Artwork referring to abortion removed from Idaho public college exhibition



Ed Pilkington

THE GUARDIAN
Tue, March 7, 2023 

A public college in Idaho is coming under pressure to explain why it has removed from an upcoming exhibition in its Center for Arts & History several artworks dealing with reproductive health and abortion.

Related: California cuts ties with Walgreens after company limits access to abortion pills

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Coalition Against Censorship have jointly written to Lewis-Clark State College expressing “alarm” at the decision to remove several pieces.

Their letter says that the college’s response demonstrated the potential abuses of new laws that have come into effect in Idaho banning the use of public funds to “promote” or “counsel in favor” of pregnancy terminations.

Titled Unconditional Care, the show invites artists to reflect on some of the most pressing health issues today – from chronic illness to disability and pregnancy. The participants share the stories of people directly affected by the challenges.

Items that touch on abortion have been singled out for removal from the exhibition. Artists were told their work violated Idaho state law that kicked in after the US supreme court overturned the right to an abortion enshrined in Roe v Wade.

Scarlet Kim, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s speech, privacy and technology project, said that the removal of works of art silenced the voices of women.

“It jeopardizes a bedrock first amendment principle that the state refrain from interfering with expressive activity because it disagrees with a particular point of view,” Kim said.

Monitors of free speech have warned that the supreme court’s eradication of federal abortion protections would soon make itself felt within the cultural realm through censorship. Thirteen states, including Idaho, have effectively banned abortion.

Related: South Carolina woman arrested for allegedly using pills to end pregnancy

Jeremy Young, Pen America’s senior manager for free expression and education, said that abortion bans were inevitably spawning bans on speech – especially in educational environments.

“You cannot ban abortion without banning speech about abortion, as Lewis-Clark students are now discovering,” he said.

Six artworks have been removed from the Unconditional Care exhibition at the instruction of senior college administrators, and a seventh has been edited to remove abortion references. Four of the works are videos and audio recordings created by a New York-based artist, Lydia Nobles, as part of a series named As I Sit Waiting.

It highlights the stories of women who have had abortions or were forced to carry pregnancies to term.

Katrina Majkut, an artist who was commissioned to curate the Lewis-Clark exhibition, also had one of her own artworks removed. Titled Medical Abortion Pills, it consists of embroidered images of the medical abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol.

College officials objected to the descriptive label that went alongside the artwork which gave basic and accurate facts about the abortion pill, as well as factual information on Idaho’s abortion laws in a “post-Roe America”. Majkut said the administrators would not let her use the phrase “post-Roe”.

It scares me. It’s frightening where we are going in this country

Artist Michelle Hartney

“I did try to have some alternative stand-in, such as a curtain placed over the work or a sign that said ‘Artwork has been removed in accordance with law’, but that was all rejected too.”

The artist added that she has shown the same body of work in more than 25 college galleries across the country, “and have never been censored or had an issue of any kind”. She said that the show she had curated was not protest art, and it was educational rather than inflammatory.

“Censorship of art is never OK. I see this as censorship of art, as well as suppression of academic learning.”

Michelle Hartney, a Chicago-based artist, also had a piece removed from her series Unplanned Parenthood which focuses on the 250,000 mothers who wrote to the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, in the 1920s. The censored item incorporated one of those original handwritten letters.

“It was really mild,” Hartney said. “It was simply a woman saying she had had an abortion.”

Asked for her response to the decision to remove the work, Hartney said: “It scares me. It’s frightening where we are going in this country.”

Lewis-Clark State College is based in Lewiston, Idaho, and has about 3,600 students. The Guardian invited the institution to explain why it had opted to censor the show, and a spokesperson replied that “after obtaining legal advice, per Idaho Code Section 18-8705, some of the proposed exhibits could not be included in the exhibition”.

Section 18-8705 is part of the No Public Funds for Abortion Act that was passed by Idaho’s Republican legislature in 2021, months after the US supreme court overturned the right to an abortion. The law forbids public entities from contracting or participating in any commercial transaction involving an abortion provider or affiliate, and creates a “gag rule” that bans individual public employees from counselling in favor of a pregnancy termination or referring anyone to an abortion clinic.

The prohibition has spread jitters across the state, especially in public colleges and universities. Last September the general counsel of the University of Idaho sent all its staff – including student workers – a lengthy memo that told them to remain “neutral” over abortion and “proceed cautiously at any time that a discussion moves in the direction of reproductive health”.

The memo reached the attention of Joe Biden in the White House. “Folks, what century are we in?” the US president said when he learned of the university’s instructions.

Last week a billboard truck displaying advice on how to access abortion pills that was being driven through the streets of Boise, Idaho, by the nonprofit Mayday Health was ordered to leave the city by police officers. The group said it was a violation of its basic constitutional rights.

Idaho College Pulls 6 Abortion-Related Artworks from Exhibit, Citing State Law

Susan Rinkunas
Tue, March 7, 2023 

Photo: Getty (Getty Images)

Update March 7, 2023: Lewis-Clark State College also censored art from the exhibit’s curator Katrina Majkut—a cross stitch of abortion pills with a label that explained the efficacy and use statistics for the pills. A banned letter from Michelle Hartney makes for a total of six works excluded. “I did try to have some alternative stand-in, such as a curtain placed over the work or a sign that said ‘Artwork has been removed in accordance with law’, but that was all rejected too.” Majkut told The Guardian. “Censorship of art is never OK. I see this as censorship of art, as well as suppression of academic learning.”

A college in Idaho reportedly pulled artwork from an on-campus exhibit because it was about abortion, disingenuously citing a 2021 state law that bans public funding from being used to “promote” abortion in any way.

Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston opened an exhibition titled Unconditional Care at its Center for Arts & History on Friday. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, an exhibit curator invited New York-based artist Lydia Nobles to display work from her abortion-related series titled As I Sit Waiting. Nobles writes on her site that she “collected narratives of people’s experiences with abortion access or lack thereof to create a sculpture in honor of them,” and she was set to display three videos and one audio recording of her interviews.

The ACLU said the curator viewed and vetted the works and was discussing installation with Nobles. But then a few days before the opening, the school informed Nobles that her work would no longer be in the exhibit because of the school’s interpretation of the state No Public Funds for Abortion Act (NPFAA), passed in 2021.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Lewis-Clark State College told Jezebel that “After obtaining legal advice, per Idaho Code Section 18-8705, some of the proposed exhibits could not be included in the exhibition.” That’s the NPFAA.

The ACLU, the ACLU of Idaho, and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) sent a letter to the school on Friday condemning the move and urging the school to show the works. Scarlet Kim, a staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project said in a statement, “This decision silences their voices and deprives the public of a critical opportunity to engage in a broader conversation about these important topics. It jeopardizes a bedrock First Amendment principle that the state refrain from interfering with expressive activity because it disagrees with a particular point of view.”

Nobles told Jezebel in a statement that “As I Sit Waiting shares diverse experiences around reproductive rights and pregnancy. I seek to bring real life accounts to the forefront to foster empathy and listening. My work critiques the systems and structures that make talking about these everyday healthcare topics stigmatizing or unsafe. These kinds of critical conversations are especially important in learning institutions where students are formulating their worldviews based on their identities and experiences.”

This isn’t the first time Idaho schools have made news for their overly cautious interpretation of the NPFAA. In September, lawyers for both Boise State University and the University of Idaho cited the law when they instructed staff not to refer students for abortion or emergency contraception, while IU went further to ban referrals for birth control—including condoms.

