lgbt-rights

"The experience of being trans is shaped by social class. While there are trans people, the vast majority are working class – just as the vast majority of the total population is working class. Trans workers are often employed in lower paid and more precarious jobs, with a high risk of discrimination and bullying in the workplace. As a result, trans political struggle is part of a wider class struggle. Despite this, trans politics is commonly misrepresented as coddled, bourgeois and anti-working class."

"Buoyed by the success of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, freed from enforced isolation by changes in the medical and psychiatric establishment, and brought together by the Internet, the transgender community has emerged in the last five years as a new voice in social activism. This voice suggests that, although gender is an identity we are born with, an identity that no amount of social influence can sway, it is too great and varied a force to shoehorn into those ubiquitous boxes marked F and M. While human desires--for love, passion, work, respect, friends, family--remain constant, the way those desires are felt and expressed cannot always be categorized at the moment of birth. Anatomy, as feminists have long argued, is not destiny."

"Being transgender is not a trend and transgender people have a history that spans centuries. Over the past few years, transgender visibility has increased dramatically, a sign that our society is becoming increasingly accepting of diverse gender identities. This is a positive sign, as more and more transgender people feel that they can live openly and receive support. Like the LGBTQ community has seen time and time again, increased visibility often leads to increased attacks by those who wish to shove us back in the closet. Lesbian, gay and bi+ young people should be free to declare their sexuality without others doubting them. The same should be true for young people who have a diverse gender identity."

"There can be no trans liberation under capitalism. This is a fact. Yet it’s not a popular view among liberal and centrist LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, who – as we’ve seen in the course of this book – talk about ‘trans rights’ in isolation as a range of personal freedoms and protections; and who cling to corporations and brands as potential ‘allies’ in the fight for social acceptance."

"Same-sex marriage"

"At the Democratic convention, in the United States, I listened to the speech of a young man who was very confident, very serene, very calm, very... bright, I would say. He, I don't remember his name, said in his speech that he was the son of two mothers. And he said it simply, without too much emphasis. He didn't seem like a freak to me. It seemed normal to me."

"Sometimes I ask myself questions too. Here we are talking about love towards children, who have the right to love. That can come from a man and a woman, God forbid, but I ask myself: why can't that love come from two men or two women and instead can it be given by seven nuns? This is a question I ask myself. Why not? Why?"

"As experience shows, the absence of sexual bipolarity creates obstacles to the normal development of children possibly placed within these unions. They lack the experience of motherhood or fatherhood. Inserting children into homosexual unions through adoption actually means doing violence to these children in the sense that their state of weakness is taken advantage of to introduce them into environments that do not favor their full human development. Certainly such a practice would be seriously immoral and would be in open contradiction with the principle, also recognized by the UN International Convention on the Rights of the Child, according to which the best interest to be protected in any case is that of the child, the most weak and defenseless (from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations regarding the projects for the legal recognition of unions between homosexual people )"

"It was a beautiful gift to Italy to have prevented two people of the same sex, who are prevented by nature, from having the possibility of having a child. We prevented an anti-natural and anthropological revolution and I believe it was our achievement."

"It is too simplistic to believe that a child, to grow in a balanced way, needs the presence of a father and a mother of different sexes. No scientific research demonstrates that being the children of homosexuals is dangerous for the acquisition of one's gender identity. The truth is that society needs time to adapt to changes: just think of what happened 30 years ago to the children of separated people, who felt uncomfortable and tried to hide their reality. Now, however, being separated children is almost normal."

"I have met wonderful same-parent families in America and a couple here, and it is certain that overseas they have a much better chance of living like so-called "normal" families. Even on the 'gestation for others', the horrible term uterus for rent, my position is one of great acceptance, even if I would never resort to it or give it to myself. But for me individual freedoms are above everything."

"After all, what establishes relationships is essentially the emotional relationship, that is, love. Let's stop thinking that homosexuals are essentially "sexual". First of all, they are emotional, they have significant cohabitation relationships just like heterosexual families. They can very well adopt children because it is not necessarily the case that two people of the same sex are "bad". And children need love, not necessarily sexual differences. Let them stop saying that the family is made up of a man and a woman, because this is a fundamentally materialist vision, defended by Catholics who always talk about the spirit. Because if the criterion of being together is simply to bring children into the world, then this is the most sinister materialism. While being together also has the meaning of loving each other, of dedicating oneself to an educational work. [...] children are children not because you sleep with a woman and the woman sleeps with a man, they are children because you raise them, because you are together [with them], because you answer their questions , because you pay attention to their needs. This means "fatherhood" and "motherhood", whoever it is carried out by."

