Report: Trump Administration to Rescind Trans Student Guidelines
The administration will withdraw the guidance on equal treatment of transgender students Tuesday, sources say.
www.advocate.com/transgender/2017/2/20/report-trump-administration-rescind-trans-student-guidelines
HRC Responds to Reports That Trump Administration Plans to Rescind Trans Students Guidance
Tonight, HRC responded to media reports that the Trump administration plans to rescind guidance from the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education regarding schools’ obligations to transgender students under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. This news comes on the heels of the DOJ’s recent decision to eliminate the Obama Administration’s challenge to a nationwide injunction against enforcement of the guidance, allowing a nationwide hold to continue.
“Transgender young people face tragically high rates of discrimination and bullying, and they need a government that will stand up for them — not attack them, said HRC President Chad Griffin. It’s shocking that this kind of harm would even be a subject of debate for the president. We call on Trump to immediately and permanently affirm the Obama Administration’s guidance and protect transgender students.”
In 2016, the Departments of Justice and Education issued comprehensive guidance to ensure that transgender students were being treated fairly and with dignity in public and federally funded schools, including having equal access to sex-segregated facilities, such as restrooms and locker rooms, that are consistent with their gender identity. Thirteen anti-equality state attorneys general, led by the notoriously anti-LGBTQ Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed suit challenging the guidance. After a Texas federal judge issued a nationwide hold on enforcement of the guidance, the Obama Administration responded by requesting the court limit the hold to the 13 states filing suit.
A little more than a week ago, just 48 hours after Jeff Sessions was confirmed as Attorney General and a day after being sworn in, the Department of Justice moved to eliminate the Obama Administration’s challenge to a nationwide injunction against enforcement of the guidance, allowing the nationwide hold to continue. Despite this action, transgender students facing discrimination can still file suit under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
Transgender youth face significant discrimination and bullying in our nation’s schools. Last year, North Carolina adopted the infamous HB2, a law requiring discrimination against transgender people, including in public schools. Several states, including Texas, are currently considering similar bills. Seventy-five percent of transgender students report feeling unsafe in school, according to a recent GLSEN report. And, tragically, one study shows that more than 50 percent of transgender youth report attempting suicide at least once in their lifetime.
Last week, in response to the DOJ’s action, more than 1,000 parents of transgender children sent a letter to President Donald Trump condemning the decision and calling on his administration to fully enforce federal civil rights laws. The letter, signed by parents from 45 states plus Washington, D.C., was organized by HRC and its newly formed Parents for Transgender Equality Council, a coalition of the nation’s leading parent-advocates working for equality and fairness for transgender people. The parents, representing the thousands of families of transgender children across the country, wrote, “No young person should wake up in the morning fearful of the school day ahead. When this guidance was issued last year, it provided our families — and other families like our own across the country — with the knowledge and security that our government was determined to protect our children from bullying and discrimination. Please do not take that away from us.”
Billy Eichner Gets Political, ‘Riverdale’, ‘HTGAWM’, ‘Moonlight’ Better Sweep The Oscars and More TV This Week
Check out our weekly guide to TV this week, and make sure you’re catching the big premieres, crucial episodes and the stuff you won’t admit you watch when no one’s looking.
Billy on the Street has been killing it this season, but it’s not all threesomes with Jon Hamm and Seth Rogen death hoaxes. Tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern on TruTV you can relive some of the show’s more politically-pointed segments.
If there’s one new show you’re looking to add to your weekly viewing queue, make it Riverdale on the CW. It’s a teen drama, so the boys — all played by much older actors, of course — are hunks. But the real draw is the highly-stylized take on the classic Archie comics. There’s a compelling mystery plaguing the small town, so you’ll want to go back and watch this addictive series from the beginning before the new episode Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern.
While Shondaland’s How To Get Away With Murder may have spun off its rails in season three, we’re still tuning in to catch any fleeting glimpses of scantily clad Jack Falahee and Conrad Ricamora. In Thursday’s two-hour finale, 9 p.m. Eastern on ABC, we’ll finally learn who killed Wes, if you’re still invested in all of that.
Look, we’re not going to try and justify intellectually or culturally why you should be watching Mama June: From Not to Hot 10 p.m. Friday on WE. The special gives the matriarch of the Honey Boo Boo clan a makeover, and, admit it, aren’t you at least a little curious?