The art exhibit news comes amid a broader crackdown on abortion-related speech. Last week, lawmakers in Texas and Iowa introduced bills that would ban internet service providers from hosting web sites that provide information about abortion pills.

We await an impassioned defense from the free speech brigade. *Taps earpiece* What’s that—oh, they only care about freedom to espouse conservative views? Noted.

Jezebel

Idaho’s abortion gag law imposes a regime of censorship. Now artwork is being removed | Opinion


Darin Oswald/doswald@idahostatesman.com

The Editorial Board
Tue, March 7, 2023 

The rising wave of censorship in Idaho has now removed items from an art exhibition, as The Guardian reported Tuesday. Lewis-Clark State College is hosting an exhibition of artworks on health care issues. But artworks dealing with the subject of abortion were removed for fear they would violate the state’s abortion gag rule, contained in the 2021 No Public Funds for Abortion Act.

The artworks you cannot see were in no way graphic or obscene. They did not even encourage women to seek abortions. They simply acknowledged the existence of abortion.

But Idaho’s laws are so vague and poorly written that the college can’t be sure that a touring art installation wouldn’t violate them. So six pieces of art were removed from the show. The ACLU and the National Coalition Against Censorship have written to the college, urging it to reconsider its decision.

It’s understandable that the college would be afraid. Idaho’s abortion gag rule treats “promoting abortion” — a vague, undefined category — as a misuse of public funds. At a minimum, that could mean college officers who exhibited the works potentially face a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. If more than $300 were spent on the art show, it’s conceivable they could face 14 years in prison.

The point of imposing penalties like that on speech is to impose fear. And the point of fear is to impose silence. If it’s unclear whether an installation of stories from women who have had an abortion is forbidden or not, better not to risk it.

And there’s another thing that’s spreading such fear: an increasing knowledge that the Idaho Legislature will try to hurt you if you make it mad. That its Republican majority is often vengeful, and that it treats neither the Idaho nor U.S. Constitution — nor even supposed beliefs about the proper role of government — as a serious constraint upon it.

The same year the Legislature passed the No Public Funds for Abortion Act, they cut universities’ budgets in retaliation for teaching things that some in the Republican majority did not like.

An art show that discusses abortion, among other health care topics? Don’t do it, they might chop your budget. Imagine what might happen if a political scientist publishes work on the rise of far-right political extremism in Idaho.

This is the message Idaho’s public universities have already received, and we can see it in their actions.

And so a regime of censorship has been achieved — not one that is theoretical, but one that has already been in effect for years.

The safest path is clear:

Don’t talk about slavery.

Don’t talk about the people who were killed to make room for colonization.

Don’t talk about abuses of police authority.

Don’t talk about the 144 years for which women were denied the vote.

Don’t talk about abortion.

There is no similar regime of censorship on the other side. Professor Scott Yenor of Boise State University has said vile things about women repeatedly, things so offensive they enraged most people. He has not lost his job.

And there was never any worry that Boise State University’s budget would be cut because Yenor worked there.

Lawmakers of good faith need to reckon seriously with what has happened. You are the proprietors of a regime of censorship. Whether you helped build it or not, it is your job to tear it down.

And Idaho’s universities should put up stiffer resistance. Universities are supposed to be havens for free intellectual inquiry. That requires fighting back on efforts to restrict that freedom.

“Every person may freely speak, write and publish on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty,” reads the Idaho Constitution.

And if some lawmakers won’t heed those words on their own, it’s time for a court to remind them.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, and newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser.

'We need to get Monday back' and get people in the office earlier in the week, says the CEO of the world's largest insurance marketplace

Huileng Tan
Thu, March 9, 2023 

Lloyd's of London CEO John Neal has been vocal about getting workers back to the office.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Lloyd's of London CEO says people are mostly going back to the office Tuesday to Thursday, per FT.

"We need to get Monday back," CEO John Neal told the Financial Times.

Many corporate leaders are trying to get employees back to the office after three years of pandemic-induced remote work.

Corporate leaders who are desperately trying to get their employees back to the office are finding that it's still hard to get people to show up on Mondays.

"Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are busy," John Neal, CEO of the world's largest insurance marketplace Lloyd's of London, told the Financial Times in an interview published Wednesday.
"We need to get Monday back," Neal told the media outlet, summing up a challenge in getting employees back to the office at the start of the week.

He was talking about getting brokers and underwriters back on Lloyd's trading floor — where deals for specialist insurance policies — such as marine insurance and body parts insurance — are struck.

It's not the first time Neal is calling for a return to the office after employees were in a prolonged remote working situation during the pandemic.

"I think it's massively important for younger workers to experience in-person trading," Neal had told The Telegraph in September 2021. "We have the best talent in the world in London in the insurance industry, but we need to be with that talent to help develop them so the next generation can be better than my generation. We have a responsibility to the next generation," he added, per the UK-based newspaper.

Corporate leaders across the board are now pushing back against remote work, with some echoing Neal's sentiment that the arrangement isn't ideal for the development of young workers, because they hurt their opportunities for learning, socializing, and networking.

David Solomon, Goldman Sachs CEO, who once called remote work "an aberration," told CNBC in October 2022 it was especially important for younger employees to show up in the office. "We have an organization where 50% of the people are in their 20s. They come to Goldman Sachs to learn, to meet people, to interact," he told the broadcaster.

"It doesn't work for young kids, it doesn't work for spontaneity, it doesn't really work for management," JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC's Squawk Box on January 19.

Other high-profile executives who want their employees back in the office include Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

While Lloyd's Neal may have been referring to employees in the UK, the experience across the Atlantic is similar.

Office occupancy across 10 metro cities in the US peaked at an average of 58% on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and was just over 50% on Thursdays in February — far leading the occupancy rates of 46% and about 30% for Mondays and Fridays, Kastle Systems, an office security firm, said in a March 6 report.

Lloyd's of London did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

What is the meaning of woke? How the GOP is driving politics of fear ahead of 2024



Mabinty Quarshie, USA TODAY
Thu, March 9, 2023 

During last week's Conservative Political Action Conference, speaker after speaker attacked "woke" ideology in their speeches to conservative activists.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley decried wokeness as "a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down."

"I traveled the country calling out the woke-industrial-complex in America,” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy bragged.

Elsewhere, Republicans have declared war on "woke capitalism” and even introduced legislation like the "Stop WOKE Act," in Florida, an acronym for Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees.

Stay in the conversation: Sign up for the OnPolitics newsletter

The uptick on excoriating "woke " ideology has increased in recent years among politicians including former President Donald Trump, as Americans across the nation battle over diversity, inclusion and equity efforts in the workforce, public schools and in legislation.

But what is "woke"? And what do the GOP attacks mean for 2024?

A GOP war on 'woke'?: Most Americans view the term as a positive, USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds
What does being woke mean?

Among conservative lawmakers, there is no consensus on what it means to be woke.

Some have used it to attack trans and gay rights, critical race theory – legal theory that examines systemic racism as a part of American institutions – and the teachings of the New York Times' 1619 project in public schools.

"If you ask people what woke is, I think what they mean is they want to stand against people who are engaging in some type of advocacy for marginalized people," said Andra Gillespie, political scientist at Emory University.

"It's kind of this lumping together of anybody whose views could be construed as being progressive on issues related to identity and civil rights."

At CPAC last week, for example, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles called for the eradication of "transgenderism."

Woke capitalism: Why Republicans aren't winning over investors in war against ESG and 'woke' big business

But Black Americans have used woke since at least the early-to-mid 20th century to mean being alert to racial and social injustice. As the Black Lives Matter movement began after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, and grew, "woke" expanded outside of Black communities into the public lexicon.
What about 'stay woke'?