"The natural family is under attack. They want to dominate us and erase our people."

"My mother was a widow and I am gay, but I know many other children of widowed mothers who, despite missing their father, did not become gay. After all, I am convinced that for a child almost anything is better than an orphanage. Nor can we pursue perfect family balance. It is sufficient that the adopters are normally civilized, not sadists who slice up creatures, that they have an income to support them, without necessarily having to be an Agnelli."

"We parents, [...] hetero couples, know well that the serenity of children is not dictated by having a mother and a father. Their serenity begins precisely from the feeling of love and understanding that is felt in the family and, instead, it often happens that we parents, instead of helping them, contribute with our fears to instill taboos and insecurities that they would not have. It is not easy to be a parent, even less to be a good parent, but sexuality is certainly not the discriminating factor between a good parent and a bad parent. These are just lies dictated by fear of change. Meanwhile, the world changes anyway and will change again."

"I speak as an open homosexual. [...] I conceive the family [...] in the traditional sense of the term, that is, made up of a father and a mother because nature wanted it that way."

"For too long schools have been afraid to intervene, while in truth there are delicate methods to explain to children, already in primary school, that some of them have two mothers and others two fathers, as in the case of our son."

"What children need is adult, mature and responsible love from parents who put their needs before their own and who at the same time know how to set the right limits for them and help them grow. Growing up with two women or two men is no problem. In the Middle Ages many children grew up in monasteries with only women or only men and many of them became saints."

"...compared to love, affective availability equally belongs to different behavioral genres. What does it matter if they are two men with a child, or a man and a woman, or two women? I don't know who is able to decide how it is right to love."

"[On the detractors of the Cirinnà bill who oppose homoparentality to the family of the Christian tradition] If you consider in which family Jesus was born, you realize [that] Mary conceives from a sacred entity outside of marriage, Joseph adopts - because "putative father" means "adoptive father" - a son who is not his and he does so out of love for his wife. And faced with this situation [...] the Cirinnà bill becomes fresh water."

"I am in favor of civil unions but children are not a right. And they can't be bought. Point. Anyone who disagrees respects the opinions of others."

"I'm gay, I can't have a child. I believe that you can't have everything in life, if it isn't there it means it shouldn't be there. It's also nice to deprive yourself of something. Life has its own natural path, there are things that should not be changed. And one of these is family."

"On the adoption of children I instinctively find the traditional figures of a man and a woman more appropriate. I try to think about the balance needed by children, but it is a complicated issue. It is not that one can argue that a heterosexual couple is necessarily able to give more love to a child."

"[On the contrast between those who are in favor of civil unions and homoparenting and those who are against] [...] I would like someone to explain to me what the traditional family is. That of 5th century Athens? The one in Sparta? The one in Rome? [...] The patriarchal one of fifty years ago? That "wife, husband, son-two sons"? Is that? Is that the traditional family of the last fifty years? [...] The family is a socio-cultural product. [...] It is therefore completely clear that its concept is changing. [...] it would be necessary for these transformations [...] to take place with a minimum [...] of cultural foundation, of awareness, of conscience. Not in the face of "We want everything" and everything that comes to mind is a "natural right" because then two "naturalisms" are opposed: the Catholic one which is totally absurd because anything can be a Christian except a "naturalist "; and the one on the other side of the so-called "natural rights" which are a ghost [...]."

