is to determine teachers’ sexual orientation and attitude toward gay rights under a 2015 government regulation that prohibits international schools from hiring foreign teachers who have “an indication of abnormal sexual behavior or orientation.”

Japan - Japan backs transgender people using the bathroom that matches their gender in landmark court case. It’s the first ruling in Japan in favour of a person suffering workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, said lawyers representing the woman, according to the Japan Times.

Kenya - How Kenya’s LGBT community celebrates Christmas: Queermas. For the Kenyan LGBT community, they celebrate Queermas to create a haven for each other in a country where it is illegal to be gay and to celebrate one another.

Ukraine - Ukrainian City Bans LGBT Marches. The local LGBTQ+ community had plans to hold an event on January 1 in the regional capital located 327 kilometers west of Kyiv. The ban, initiated by the head of the council’s budget committee, cited the Family Code as justification.

MEDIA MATTERS

Dwyane Wade speaks out--proudly--about his child. During an hour long guest spot on basketball podcast All the Smoke earlier this week, Wade spoke up about the conversations that have been happening surrounding his support of his 12-year-old, Zion, who attended Pride with stepmom Gabrielle Union this summer and was recently seen in a family Thanksgiving photo with painted nails.

Apple announces new documentary series Visible: Out on Television. This five-part series from filmmakers Ryan White and Jessica Hargrave, and executive produced by Wanda Sykes and Wilson Cruz, will investigate how the LGBTQ+ movement has shaped television. Combining archival footage with interviews with key players from the movement and the screen, the docuseries is narrated by Janet Mock, Margaret Cho, Asia Kate Dillon, Neil Patrick Harris and Lena Waithe. Each hour-long episode will explore themes such as invisibility, homophobia, the evolution of the LGBTQ+ character, and coming out in the television industry.

Transgender children sense their gender identities at young ages. Transgender children may start to identify with toys and clothes typical of their gender identity from a very young age, a recent study suggests. And their confidence in their gender identity is generally as strong as that of cisgender children, whose identity matches their sex assigned at birth, researchers found. For the study, researchers interviewed 317 transgender children, ages 3 to 12, and 189 of the children’s siblings. They also interview 316 cisgender kids.

Transgender person sends 4,000 Christmas cards to LGBTQ+ people disowned by their families. Last year, Ellis Roberts-Wright started the Rainbow Cards project to make sure LGBTQ+ people disowned by their families would still receive a Christmas card during the difficult time.

“I don’t believe that transgender people should be in the military.” In 2015, when I heard those words from my supervisor, I was a young technical sergeant in the United States Air Force, and a closeted transgender person. My boss, a master sergeant, went on to explain to me and a couple of other airmen in the office that transgender people had too many problems, that they had mental health issues, that there were too many logistical problems with dorms and open-bay showers and not being deployable. An op-ed in the NY Times (free sign-up available) by Alexandria Holder, a transgender technical sergeant in the United States Air Force.

Charlize Theron Talks Queerness In Her Films and Getting Her Daughter’s Pronouns Right. “My daughter’s story is really her story, and one day, if she chooses, she’ll tell her story. I feel like as her mother, for me, it was important to let the world know that I would appreciate it if they would use the right pronouns for her.”

Hallmark changes course after pulling wedding ads from registry site Zola showing brides kissing. The owner of the Hallmark Channel backtracked and apologized for the “hurt and disappointment it has unintentionally caused.” The company said it would reinstate the commercials and work to re-partner with Zola.