"Woke" is now being appropriated in ways far from its original definition.

"To me, it's not just woke. It's 'stay woke,'" said Terri Givens, a political science professor at McGill University. "The reason we have to 'stay woke' is because of exactly what these people are doing right now, which is finding very insidious ways to undercut our rights."

Givens called the attacks on wokeism "a full-on dog whistle" and pointed to attempts to limit the right to vote, curtail reproductive and abortion rights and ban inclusive education in schools as examples of the backlash against Black and brown civil rights.

"Learning history is not about wokeism," Given said.
The backlash to wokeness

Political experts said the backlash to wokeism greatly increased after the 2020 worldwide protests against the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor's killing.

Conservatives now use the term as an attack against cancel culture, political correctness and racial justice initiatives.

"What they're trying to do is make the term a pejorative," said Kendra Cotton, chief operating officer of New Georgia Project, a progressive-leaning voting rights group.

As more marginalized groups are elected into office and exercising their voting power during elections, it can make some Americans afraid, said Cotton.

GOP wins House majority: Republicans send a message to 'woke' businesses— get out of politics

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible GOP presidential candidate, has built a persona crusading against wokeness. In addition to championing the Stop WOKE Act, he has stated that the Sunshine state is "where woke goes to die."

Tehama Lopez Bunyas, a political scientist at George Mason University and co-author of the book "Stay Woke: A People's Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter," said the legislation is "perhaps the most explicit way we see the co-optation of the term 'woke' today."

“Right now, we're seeing racially conservative pundits and politicians positioning themselves as adversaries of the multiracial Black Lives Matter movement," said Lopez Bunyas. "One of the rhetorical tools they are using is the maligning of a term that has been in use by Black people and in Black politics for well over a hundred years."
Have the anti-woke attacks been successful?

Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin cruised to victory in 2021 riding a wave of parental anger over teaching inclusive history in public schools.

Keneshia Grant, a political scientist at Howard University, said Youngkin's success was part of an intentional pushback against marginalized communities, which includes misunderstanding terms like woke, critical race theory, and LGBTQ rights.

"He ends up successfully using the fear that people have about teaching students Black history or American history through the guise of CRT and successfully uses that to motivate a base," Grant said. "They are doing this because they think it w

ill help them win. And we have evidence that sometimes it actually does help them win."

Americans divided on what 'woke' means

Americans are not all in agreement on what exactly woke means.

A new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll released Wednesday found that 56% of Americans said woke means "to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices."

Yet 39% of those surveyed agree with the Republican definition,"to be overly politically correct and police others' words."

The war on 'woke': Senate blocks Biden ESG investing rule, Biden vows to veto

"Racial resentment and grievance are certainly one of those things that have been very effectively used to mobilize a certain segment of the Republican population for a long time," said Gillespie.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What does 'woke' mean? Republicans bashing 'wokeness' ahead of 2024

Michigan Lawmakers OK LGBTQ+ Rights Bill; Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to Sign

Trudy Ring
Wed, March 8, 2023 

​Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Michigan has finally said yes to banning anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and it will be the 22nd state to do so through legislation.

The Michigan House of Representatives Wednesday approved a bill expanding the state’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression, Bridge Michigan reports. The act, first adopted in 1976, already banned discrimination based on race, religion, sex, and a variety of other factors.

The Michigan Senate had passed the bill last week, but it needs to take one more action, after which it the measure will go to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, who was promised to sign it into law. “This is about doing the right thing, and it is just good economics,” Whitmer said in a statement, according to Bridge Michigan. “Bigotry is bad for business, and ensuring these protections will build on our reputation as a beacon of opportunity where anyone can succeed.”

The vote was 64-45, with eight Republicans joining Democrats. The new protections will apply to employment, housing, and public accommodations.

Court decisions and interpretations of the Elliott-Larsen Act have held that sexual orientation and gender identity/expression are already covered, but LGBTQ+ advocates and allies said it’s important to write that into the law to keep rights from being rescinded by courts going forward. Legislators have been trying to amend the act for years, and they succeeded now that both the House and Senate have Democratic majorities.

Amending the law “is the most direct way we can ensure all Michiganders know what protections they have,” said Democratic Rep. Laurie Pohtusky, as reported by Bridge Michigan. It will shield their rights from “fickle political winds,” added Pohtusky, Michigan’s first out queer female legislator.

Some Republicans had sought to add religious exemptions to the bill, but those attempts failed. Democrats pointed out that the Elliott-Larsen Act already bans discrimination based on religion.

“No one is asking for a fundamental shift in religious tolerance,” Pohutsky said. “All we’re asking is for the ability to live and work in our state with the same humanity and protections as every other Michigander.”

The audience in the House gallery applauded after the bill passed. Attorney General Dana Nessel, Michigan’s first out gay statewide official, was present on the House floor, as was Sen. Jeremy Moss, the gay legislator who sponsored the bill in the Senate.

LGBTQ+ groups offered praise. “LGBTQ people — like all people — deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and to live life free from discrimination. By codifying nondiscrimination protections into state law, Michigan brings us one step closer to creating a society where LGBTQ young people never have to fear being turned away from a business or told they cannot participate in an activity or enter a public space just because of who they are or who they love,” Gwen Stembridge, advocacy campaign manager for the Trevor Project, said in a press release. “We thank and honor the years of hard work of our fellow advocates, community leaders, and partners like Equality Michigan, who led the way to where we are today. Amid the ongoing legislative attacks on LGBTQ communities, especially trans youth, this proactive law is a beacon of hope and optimism.”

“Today is a big step for equality and sends a powerful message to LGBTQ+ Michiganders that discrimination has no home in our state,” added Erin Knott, executive director of Equality Michigan. “Michigan now joins alongside 21 other states who have sent this same message to their own LGBTQ communities and codified these protections into law. Today’s victory would not have been possible without years of hard work from generations of courageous leaders. We are witnessing a sea change toward equality, bringing us closer to a future where everyone is treated equally under the law, no matter our gender, the color of our skin, how we worship, or who we love.”

Ugandan bill threatens jail for saying you're gay


Patience Atuhaire - BBC News, Kampala
Thu, March 9, 2023 

Uganda's small LGBTQ+ community has repeatedly complained of discrimination

Uganda's parliament is set to consider a draft law that criminalises anyone identifying as LGBTQ+, and threatens them with 10 years in jail.

The bill also threatens landlords who rent premises to gay people with a prison sentence.

Speaker Annet Anita Among used homophobic language as she addressed lawmakers after the bill was tabled.

It is the latest sign of rising homophobia in a country where homosexual acts are already illegal.

Campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it believed that if the law was passed, Uganda would be the only African country to criminalise those who simply identify as LGBTQ+.

The proposed law would also ban the funding or promotion of LGBTQ+ activities.

It also prescribes a 10-year jail term for anyone who engages in a same sex relationship or marriage. Consent will not be a defence.

Anyone convicted of gay sex with a minor would also be jailed for 10 years.

The bill was tabled by opposition MP Asuman Basalirwa, and it is unclear whether President Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) - which has a majority in parliament - will back the bill.

However, Mr Museveni has been speaking out against homosexuality recently, and the speaker is a member of the NRM.

She used a derogatory word to describe gay people, while saying they would be allowed to express their views in "public hearings" on the proposed legislation.

Politicians and others behind the bill have accused gay rights groups of recruiting and grooming children, and luring some with money or scholarships. But they have not presented any evidence to back up the claims.