If the Academy fails to give Moonlight all the awards at the 89th Annual Academy Awards this Sunday at 8:30 p.m. Eastern on ABC, we’re going to lose it. You thought we were mad when Beyoncé lost to Adele? Just you wait. Just. You. Wait.
What are you watching this week?
The post Billy Eichner Gets Political, ‘Riverdale’, ‘HTGAWM’, ‘Moonlight’ Better Sweep The Oscars and More TV This Week appeared first on Towleroad.
Katy Perry, China, Woolly Mammoth, South Africa, Mike Pence, Uber, Lana del Rey, Twin Peaks: HOT LINKS
MIKE PENCE. On Michael Flynn: “I was disappointed to learn that the facts that had been conveyed to me by General Flynn were inaccurate.”
“I was disappointed to learn that the facts conveyed to me by Gen. Flynn were inaccurate,” VP Pence says at presser with Nato Secy General pic.twitter.com/ex9RrGh5BU
— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 20, 2017
RUSSIA. Psychological dossier on Trump compiled for first meeting with Putin. “Very serious preparatory work is going on in the Kremlin, including a paper — seven pages — describing a psychological portrait of Trump, especially based on this last two to three months, and the last weeks.”
NEW MEXICO. Senate approves gay conversion therapy ban. “The Senate approved the bill 32-6 Thursday, after several Republican senators questioned whether it would target religious teachings. Sen. Jacob Candelaria, D-Albuquerque, the sponsor of Senate Bill 121 and the first openly gay man to be elected to the Senate, insisted it would not, saying it would merely make it illegal to be paid for providing conversion therapy to someone under 18 years old.”
UBER. A shocking account about the company’s treatment of women.
CHINA. Trump proposes including Chinese visitors in social media checks: “U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials are proposing to ask Chinese visitors to disclose their social media “handles” or other identifiers on common social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The question would be asked online as part of an electronic system Chinese holders of long-term U.S. business and visitor visas use to advise of upcoming travel.”
I AM A HUMAN BEING. A gay Syrian refugee’s message to Donald Trump.
EDWARD WILLIAM. Tom Daley had an 18-month affair with a male model, according to a British tabloid.
RECORDS. Lady Gaga’s halftime show was the most-watched musical event of all time across all platforms: “Between YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Giphy, the show was an absolute hit. The Halftime Show is the most-watched video on the NFL’s YouTube channel with more than 24 million views. There were 2.2 million real-time tweets about the show, and 49 million Facebook video views. The GIFs from the performance generated 75 million views on Giphy.”
GOD LOOKED AWAY. But not from Garrett Clayton in his undies.
TWINKLE TWINKLE. Madonna shares video of adopted twins.
TWIN PEAKS. A new teaser for the reboot launching in May.
REBIRTH. Woolly mammoth on the verge of resurrection, according to scientists: “Speaking ahead of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston this week, the scientist leading the “de-extinction” effort said the Harvard team is just two years away from creating a hybrid embryo, in which mammoth traits would be programmed into an Asian elephant.”
SPACEX. The Falcon 9 first stage landing.
SOUTH AFRICA. Two professors suspended for refusing to teach gay student: “I was wearing skinny jeans and it was the first day I came to school with braids. They asked me why I was wearing girl’s clothes and doing my hair like a girl. They said I had come all the way from Pietermaritzburg to embarrass my parents by pretending to be a girl.”
NEW TUNE OF THE DAY. Lana Del Rey’s “Love”.
CHAINED TO THE RHYTHM. But unfortunately not chained to the melody.
MONDAY MAN. Royal Ballet soloist Marcelino Sambé.
The post Katy Perry, China, Woolly Mammoth, South Africa, Mike Pence, Uber, Lana del Rey, Twin Peaks: HOT LINKS appeared first on Towleroad.
Virginia Legislature Sends Anti-LGBTQ ‘License to Discriminate’ Bill to Governor
HRC and Equality Virginia blasted the Virginia House of Representative’s final vote of 54 to 38 passing House Bill (HB) 2025 — discriminatory legislation seeking to give taxpayer-funded agencies and service providers a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people under the guise of religion. The dangerous anti-LGBTQ proposal now heads to Governor Terry McAuliffe, who has promised to veto the bill.