"Adoption by same-sex couples"

"Homosexuality"

"Civil union"

"If the Supreme Court were to overturn Obergefell, the new federal law guarantees that a same-sex couple who was married in Illinois, for example, would still be recognized as married if they moved to Virginia, which has a ban on same-sex marriage that could be reactivated. But a same-sex couple wishing to be married in Virginia might have to travel out of state to get their marriage license. The Respect for Marriage Act also provides similar protections for interracial marriages. The dynamic could create a challenge for couples who want to get married but can’t afford to travel to another state for the license. That would exclude such couples from accessing the benefits that come with marriage, including inheritance, tax benefits, and the ability to make health care decisions for a spouse who is unable to make them themselves. “You will start to see a real economic justice problem,” Carpenter says. Bryan Wilson, who co-founded the Pride Center West Texas in Odessa, Texas, says the Respect for Marriage Act is a win for him and his husband, and other LGBTQ couples who are already married, but worries it doesn’t do enough for young or unmarried people in states like Texas. “I have youth who go, ‘Well, if on the off chance I ever want to get married in about six, seven years, 10 years, 15 years, I’m probably not going to be able to do it here anyway, so I hope I’ve moved to California, New York, or Washington,'” Wilson says. “There will be enough respect for marriage when every state in the union, every territory, has legalized it as well as enshrined it in their constitution, that same-sex marriage is allowed,” Wilson adds.For LGBTQ people living in states with dormant bans on the books who are vulnerable to financial insecurity, face discrimination, or struggle with their mental health, overruling Obergefell could cause a different kind of fallout, experts warn. “It would be a deep psychological and emotional blow to a lot of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to be told that even if their state has to recognize a marriage formed out of the state, that their state nonetheless disapproves of their relationship and effectively considers them second class citizens,” says Michael Boucai, a law professor at the University of Buffalo."

"Provide robust protections for religious employers. America’s religious diversity means that workplaces include people of many faiths and that many employers are faith-based. Nevertheless, the Biden Administration has been hostile to people of faith, especially those with traditional beliefs about marriage, gender, and sexuality. The new Administration should enact policies with robust respect for religious exercise in the workplace, including under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), Title VII, and federal conscience protection laws."

"Sex Discrimination. The Biden Administration, LGBT advocates, and some federal courts have attempted to expand the scope and definition of sex discrimination, based in part on the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Bostock held that “an employer who fires someone simply for being homosexual or transgender” violates Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination. The Court explicitly limited its holding to the hiring/firing context in Title VII and did not purport to address other Title VII issues, such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes, or other laws prohibiting sex discrimination. Notably, the Court focused on the status of the employees and used the term “transgender status” rather than the broader and amorphous term “gender identity.” * Restrict the application of Bostock. The new Administration should restrict Bostock’s application of sex discrimination protections to sexual orientation and transgender status in the context of hiring and firing. *Withdraw unlawful “notices” and “guidances.” The President should direct agencies to withdraw unlawful “notices” and “guidances” purporting to apply Bostock’s reasoning broadly outside hiring and firing. *Rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics. The President should direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc. *Direct agencies to refocus enforcement of sex discrimination laws. The President should direct agencies to focus their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of “sex.”"

"And the attacks on queer people just keep coming. In May 2023, the Human Rights Campaign listed anti-queer bills introduced and passed in this year alone: • Over 520 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures, a record; • Over 220 bills specifically target transgender and non-binary people, also a record; and • A record 74 anti-LGBTQ laws have been enacted so far this year, including: • Laws banning gender affirming care for transgender youth: 16 • Laws requiring or allowing misgendering of transgender students: 7 • Laws targeting drag performances: 2 • Laws creating a license to discriminate: 3 • Laws censoring school curricula, including books: 13 We’re not paranoid. They really do want us to disappear."

"Provide Robust Accommodations for Religious Employees. Title VII requires reasonable accommodations for an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs, observances, or practices unless it poses an undue hardship on the employer’s business. These accommodation protections also apply to issues related to marriage, gender, and sexuality."