LGBTQ+ activist Frank Mugisha, who lives in Uganda, said people were being "indoctrinated" into believing that gay rights were a threat to African values, and was "some big monster" that was "coming from the West".

"We've registered so many cases of violations [against the LGBTQ+ community]. We've seen so many cases of arrest, blackmail and extortion so this is going to increase," the activist said.

In 2014, Uganda's constitutional court nullified the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which had toughened laws against the LGBTQ+ community.

It included making it illegal to promote and fund LGBTQ+ groups and activities, as well as reiterating that homosexual acts should be punished by life imprisonment.

The court ruled that the legislation be revoked because it had been passed by parliament without the required quorum. The law had been widely condemned by Western countries.

The punishment of life imprisonment for same-sex relations already exists in the country's penal code. It is not clear if the proposed new legislation would override this.

Same-sex relations are banned in about 30 African countries, where many people uphold conservative religious and social values.

Uganda considers bill to criminalise identifying as LGBTQ


2022 San Francisco Pride parade

Thu, March 9, 2023 at 7:09 AM MST·2 min read

KAMPALA (Reuters) -Uganda's parliament on Thursday took up a bill that would criminalise identifying as LGBTQ, with lawmakers saying the current ban on same-sex relations does not go far enough.

Anti-LGBTQ sentiment is deeply entrenched in the highly conservative and religious East African nation, with same-sex relations punishable by up to life in prison.

More than 30 African countries ban same-sex relations, but Uganda's law, if passed, would appear to be the first to criminalise merely identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ), according to Human Rights Watch.

The proposed Ugandan law was introduced as a private lawmaker's bill and aims to allow the country to fight "threats to the traditional, heterosexual family", according to a copy seen by Reuters.

It punishes with up to 10 years in prison any person who "holds out as a lesbian, gay, transgender, a queer or any other sexual or gender identity that is contrary to the binary categories of male and female".

It also criminalises the "promotion" of homosexuality and "abetting" and "conspiring" to engage in same-sex relations.

The law is similar in some ways to a law passed in 2013 that stiffened some penalties and criminalised lesbianism. It drew widespread international condemnation before it was struck down by a domestic court on procedural grounds.

"One of the most extreme features of this new bill is that it criminalizes people simply for being who they are as well as further infringing on the rights to privacy, and freedoms of expression and association that are already compromised in Uganda,” said Oryem Nyeko, Uganda researcher at Human Rights Watch.

After the new bill was read in parliament, Speaker Anita Among sent it to a committee for scrutiny and public hearings before it is brought back to the House for debate and a vote.

Among urged members of parliament to reject intimidation, referencing reported threats by some Western countries to impose travel bans against those involved in passing the law.

"This business of intimidating that 'you will not go to America', what is America?" she said.

An investigation by a parliamentary committee ordered in January into reports of alleged promotion of homosexuality in schools has already sparked a wave of discrimination and violence against members of the LGBTQ community, activists say.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by George Obulutsa, Hereward Holland and Shounak Dasgupta)

CPAC 2023 Was a Hatefest Against Transgender People

Trudy Ring
Wed, March 8, 2023 

From left: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, and Michael Knowles

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference is always a hatefest, but this year it was particularly so, and the hate was directed mostly at transgender people.

At this past weekend’s event, right-wing commentator Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire said that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely” and that it would be “for the good of society.” The reliably outrageous Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely claimed that puberty blockers cause permanent damage and promised to once again introduce legislation to criminalize the provision of gender-affirming care to minors. And none other than Donald Trump boasted of banning “transgender insanity” from the U.S. military.

“It is a sign of their disconnection from reality that these extremist politicians and activists spent their weekend at CPAC spreading hateful and discriminatory transphobic rhetoric rather than tackling any real issues facing our country,” Geoff Wetrosky, national campaign director for the Human Rights Campaign, said in a press release. “Their vile, anti-trans rhetoric does not resonate with the majority of Americans who are interested in solutions, not slander. But that doesn’t mean their transphobic hate and propaganda won’t cause harm. Their words rile up far-right extremists resulting in more stigma, discrimination and violence against LGBTQ+ people. The rights and very existence of trans people are not up for debate. We will keep fighting back until we are all treated equally, with dignity and respect.”

HRC has assembled a list of anti-trans comments from CPAC, culled from media coverage of the event. Here’s a selection of them, supplemented by The Advocate’s research.

Knowles wasn’t the only one to lambaste “transgenderism,” which many trans people consider an offensive term, as it is used to “reduce their humanity to a ‘condition,’” as the LGBTQ+ Twitter account Queer Insider explained. Right-wing activist Candace Owens used the term as well, saying, “There is no middle ground on transgenderism” and that “if you don’t have the courage to say what needs to be said, we truly don’t need you,” as reported by The Independent.

Knowles objected to coverage of his talk and claimed eliminating “transgenderism” doesn’t mean eliminating trans people — he simply denies they exist. “Saturday does not mark the first time Knowles has used this anti-transgender rhetoric,” The Daily Beast noted. “Just last week, Knowles responded to backlash he faced for a similar transphobic comment calling for a ban on ‘transgenderism.’ ‘I don’t know how you could have a genocide of transgender people because genocide refers to genes, it refers to genetics, it refers to biology,’ Knowles said on The Michael Knowles Show. ‘And the whole point of transgenderism is that it has nothing to do with biology.’ ‘Nobody’s calling to exterminate anybody because the other problem with that statement is that transgender people is not a real ontological category,’ he added. ‘It’s not a legitimate category of being.’”

He groused on Twitter about a Rolling Stone headline that read, “CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgender People to Be ‘Eradicated,’” so the publication changed it to “CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgenderism to Be ‘Eradicated.’” Rolling Stone drew some criticism, then changed the head again, to “CPAC Speaker Calls for Eradication of ‘Transgenderism’ — and Somehow Claims He’s Not Calling for Elimination of Transgender People.”

There was lots more hateful rhetoric being tossed around. Former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka used the same terminology as his old boss in discussing trans people. He “ranted about ‘mutilating boys and girls’ and ‘sacrificing them on the altar of their transgender insanity,’” according to The Independent.

Anti-trans forces often call gender-affirming care “mutilation.” Greene, a Republican member of the U.S. House, invoked this in claiming that social media influences young people to be transgender. “These are kids who are confused about who they are and they are confused about who they are because of what they are seeing on the internet, what they see on social media, and they are also confused, many of them, because these victims of this billion-dollar industry that mutilates the genitals of children, many of these victims have diagnoses of autism, mental illness, they have depression, anxiety, psychosis,” she said in a speech broadcast on C-SPAN. In truth, genital surgery is not recommended for minors, and when adults have it, they see it as a life-enhancing improvement, not mutilation.

She also said, “These boys think they can become girls and the girls think they can become boys, but what’s happening to them is they are given puberty blockers that actually chemically castrates them, makes them sterile.” But scientists that that’s not so. “Puberty blockers are falsely claimed to cause infertility and to be irreversible, despite no substantiated evidence,” The Lancet, a well-regarded medical journal, noted in 2021.