“Let’s be clear, HB 2025 is nothing more than a thinly veiled legislative assault on LGBTQ Virginians and visitors to the state,” said HRC Senior Vice President for Policy and Political Affairs JoDee Winterhof. “The measure has nothing to do with the right to practice one’s religion — which is already firmly protected in the U.S. Constitution — and everything to do with enshrining taxpayer-funded discrimination against LGBTQ people into law. Just as we saw in North Carolina, HB 2025 would no doubt inflict profound harm on Virginia’s people, reputation, and economy. Governor McAuliffe must follow through on his promise to veto this repulsive proposal.”
“Today is a sad day for the people of Virginia,” said Equality Virginia Executive Director James Parrish. “Instead of working to find solutions to the real problems we face as a state, our lawmakers are pushing shameful legislation providing a license to discriminate against loving LGBTQ families. We don’t want to be the next North Carolina. We applaud Governor McAuliffe’s promise to veto HB 2025 which will send a clear message that this legislation does not represent the values we hold dear as Virginians.”
HB 2025 could allow taxpayer-funded organizations, like homeless shelters and adoption agencies, to refuse service to same-sex couples, transgender people, and anyone suspected of having intimate relationships outside of a heterosexual marriage (such as single mothers or a cohabiting straight couple) without losing taxpayer funding, contracts, licensing, or other forms of state recognition.
Governor McAuliffe vetoed a similar discriminatory proposal in 2016.
Last summer, a Mississippi law with similar intentions — HB 1523 — was ruled unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves just before it would have gone into effect. That law, deceptively titled “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act,” enabled almost any individual or organization to discriminate against LGBTQ Mississippians at work, at school and in their communities. It remains pending at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Virginia lawmakers should learn from the mistakes of North Carolina, where fallout over that state’s discriminatory, anti-LGBTQ HB2 law has been swift and severe. Following passage in March of 2016, HB2 triggered a national outcry of opposition and a broad range of voices continue to speak out demanding its full and complete repeal. The economic fallout alone includes hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business. In November, former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory became the only incumbent governor from either party to lose on Election Day specifically because he championed and signed HB2 into law.
The attack on fairness and equality in Virginia is part of an onslaught of anti-LGBTQ bills being pushed in 2017 by activists around the country. HRC is currently tracking more than 70 anti-LGBTQ legislative proposals in 24 states. For more information, visit hrc.im/2017legislature.
Queer Latina animator needs your help telling an immigrant story
Queer Latinx animator Pamela Chavez has a story she wants to share with you. Caracol Cruzando, is the name of Chavez’ 20 minute animated short that she is completing with help from Latino Public Broadcasting and a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter which began on February 17, 2017.
“Caracol Cruzando follows a young Costa Rican migrant who must decide whether to bring her best friend and pet turtle across the US/Miami border with her undocumented family.”
The film tells a story that is particularly relevant today but connects back to stories that have been told for centuries as people have migrated, pushed out by the impact of decisions made about labor, land use, and sovereignty within and across borders. She knows that story well, because she has lived it.
“I was primarily inspired by a desire to share a part of my story that was based on my immigration from Costa Rica to the US. The im/migrant story oftentimes includes a lot of moving, surviving.”
But she knew that to tell that story she had to find an entry point for an experience that has been stigmatized, misrepresented, and criminalized. She decided to tell the story through the eyes of a child.
“I found it was a good opportunity to share a difficult experience in a new kind of way. I knew there was something more to offer than the victimizing narrative. I went on a hunt for this premise, I had to shed a lot of adult feelings to clear the way for an honest portrayal of how a kid would deal with immigrating.”
Chavez learned from filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki who made Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro to bring in elements of myth in order to find images that could communicate the difficulties of migration without re-traumatizing potentially young viewers.
The journey Chavez wants to share is one that includes loss, trauma and a resilient response to the journey-a resilience that she says is often left out in mainstream retellings of the im/migrant story and one that non-immigrants can learn from.
“As immigrants we’ve developed some pretty stellar qualities to break down huge barriers. We move thousands of miles to protect our families, out of love. We choose to live with those we want to live with regardless of the loss we experience. We start and restart our families, our communities. We develop resiliency, tenacity, fortitude. When we can remember these tools, we establish clearer relationships to our own hopes, we make more decisions based on courage. These qualities are shared with all types of people who are targeted by our xenophobic and homophobic society, and therein lies our intersectionality.”
The first part of the story she knew, it was based on the last time she left Costa Rica at age six when she was old enough to be aware of the losses and young enough to express it only in her sadness about her dog who had to stay behind.