"It’s not all that uncommon today for right-wing Christians in the United States to publicly demand that LGBT people be put to death. As recently as Pride month (June) * Though they’re starting to say the quiet part out loud, even in this country, they’ve been so much less careful in Africa for decades now. It’s not all that uncommon today for right-wing Christians in the United States to publicly demand that LGBT people be put to death. As recently as Pride month (June) of last year, in a sermon that went viral on Tik-Tok, Pastor Joe Jones of Shield of Faith Baptist Church in Boise, Idaho, called for all gay people to be executed. Local NBC and CBS TV stations, along with some national affiliates, saw fit to amplify Jones’s demand to “put them to death. Put all queers to death” by interviewing him in prime time. In keeping with right-wing propaganda that treats queer people as child predators, Jones sees killing gays as the key to preventing the sexual abuse of children. “When they die,” he said, “that stops the pedophilia. It’s a very, very simple process.” (The reality is that most sexual abuse of children involves male perpetrators and girl victims and happens inside families.) Though American “Christians” like Jones may be years away, if ever, from instituting the death penalty for queer people here, they have already been far more successful in Africa. On May 29, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni signed perhaps the world’s harshest anti-LGBT law, criminalizing all homosexual activity, providing the death penalty for “serial offenders,” and according to the Reuters news agency, for the “transmission of a terminal illness like HIV/AIDS through gay sex.” It also “decrees a 20-year sentence for ‘promoting’ homosexuality.” While Uganda’s new anti-gay law may be the most extreme on the continent, more than 30 other African countries already outlaw homosexuality to varying degrees."

"Now, however, there’s a new extermination campaign stalking this country that would definitely include me among its targets: the right-wing Republican crusade against “sexual predators” and “groomers,” by which they mean LGBTQI+ people. (I’m going to keep things simple here by just writing “LGBT” or “queer” to indicate this varied collection of Americans who are presently a prime target of the right wing in this country.) You may think “extermination campaign” is an extreme way to describe the set of public pronouncements, laws, and regulations addressing the existence of queer people here. Sadly, I disagree. Ambitious would-be Republican presidential candidates across the country, from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to the less-known governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, are using anti-queer legislation to bolster their primary campaigns. For Florida, it started in July 2022 with DeSantis’s Parental Rights in Education act (better known as his “Don’t Say Gay” law), which mandated that, in the state’s public schools, “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards."

"In April 2023, DeSantis doubled down, signing a new law that extended the ban all the way up through high school. Florida teachers at every level now run the very real risk of losing their jobs and credentials if they violate the new law. And queer kids, who are already at elevated risk of depression and suicide, have been deprived of the kind of affirming space that, research shows, greatly reduces those possibilities. Is Florida an outlier? Not really. Other states have followed its lead in restricting mentions of sexual orientation or gender identity in their public schools. By February of this year, 42 such bills had been introduced in a total of 22 states and are creating a wave of LGBT refugees. But the attacks against queer people go well beyond banning any discussion of gayness in public schools. We’re also witnessing a national campaign against trans and nonbinary people that, in effect, aims to eliminate such human beings altogether, whether by denying their very existence or denying them the medical care they need. This campaign began with a focus on trans youth but has since widened to include trans and nonbinary people of all ages."

"What I failed to emphasize then—perhaps because I thought it went without saying (but it certainly needs to be said today)—is that fascism is almost by definition deadly. It needs enemies on whom it can focus the steaming rage of its adherents, and it is quite content for that rage to lead to literal extermination campaigns. The creation of such enemies invariably involves a process of rhetorical dehumanization. In fascist propaganda, target groups cease to be actual people, becoming instead vermin, viruses, human garbage, communists, Marxists, terrorists, or, in the case of the present attacks on LGBT people, pedophiles and groomers. As fascist movements develop, they bring underground streams of hatred into the light of “legitimate” political discourse. All those decades ago, I suggested that the Christian fundamentalists represented an incipient fascist force. I think it’s fair to say that today’s Make America Great Again crew has inherited that mantle, successfully incorporating right-wing Christianity into a larger proto-fascist movement. All the elements of classic fascism now lurk there: adulation of the leader, subordination of the individual to the larger movement, an appeal to mythical past glories, a not-so-subtle embrace of white supremacy, and discomfort with anything or anyone threatening the “natural” order of men and women. You have only to watch a video of a Trump rally to see that his is a mass (even if not a majority) movement."

"Why should it matter whether Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and the Republican Party he’s largely taken over represent a kind of fascism? The answer: because the logic of fascism leads so inexorably to the politics of extermination. Describing his MAGA movement as fascism makes it easier to recognize the existential threat it truly represents—not only to a democratic society but to specific groups of human beings within it. I know it may sound alarmist, but I think it’s true: proto-fascist forces in this country have shown that they are increasingly willing to exterminate queer people, if that’s what it takes to gain and hold on to power. If I’m right, that means all Americans, queer or not, now face an existential threat. For those who don’t happen to fall into one of MAGA’s target groups, let me close by paraphrasing Donald Trump: In the end, they’re coming after you. We’re just standing in the way."