Greene further vowed to introduce “a bill called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act that would criminalise doing ‘anything to do with gender-affirming care’ for minors,” according to The Independent. She introduced a bill with the same title last year, and it went nowhere before the congressional session ended. The House had a Democratic majority then; it now has a Republican majority, but the Senate is still in Democratic hands, so the bill has little chance of going to President Joe Biden, who would undoubtedly veto it anyway.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who’s challenging Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — Trump remained the favorite of CPAC attendees in the conference’s straw poll — claimed awareness of trans identity is undermining the military. “We need our military to be stronger than ever,” she said in a talk carried on C-SPAN. “But what does Joe Biden have our troops doing? Taking gender pronoun classes. I am the wife of a combat veteran and that disgusts me. Our troops already know the difference between men and women. They also know that we need a different commander in chief. It’s not just our military. On Biden and Harris’s watch, this woke self-loathing has swept our country. It’s in the classroom, the boardroom, and the bathrooms of government.”

Other speakers pushed the narrative that support for trans people is bad for women, and they took time to denounce trans women athletes. “There's this systemic eradication of women that is being attempted by the left, and it’s more than sports,” Riley Gaines, who tied trans woman Lia Thomas in the NCAA swimming championships last year, told the Washington Examiner during an interview at CPAC. Gaines, who now works for the Independent Women’s Forum, also said, “These large organizations and large companies, these woke companies, continually make the claims that men make the best women.”

In addition to doing the interview, she spoke on a CPAC panel, where she said, “Man and woman is the sheer essence of humanity, and these people are trying to blur that line. I don’t know if I was just naive before or if this is something that has just been totally sprung on us, but it’s an attack on women.”

Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, a former college football coach, got in digs at trans athletes and education about race and gender. “All this woke, transgender athletes, CRT, 1619, they don’t teach reading, writing, or arithmetic,” he said on a panel called “Sacking the Woke Playbook,” as reported by The Independent, referring to critical race theory and The 1619 Project. He called trans girls “biological boys” and said they shouldn’t be permitted in school sports. “Sports have built this country,” he said.

“The senator also falsely claimed,” The Independent noted, “that ‘half the kids when they graduate they can’t read their diploma’ as he condemned ‘the progressives, the crazies’ who are ‘trying to change family, change things that are our moral values.’”

Opinion: What the CPAC speaker meant when he said 'transgenderism must be eradicated'

Diana Goetsch
Wed, March 8, 2023 

Michael Knowles on a TV set in 2022. At CPAC last weekend, Knowles said that in "dealing with transgenderism" it was "all or nothing." (Jason Davis / Getty Images)

When far-right commentator Michael Knowles announced from the Conservative Political Action Conference stage this past weekend that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely,” Rolling Stone ran the headline “CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgender People to Be Eradicated,” under the banner GENOCIDAL MANIA. But hours later, after Knowles threatened multiple news outlets with libel suits, Rolling Stone editors changed that headline to “CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgenderism to Be Eradicated,” and put “GENOCIDAL” in scare quotes — which is fitting because editors are scared of lawsuits.

Knowles pretends to claim transgenderism and transgender people are two different things, and he was careful to use the “ism.” He said, “There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing.”

Let’s not overthink this. Had he said, “Judaism must be eradicated,” or had he proclaimed an “all or nothing” solution for homosexuality, nobody would mistake the murderous intent of such a message. The story would have earned a front page headline in every major newspaper in the U.S. and beyond. (Which I hope will someday be the case when it comes to threats of trans genocide from a major political party.)

For the record, trans people have existed throughout history in every culture, which has been exhaustively documented. By turning trans existence into an ism, conservatives are attempting to misrepresent a struggle for equality as a culture war.

The campaign against Black history is another attempt to turn one group’s existence into an ism. Critical race theory is taught as an upper-level elective in some law schools, not to children in public schools. In reality, when Florida’s Ron DeSantis and other Republican governors ban “CRT” they are banning the teaching of basic historical facts — such as the details of slavery, the events leading to the Civil War, what happened during Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement. (You know, the kinds of things on posters during Black History Month.)

The state of Florida has also banned discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity through the third grade, and “inappropriate” instruction beyond that — lest queer and trans children feel safe enough to come out. When DeSantis says Florida is where “woke goes to die,” he’s going after people. Again, the propaganda strategy is to turn some humans into a problematic idea — “wokeism” — and then eradicate the ism.

It’s also the legal strategy. While the gaslit GOP base is attacking drag queens, trans people and LGBTQ nightclubs, its leaders are introducing anti-trans bills in state legislatures at a dizzying pace — more than 410 in the first three months of 2023, according to the Human Rights Campaign — targeting trans people, particularly trans kids.

It’s worth remembering that during the first six years of Hitler’s dictatorship more than 400 anti-Jewish decrees and regulations were issued, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia. Many were national laws, “but state, regional, and municipal officials, acting on their own initiatives, also promulgated a barrage of exclusionary decrees in their own communities.” Was the legislation “anti-Jewish” or “anti-Jew”? Does it matter, given what happened next?

Here’s a piece of good news: That Rolling Stone headline now reads, “CPAC Speaker Calls for Eradication of ‘Transgenderism’ — and Somehow Claims He’s Not Calling for Elimination of Transgender People.” The updated story features Erin Reed, a trans writer and legislative researcher — and needless to say the scare quotes are where they belong, around the “ism.”

Here’s one ism we ought to be citing: fascism. We should have been using it for years to describe what’s transpiring, yet few people in the national media choose it, opting instead for blunted substitutes like “anti-democratic” or “extremism” or “ultra-MAGA.” I’m wondering how the majority of Americans can see clearly where things stand when news sources employ mealy-mouthed euphemisms instead of the right word: fascism.

Maybe national media outlets are cautious about deploying this ism, lest they be branded extreme, or lose audience. Or maybe they are saving it for the right moment, lest they become the boy who cried wolf. If so, now is the time. When a political party calls for the eradication of a group of people, that’s fascism.

Diana Goetsch is the author of the memoir “This Body I Wore,” a 2022 best nonfiction selection of the Washington Post.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Ted Cruz keeps dodging on whether he agrees with his former podcast co-host's call to eradicate 'transgenderism'


Bryan Metzger
Tue, March 7, 2023 

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and conservative personality Michael Knowles.

Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images; Jason Davis/Getty Images

Conservative personality Michael Knowles called for the eradication of "transgenderism" in a CPAC speech.

Knowles previously co-hosted a podcast with Ted Cruz for nearly two years.

Cruz repeatedly refused to say whether he agrees with that idea, calling it "silly politics."

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas repeatedly refused to say whether he agrees with his former podcast co-host that "transgenderism" must be "eradicated."

"I think the extreme left's ideology has been very harmful," Cruz initially told Insider on Tuesday before boarding an elevator in the Capitol building.

Minutes later, Insider posed the same question to Cruz again, prompting him to dismiss the question as "silly politics."

"I get that you have a story you want to write," Cruz told Insider. "But let me tell you this: when you write a story about the young children who have their genitals mutilated, and they're rendered permanently sterile from radicals who removed their reproductive organs in the interest of radical ideology, then I'm happy to answer your other questions."

"But until you write that story, it's just silly politics that you're playing," he added.

In a Saturday speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, conservative media personality Michael Knowles — who previously co-hosted a podcast with Cruz for nearly two years — called for the eradication of what he describes as "transgenderism," arguing that it "isn't true."

"There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism — it's all or nothing," said Knowles, who co-hosted "Verdict with Ted Cruz" from the show's inception in January 2020 until it was purchased by iHeartMedia in October 2022. "For the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely."

"Transgenderism" is itself a largely derogatory term mostly used by opponents of transgender rights to dehumanize transgender people.

An influential figure on the right and a competitive presidential candidate in 2016, Cruz is typically willing to directly answer questions from reporters and offer his positions on all manner of issues.