“It was the first time I can remember feeling sad about saying goodbye. It sounds trivial compared to the fact that I had to leave my grandparents, cousins, aunties, uncles and classmates. My parents and brother were undocumented so there was a lot of tension, but as a kid I mostly remember working through the feelings of having to leave my best friend, my dog. That’s how I coped with it.”
In order to expand on this story Chavez also reflected on her experience working in a community center with Afro Costa Rican activists who are organizing for their land rights.
“Afro Costa Ricans who had been in Puerto Viejo for generations were losing their homes because Costa Rica had a racist historical practice of not giving land titles to Afro Costa Ricans. Costa Rica is well known for its biological richness but what’s less known is that Costa Rica has had a very long history of people who have been resisting attempts from development projects to overtake their communities. Hotels and developers had been trying to creep in to take land from Afro Costa Ricans, capitalizing on a community that had already been marginalized. I felt particularly drawn to Puerto Viejo because my ancestors from my father’s side are from Limon, but it’s a history I don’t know very well. I was inspired to base the setting of this film on that area to highlight the present day issues, which in turn I fictionalized into what’s called Caracol Mountain.”
Chavez always found herself drawing, painting, making murals and using graffiti arts but it took meeting queer women of color academics, artists and activists at UC Santa Cruz and organizing with youth in the Bay Area to help push her to become an artist full-time. She went to the Rhode Island School of Design and discovered the freedom of animation.
“[In animation] there were no boundaries, no limitations in a world where being a Queer Latinx Immigrant is very limiting, full of all types of social boundaries and expectations.”
As both a media consumer and now media producer Chavez has a vision for what she would like to see and create with her work.
“I think there is a serious need for there to be an honest portrayal of Latinx LGBTQ folks in both Spanish and English language media. There’s still such a really negative representation of queer Latinxs in Latinx cultures. It perpetuates a really terrible stereotype that serves absolutely no one. I think in English-language media there are slightly more opportunities right now for this sort of representation, but I feel like Spanish Language media is still really behind. Their argument (I’ve heard) is that they’re afraid of losing viewership. But is this fear silencing Latinx LGBTQ communities like xenophobic people are silencing our immigrant communities? How can we stand up against xenophobia but in turn reflect the same sort of fear of acceptance of people within our own families? The Latinx Spanish speaking community is ready for accurate and visible representation.”
Supported by her wife, communities and mentors like queer independent filmmaker Aurora Guerrero, Chavez has worked to tell a story in a way that is authentic, free of stereotype, specific, and empowered. Her message for young artists and activists, especially those who are LGBTQ Latinx, living under an administration that has given license to an open and aggressive xenophobia:
“Honor your feelings about safety. Make connections with other folks who share your values, with adults that can support you to grow in all good directions, who will help you understand yourself more, that help you stay connected to yourself.. .Give yourself permission to grow. Tell your story, use whatever medium calls you. Be courageous, if you’ve always wanted to write, take a writing class. Or write on walls. We don’t deserve to be targets for the projections of other people’s fears. Don’t let that stop you. The way we are represented is important. You are very, very relevant right now. Let us know why.”
www.glaad.org/blog/queer-latina-animator-needs-your-help-telling-immigrant-story
Study: Teen Suicide Attempts Decreased After Same-Sex Marriage Was Legalized
According to CBS News, a new study from JAMA Pediatrics found that suicide attempts dropped 7% among all students, and 14% among gay youth after same-sex marriage laws were passed.
Boxer Yusaf Mack Beats Down Homophobic Twitter Troll at Barber Shop: WATCH
Boxer Yusaf Mack spotted a Twitter troll who had been harassing him for being gay while the troll’s head was in a sink at the LA Clippers barber shop in Philadelphia over the weekend. Mack decided to physically punish the troll in front of customers and employees, according to TMZ:
Mack tells us he got sick and tired of the online harassment and decided to confront the guy face-to-face. Mack is unapologetic and says the guy got what he deserved.
We also reached out to the victim who didn’t want to talk … but has since issued several homophobic statements on his Facebook page, including:
“I rather have a video of some beating me up then a video of someone seeing me take a d*** up my a** any day.”
The man says he will retaliate against Mack … “Me and him gonna fight again.”
Watch:
Mack was the center of much media attention after appearing in a gay adult film and claiming he was drugged into it by the film’s producers. After the film’s producers fired back at Mack, Mack confirmed that he had willingly agreed to do the gay film and that he was bisexual. Mack then came out as gay.
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Boxer Yusaf Mack Beats Down Homophobic Twitter Troll at Barber Shop: WATCH