"Avery told us how gay people used to not be allowed to touch. At bars, clubs, wherever, you’d be arrested for touching. So people danced with two feet of space between them and scattered even farther when the cops came. But he said they took up a lot of space when they were dancing, used their whole bodies."

"I saw a Gay Liberation Front flier from the 70’s that said: “Touch One Another.” I didn’t quite understand its meaning until Grace and I were at Jewel’s, and Avery told us about the no-touch laws.Then, we understood that the state had existed in the space between two people. I thought about how law creates forcefields between us, isolating us from the touch we need and want. I thought about the after-life of these laws, the way that forcefields still exist all around us and between us.It was profound, and scary, to think about about the way those anti-touch laws still affect my experience of myself."

"In 2006, following the horrific murder of Gwen Araujo, California became the first state to pass legislation limiting the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense. The law, named in Gwen’s honor, aimed to “curtail the use of so-called ‘panic strategies’... most widely used in criminal cases involving bias based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” More specifically, The Gwen Araujo Justice For Victims Act (AB 1160) allows parties to request “the court instruct jurors not to allow bias based on sexual orientation, gender identity or other protected bases to influence their decision.” While this bill was pending in the state legislature, Vice President Kamala Harris, at that time San Francisco District Attorney, called for a national conference on combating the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense – an action that was also undertaken in Georgia a year earlier by the Fulton County District Attorney in response to the murder of Ahmed Dabarran. Despite this flurry of action regarding the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense, for years The Gwen Araujo Justice For Victims Act remained the only legislation in the country limiting the heinous defense strategy. In 2014, California further restricted use of the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense when the state legislature passed Assembly Bill No. 2501. While the 2006 Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act focused on juror instruction, Assembly Bill No. 2501 codified the illegality of the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense. The new law amended Section 192 of California’s Penal Code to prohibit “the discovery of, knowledge about, or potential disclosure of the victim’s actual or perceived gender, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation” from being considered objectively reasonable circumstances for a sudden altercation. This means that murder charges cannot be reduced to voluntary manslaughter through the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense in California. Importantly, the law also clarifies that this ban includes “circumstances in which the victim made an unwanted non-forcible romantic or sexual advance towards the defendant, or if the defendant and victim dated or had a romantic or sexual relationship.” Assembly Bill No. 2501 was groundbreaking as the first successful piece of legislation specifically prohibiting the use and limiting the effectiveness of the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense. For three years, it was the only legislation in the nation that acted to curtail the use of this heinous courtroom tactic."

"Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended."

"Gay people, we are painted as child molestors. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the myth of child molestations by gays. I want to talk about the fact that in this state some 95 percent of child molestations are heterosexual and usually committed by a parent. I want to talk about the fact that all child abandonments are heterosexual. I want to talk about the fact that all abuse of children is by their heterosexual parents. I want to talk about the fact that some 98 percent of the six million rapes committed annually are heterosexual. I want to talk about the fact that one out of every three women who will be murdered in this state this year will be murdered by their husbands. I want to talk about the fact that some 30 percent of all heterosexual marriages contain domestic violence. And finally, I want to tell the John Briggs and the Anita Bryants that they talk about the myths of gays, but today I’m talking about the facts of heterosexual violence and what the hell are you going to do about that? Clean up your own house before you start telling lies about gays. Don’t distort the Bible to hide your own sins. Don’t change facts to lies. Don’t look for cheap political advantage in playing upon people’s fears! Judging by the latest polls, even the youth can tell you’re lying! Anita Bryant, John Briggs: Your unwillingness to talk about your own house, your deliberate lies and distortions, your unwillingness to face the truth, chills my blood. It reeks of madness!"

"There is a difference between morality and murder. The fact that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that, my friends, is the true perversion! For the standards that we set, should we look to next week’s headlines? Well, I’m tired of the lies of the Anita Bryants and the John Briggs. I’m tired of their myths. I’m tired of their distortions. I’m speaking out about it."