But the senator has repeatedly declined to answer reporters' questions about Knowles' comments, opting instead to criticize the media for the way the comments were portrayed. Following Knowles' CPAC speech, critics accused him of making genocidal comments, arguing that he had essentially called for the elimination of transgender people.

Knowles has since argued that he was instead referring simply to the phenomenon of people undergoing gender transitions.

"Quite clearly, I'm saying I don't want to kill these people, I want to help them," said Knowles, who went to argue that transgender people must be required to identify by their sex on official government documents and be prohibited from using the bathroom of their preferred gender.

Knowles has since accused several media outlets of libelous behavior for saying he had called for the eradication of transgender people, prompting Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah to publicly back him up.

"The press is being silly and deliberately taking him out of context," Cruz told Insider when first asked about the issue on Tuesday.

But even so, Knowles' comments go well beyond what most Republican lawmakers have articulated.

While the GOP has put forward legislation at both the federal and state level to ban transgender people from participating in sports, prevent them from using the bathroom of their choice, or block minors from receiving gender-affirming care, there's been relatively little sign of a broader effort to prevent people from transitioning altogether.

However, former President Donald Trump has pledged to sign an executive order instructing federal agencies to "cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age."

Anxiety, fear fill West Virginia transgender-health clinic

 

LEAH WILLINGHAM
Thu, March 9, 2023 

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — The tiny clinic where physicians prescribe hormones and other medications to transgender teenagers shares the same campus where West Virginia kids travel to receive treatments for rare cancer, heart surgery and other health care difficult to get anywhere else.

In a rural state purported to have the highest number of transgender youths per capita and some of the nation’s worst health outcomes, West Virginia University Medicine doctors say transgender health care is just as essential as the other lifesaving services they provide.

But it could soon be banned. Ignoring doctors' pleas, lawmakers are preparing to vote this week on a bill that would outlaw certain health care for transgender minors, including hormone therapy and fully reversible medication that suspends the physical changes of puberty, buying patients and parents time to make future decisions about hormones.

"There's a lot of anxiety and fear in our exam rooms right now," said Dr. Kacie Kidd, medical director of WVU Medicine Children's Adolescent Gender and Sexual Development Clinic.

State lawmakers and West Virginia's largest health care provider are at odds over how and when to treat adolescents with gender dysphoria — the severe psychological distress experienced by those whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth.

WVU's classification among the highest level of American research universities is often lauded by the same state leaders who have been unwilling to listen to experts when it comes to gender-affirming care. During a meeting last week at which Kidd testified before lawmakers, Senate Finance chair Eric Tarr described the treatments as “child abuse."

“I was caught off guard to see that WVU Medicine has a clinic to change the sex of children in West Virginia," the Republican said, leading a charge to reject amendments that would have allowed some care to continue. Two physicians on the committee — both Republicans — expressed concern, saying “medically uneducated” people shouldn't be making such decisions.

Lawmakers in West Virginia and other states advancing similar legislation often characterize gender-affirming treatments as medically unproven, potentially dangerous in the long term and a symptom of “woke” culture.

Yet every major medical organization, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association, supports gender-affirming care for youths.

The legislation in West Virginia also includes a ban on gender-affirming surgery for minors, something medical professionals emphasize does not happen in the state.

Lia Farrell, a WVU medical student from New York, said it was clear to her that lawmakers have "no idea what providing this care actually entails."

"It’s really cutting off your nose to spite your face," she said. “This isn’t going to accomplish anything except harming people and preventing us from doing our jobs."

Opened in 2021, WVU Medicine Children's Adolescent Gender and Sexual Development Clinic looks like any other health care setting — animal-shaped stickers cover the walls, examination rooms, machines to check blood pressure and heart rates. But providers wear lanyards with colorful buttons displaying pronouns and jackets decorated with a rainbow heart and stethoscope — something Kidd calls “visible reminders" of support.

Some families travel for hours on mountain roads to meet with providers, including therapists. While they talk, young people draw to calm their nerves. Kidd has several patients' creations displayed in her workspace, including one favorite, a unicorn.

A West Virginia native, Kidd was training to be a pediatrician at WVU when she began meeting transgender kids hospitalized after suicide attempts.

Patients have described gender dysphoria to her as a profound, deeply rooted frustration — even sometimes anger — that the person in the mirror “isn’t who they are."

“I’ve had young people tell me that they can’t imagine a future where they can be happy,” she said. “That’s one of the most heartbreaking things I ever hear.”

Dakota Kai, 17, spent childhood in and out of psychiatric care because of depression and anxiety related to gender dysphoria.

Kai said the testosterone gel they apply to their shoulders, which has caused their voice to deepen and facial hair to sprout, has saved their life.

“It’s literally going to kill people if they can’t access this care,” Kai said. “It’s difficult to try to exist in a place where it’s threatening just being yourself.”

Kai is now planning to start college this year and eventually become a cardiovascular surgeon.

Kai's mother, Sherry, said she was apprehensive at first about hormone therapy. But after conversations with providers, she and her child confidently decided to pursue it and have no regrets. Transgender minors can't begin medical interventions without parental consent.

“The amount of ignorance about the subject is honestly astounding,” she said. “Watching our society respond with such emotional fervor about something that they obviously logically don’t understand is terrifying.”

She said nothing about the care is pushed on patients, “lightly talked about or treated as if it’s no big deal."

“They are not trying to play God,” Sherry said. “They’re out there trying to perform a service of helping people, and because of science and because of time and because of studying the concept of being trans are able to say, ‘This is not fictitious or just a whim. This is a scientific, medical fact.’”

As the ban advances through the Legislature, Kidd's staff works late in the clinic, leaving long after dark to fit in appointments with frantic families.

“It is heartbreaking,” Kidd said, “to have to tell young people and families that we can’t provide the care that they need.”

This week, providers saw a 12-year-old patient, a transgender girl whose relatives said they'd known her identity since she was 3. She expressed distress about her voice deepening or growing hair on her underarms and face — concern about her body betraying her, of not being seen for who she is.

They talked through options, which included puberty-blocking medication lawmakers seek to ban — a fully reversible pause on puberty that provides significant relief for dysphoria.

Another was a 16-year-old patient who was hospitalized for the most recent time last year. When he came in, he couldn't speak at all. His parents were terrified.

But on this visit, he chattered happily about a new pet and a video game he couldn’t put down.

“It's such a joy, a year later for this particular patient, for this conversation to be profoundly different,” Kidd said.

Other children talked with therapists about anxiety over a school dance or asked for help on plans to talk to relatives about their gender identity. No medical interventions are provided to patients before the age of puberty.

El Didden, a WVU medical student who worked in the clinic as a researcher, said the providers are role models for “going above and beyond and acting like it’s the bare minimum.”

Didden, who is transgender, started hormone therapy the summer before starting medical school, when only a Planned Parenthood clinic was offering the service in the state. It inspires Didden as a future physician to see compassionate health care for people “who don't normally get that level of respect and care.”

Kidd's catchphrase for the clinic is "happy, healthy, thriving.” Didden wishes lawmakers understood.

“They think that in the choice between having a trans kid and having a dead kid, they prefer to have a dead kid,” Didden said, something that is “just existentially horrifying to think about.

West Virginia University student El Didden holds a vial of testosterone cypionate that is used for hormone therapy on Wednesday, March 8, 2023, in Morgantown, W.Va. (AP Photo/Kathleen Batten)

RuPaul Reads Anti-Drag Bills to Filth in Inspiring New Video


Bernardo Sim
Thu, March 9, 2023

RuPaul

Mother has spoken.

On Wednesday, March 8, RuPaul shared a new video through the official RuPaul’s Drag Race social media accounts declaring his direct opposition to all of the new anti-drag bills being introduced all over the country by conservative politicians. He said in the new video:

“Hey, look over there! A classic distraction technique, distracting us away from the real issues that they were voted into office to focus on: jobs, healthcare, keeping our children safe from harm at their own school. But we know that bullies are incompetent at solving real issues. They look for easy targets so they can give the impression of being effective. They think our love, our light, our laughter and our joy are signs of weakness. But they’re wrong, because that is our strength.”


The Drag Race host went on, “Drag queens are the Marines of the queer movement. Don’t get it twisted and don’t be distracted: register to vote so we can get these stunt queens out of office and put some smart people with real solutions into government. And by the way, a social media post has never been as powerful as a registered vote.”

MTV and World of Wonder also issued a statement on social media that read:

“Drag performers and the LGBTQ+ community are facing threats across the country. That’s why RuPaul’s Drag Race, MTV, and World of Wonder are proud to donate to ‘The Drag Defense Fund.’ Join us in supporting the ACLU’s work for LGBTQ+ rights.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has set up a dedicated page for people to support and donate to its newly-introduced “Drag Defense Fund.” With states like Tennessee passing bills that significantly restrict drag performances in the state, now is the right time to fight back against this kind of bigotry.

RuPaul’s Drag Race season 15 airs Fridays on MTV.

Jill Biden gives award to transgender woman on International Women’s Day

Our Foreign Staff
Thu, March 9, 2023 

Jill Biden awards Alba Rueda, from Argentina, on International Women’s Day 

- Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images North America

US Republicans have criticised Jill Biden, the First Lady, after she presented an award for women to a trans woman on International Women’s Day.

Argentinian Alba Rueda was one of 11 people chosen as recipients of the International Women of Courage Award paying tribute to women around the world “who are working to build a brighter future for all", according to the US State Department.

Ms Rueda became the first openly-transgender Argentinian politician to hold a senior position in government, serving as Undersecretary of Diversity Policies in the country’s Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity between January 2020 and May 2022. She is currently the foreign ministry’s special envoy for sexual orientation and gender identity.

In a lavish ceremony at the White House, Ms Rueda was introduced as a "transgender woman who was kicked out of classrooms, barred from sitting for exams, refused job opportunities, subjected to violence, and rejected by her family”.

“But in the face of these challenges, she worked to end violence and discrimination against the LGBTQ plus community in Argentina."

US conservatives were quick to criticise the award.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Republican Governor of Arkansas, said: "It’s International Women’s Day – a good time to remember that Democrats can’t even tell you what a woman is."

Dana Loesch, a conservative commentator, criticised the First Lady for encouraging “the diminishment of women on ‘international women's day’”. Jennifer Barreto-Leyva, a podcaster and board member of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, said: "This is disgraceful and unacceptable!"

The International Women of Courage Awards have run since 2007. “Girls everywhere need to know that there are women fighting for them and winning,” Ms Biden said on Wednesday, before the ceremony began.

“Opening doors, transforming schools and communities and governments, building a better world for all of us.

“And, we’re also here to say to their brothers and fathers and husbands and friends: as much as we need women who are willing to speak up, we need more men who are willing to listen and act.”


'You have to stand up to bullies': How Rachel Levine fights for LBGTQ people as highest-ranking transperson

Deborah Barfield Berry, USA TODAY
Wed, March 8, 2023

WASHINGTON – Rachel Levine didn’t hesitate to speak to a group at Texas Christian University in April about her frustrations with states proposing anti-trans bills.

"We have to stand up. We have to take a stand on behalf of those who are being hurt. We have to be doctors. This is what we do, even when it’s difficult," she told the medical conference.

Levine became the highest-ranking openly-trans official in the country last year when she was confirmed as assistant secretary for health for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Levine said it’s important to use her platform to advance policies that help the LGBTQ community and also important to push back against those that cause harm, including the anti-trans bills. The measures would ban transgender women from competing on women's sports teams and some would ban medical care for trans youth.

“I learned many years ago that you have to stand up to bullies,’’ Levine told USA TODAY. “These state actions constitute bullying.”

Other LGBTQ people in high-profile posts in the Biden administration include Karine Jean-Pierre, the first Black woman and openly gay White House press secretary, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who was confirmed last year as the first openly gay Cabinet secretary.

“It's not that they are gay that's important, it’s that they are there and that they are gay,’’ said Rodney Coates, a professor of critical race and ethnic studies at Miami University in Ohio. ‘‘They are there because people have confidence in them."

Beyond the leadership posts, administration officials have taken other steps to recognize LGBTQ communities.

At the start of Pride Month this June, the Department of Energy raised the Progress Pride flag at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

In April for Lesbian Day of Visibility, the White House hosted a roundtable, including senior LGTBQ leaders in the administration and top officials at federal agencies, including Levine. President Joe Biden also recognized Transgender Day of Visibility in March.

Polls show more Americans, especially younger people, feel comfortable talking about their identity and advocating for their communities.

“They're coming out of the closet,’’ Coates said. “It matters if they can help forge coalitions. I think part of the attacks on the LGBTQ community is to put them back in the closet.”

Levine, who served as Pennsylvania's secretary of health, has been a public figure, particularly as a top health official during the COVID-19 pandemic. With Pride Month underway, USA TODAY talked to Levine about her role in the administration. Some answers have been shortened for clarity and brevity:

You were a guest in April when the White House hosted its roundtable for Lesbian Day of Visibility. Do you think it made a difference?

It makes a difference for those young people and their parents, their families to see support at the highest levels. That support matriculates throughout the country. But we understand the challenges before us and so we need to continue and redouble our effort.

Can you speak to some of the challenges you think the LGBTQ community faces?

There is significant pushback in the states…That pushback is politically motivated. And I think that it is extremely harmful the actions that states are taking such as in Texas and Florida and Alabama and others that target vulnerable trans and gender diverse young people and their families. We need to fight that even harder in support of diversity, equity and inclusion for the transgender community, especially to empower our trans youth.

What does that fight look like? How does it play out?

There are three pillars for us in the administration. One is advocacy. And that means speaking out publicly in support of the LGBTQ+ community broadly, but in this case, particularly trans youth and gender diverse youth and their families... We need to continue to work on policy. For example, our Office of Civil Rights has declared that its interpretation of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, that when it says you cannot discriminate on the basis of sex that that includes sexual orientation and gender identity... In addition, the Department of Education is writing its interpretation of Title IX that you cannot discriminate on the basis of sex and that includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

Was there a particular moment in your new role where you felt you had to say or do something that impacted the LGBTQ community?

I co-chair the Health Disparities Council for the secretary and within HHS and as part of that health equity work that includes advocating for sexual and gender minorities, so the LGBTQ+ community. We have a coordinating committee and LGBTQI Coordinating Committee across HHS that is looking at this work and looking at data and research studies, but also discussing rules and regulations.

Sounds like making that speech in Texas kind of meant a lot to you.

I’ll be doing it again. We're not done. We have to continue to stand up… I learned many years ago that you have to stand up to bullies. These state actions constitute bullying for example when they are limiting the ability of transgender youth and gender diverse youth to receive gender affirming care in their states. Gender affirming care is medical care. Gender affirming care is mental health care and gender affirming care literally is life-saving care. They are putting these young people's lives at risk by limiting their access.

Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender person to be confirmed to federal office by the U.S. Senate, serves as an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services under the Biden administration. During her confirmation hearing, Levine spoke about the need to understand transgender individuals' medical needs and the overall lack of access to medical help in the transgender community.

You noted different policies of the agencies and the administration. What about Congress? Has Congress done enough?

Congress has not done enough. The president has spoken out very publicly about his support of the Equality Act. The Equality Act is critical in terms of putting into statute the rights of sexual and gender minorities and for the LGBTQI+ community.

You mentioned some of the criticism you faced after the speech in Texas and I know there was some criticism after you were featured in USA TODAY’s Woman of the Year series. Were you surprised, alarmed, troubled by that?

I use the negative pushback that I received, and receive not infrequently, as fuel and motivation to continue my work in public health. I am able to sublimate that, my feelings, my thoughts and feelings to further fuel my work.

It doesn’t hurt sometimes?

I learned in my clinical days to compartmentalize things. So when I received those criticisms, I'm able to compartmentalize them. I process them later with my family and my friends, and then again… to sublimate that into my work.

How do you see your role in bringing about change? How do feel about your mission?

I have always felt tremendously gratified by my career in medicine. In academic medicine at Penn State College of Medicine, I was able to see patients and their families and try to help them in pediatrics and specifically adolescent medicine. I was able to teach students and residents and others about how to do that. I was able to do clinical research about how to do it better and then to develop programs, basically, to help people.

In my public service, first in Pennsylvania, and then now nationally, I am able to do that and to help people with a broader brush from that public health and public service perspective. And so what could be more gratifying than that?

Contributing Mabinty Quarshie and David Jackson

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Transgender rights are a top mission for Rachel Levine on Biden staff

NASA image may show first-ever 'rogue' supermassive black hole, leaving a trail of newborn stars in its wake

Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Thu, March 9, 2023

A potential supermassive black hole (bottom left arrow) leaves a trail of stars (middle arrow) as it's flung from a galaxy (top arrow).NASA/ESA/Pieter van Dokkum et al./Astrophysical Journal Letters 2023

A NASA Hubble image may show the first runaway supermassive black hole ever discovered.

A trail indicating an object traveling away from a galaxy hints that a black hole got kicked out.

A rogue black hole may have generated a shock wave that made a trail of new stars, visible in the image.

The Hubble Space Telescope is still making first-of-a-kind discoveries after more than three decades in space. Its latest? Observations of the first ever supermassive black hole gone rogue from its own galaxy.

That's what a team of astronomers is suggesting in a new study posted online. The study has been peer reviewed for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, according to Pieter van Dokkum, an astrophysicist at Yale University who led the new study.

Even experts not involved in the study are excited for the team's results.

"The observations are all fitting together with this scenario," Manuela Campanelli, an astrophysicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology not involved in the study but who has simulated runaway black holes in her research, told Insider.

The first possible photo of a 'rogue' supermassive black hole

A trail of stars leaving a galaxy (the spot in the upper right of both images) and narrowing to a point on the lower left, indicating a runaway supermassive black hole.NASA/ESA/Pieter van Dokkum et al./Astrophysical Journal Letters 2023

What you're seeing above are two images of the same thing that tell the story of what happened.

Look at the zoomed-in shot on the right: The big spot in the upper right is a galaxy. Then follow the faint line trailing away from it, which ends in a point on the lower left. That's where scientists think the runaway black hole is hiding.

Black holes, by their very nature, are invisible. The reason astronomers are able to "see" any black hole is because it's surrounded by a swirling hot disk of gas, stars, and other cosmic stuff that is visible.

But the most fascinating part of these photos is the streak you see trailing behind the black hole. That's what caught researchers' eyes as they examined nearby stars.

They think that long tail coming out of the black hole is actually a trail of newborn stars, which formed after the black hole was hurled from its home galaxy, and ripped through space, generating a shockwave that caused clouds of intergalactic gas to collapse into stars.

"I thought that I'd actually made an error that there was this weird streak in the image," van Dokkum told Insider. "It didn't look like any astrophysical objects at first. And then it turned out that it was real. It was also in other datasets. And that's when I got excited."

Though black holes are notorious for devouring and destroying stars, this one seems to be creating them as well.

Further observations, probably with the James Webb Space Telescope, are necessary to confirm that the object in the picture truly is a runaway supermassive black hole.
Why a supermassive black hole would go rogue

Supermassive black holes are mind-bogglingly dense objects with the mass of billions of suns, and scientists think there's one at the center of every galaxy. Needless to say, kicking one out of its home would take a lot of force.

One such cataclysmic event that could possibly do the job is if two galaxies collide together, and their central black holes merge. A collision between black holes is one of the most violent, forceful events in the universe, and it could send a smaller remnant black hole careening into the void.

Astrophysicists have long theorized that black holes could "go rogue" or "run away," if other black holes pushed them out of their galaxies.

But nobody has ever confirmed a black hole wandering through intergalactic space, much less a supermassive black hole going rogue.

And while two galaxies colliding is the simplest explanation for a rogue black hole, that's not what seems to have happened here.
2 other black holes may have expelled this one in a rare, violent event

Van Dokkum thinks this black hole had an especially rare, dramatic, violent exit. Here's his theory: Two galaxies merged, and their supermassive black holes fell together, due to their sheer gravitational pull.

That happens all the time. Hubble has photographed plenty of merging galaxies, like the ones in the image below. The next step is what made this merger so weird.

NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and K. Noll (STScI)

The team thinks that a third galaxy arrived, with a third black hole, and its gravity caused a complex dance of the three black holes, which ended with ejecting one of them into the distance.

A merging pair of galaxies, captured by JWST.ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. Evans

Ever since then, over a period of 39 million years, the runaway black hole has been screaming away from its home galaxy at a speed of about 1,600 kilometers (nearly 1,000 miles) per second, according to van Dokkum's team's calculations. For reference, at that speed it would take you 25 seconds to circle the entire Earth.

Basically, this supermassive black hole (if that's what it is) got third-wheeled and kicked out of its own home. Evidence for this third galaxy is yet to be confirmed, but the team is investigating a trail they see on the opposite side of the galaxy, where they think the other two black holes merged and then got kicked out by the recoil.

"The picture really tells the story," van Dokkum said.

That makes this event exceptionally rare, Campanelli said, because it involved three black holes instead of the conventional two that theorists typically pose in a scenario like this.
Follow the trail of newborn stars — if it's not just a jet

The other explanation for the mysterious trail in van Dokkum's Hubble photo is a fairly common one: jets of material that shoot out from the centers of galaxies with highly active black holes.

But van Dokkum and Campanelli both say that's unlikely, based on the shape of the trail in the new picture. Jets shooting from galactic centers fan out away from the galaxy, as the material shoots from a point and spreads out in the distance, like what's shown in the Hubble image below:

Spectacular jets powered by the gravitational energy of a supermassive black hole in the core of the galaxy Hercules A.NASA Goddard

Instead, the trail in van Dokkum's Hubble image fans out toward the galaxy. It seems to be a trail of new stars that formed as the traveling black hole generated shock waves in the intergalactic gas.

Campanelli added that the compact and irregular shape of the galaxy is "typical" of galaxies formed from mergers.

"If it turns out to be not real, I'll be surprised," van Dokkum said. "If it's not real, I think it is actually a combination of a few other gas clouds or something that seemed to line up in such a way that it looks like a streak."

Even though they're invisible, there's no reason to worry about rogue supermassive black holes sneaking up on us from other galaxies.

"We would have seen the effects of it if it was anywhere near us," van Dokkum said.