"Gay brothers and sisters, what are you going to do about it? You must come out. Come out to your parents. I know that it is hard and that it will hurt them, but think of how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives. I know that it is hard and will upset them but think of how they will upset you in the voting booth. Come out to your friends. If indeed, they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, to your co-workers, to the people who work where you eat and shop. Come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are being terrified by the votes coming from Dade County to Eugene. If Briggs wins, he will not stop. They never do. Like all mad people, they are forced to go on, to prove they were right."

"What would you do if your government identification suddenly ceased to exist? In the state of Kansas last month, hundreds of residents received a notice that their driver’s licenses had been revoked. They hadn’t done anything wrong to warrant this action – except change their gender identity. Under a new state law that was passed on Feb. 26, Kansans are now forced to have their documentation reflect their biological sex at birth. As a result, the trans community in Kansas has been left reeling. Forcing trans individuals to renounce their own gender identity is deeply wrong, and it reflects a wider assault on trans rights in the U.S. that serves to dehumanize and minimize their existence. To understand the law’s harmful impact, we must dig deeper into the details. Known as S.B. 244, it orders that gender markers on a driver’s license or birth certificate must reflect someone’s assigned sex at birth. Previously, Kansas allowed people to change their gender on government IDs. S.B. 244, however, instantly changed that rule as soon as it became law, affecting about 1700 people in the state. It’s also worth mentioning that Kansas bills usually become law on July 1, in the year that they are passed, but this one was specifically ordered to take effect just a few days after it was signed. The application of the law was so sudden that those affected had to have friends or family drive them to the DMV so that they could get new licenses. If they had tried to drive themselves, they would have already risked getting pulled over."

"The law also prohibits trans people from using bathrooms in public places according to their preferred gender identity and allows citizens to sue for up to $1000 in damages if they believe someone has violated these rules. According to the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), 20 states currently have laws that prohibit in some form the ability of trans people to enter the bathroom of their choice. With this law, Kansas has put itself near the top of these states in discriminatory severity, since it applies to all public spaces and violations represent a criminal offense. When you add in the amount people can ask for in so-called “damages,” S.B. 244 represents a particularly draconian and disgusting law. It weaponizes the government and the state’s own citizens to discriminate against trans individuals. These restrictions on trans rights have already spurred many members of the trans community to think about leaving Kansas. Those who stay are now essentially considered nonexistent until they comply, since their current gender identity has been invalidated. To Kansas, there is no such thing as transitioning anymore – only your initial biology matters. It is especially notable that the law defines gender as a person’s “biological sex at birth,” even though gender is a social construct and not biological. At the same time, while genetics cannot be altered, some aspects of one’s biological sex can change. The law’s language therefore fundamentally misunderstands the actual science and social aspects in favor of catering to anti-trans sentiment."

"Kansas’ law follows the growing efforts of the American right to restrict the rights of trans people and LGBTQ+ individuals in general. In the past few years, especially after Trump was elected to a second term, Republicans have honed in on attacking trans rights. Several Republican states, including Florida and Texas, have already passed laws prohibiting trans individuals from officially changing their gender identity in the future. Kansas is simply the first state to take a drastic step and revoke documents that were already on file. Trans people have had to deal with an increasing amount of discriminatory legislation. According to Trans Legislation Tracker, 2025 saw the highest number of anti-trans bills both considered and passed. Just through the first couple of months in 2026, 15 bills restricting trans rights have already been passed. In addition, the ACLU has tracked 489 anti-LGBTQ+ bills that are currently waiting on votes. This surge in restrictive legislation is in line with the Trump administration, which prevented transgender, intersex and nonbinary people from updating their gender designation on his first day in office. The onslaught on trans rights, both at the state and federal level, represents a concerted effort from Republicans to eliminate their legal standing. Kansas’ law should serve as a fresh reminder that the right will not stop in its attempt to roll back the protections trans individuals had just started to enjoy. By forcing trans people to go against their own identity, Kansas is throwing the weight of the state against their ability to simply live their lives comfortably. Policing bathroom use while revoking driver’s licenses and birth certificates is a clear sign that trans people are no longer welcome in the state of Kansas. If the law is allowed to stand, anti-trans discrimination and dehumanization will continue to get worse."

"Speculation of whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take a case to overturn same-sex marriage at the federal level is mounting after embattled Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis pushed the effort as far up the legal chain as possible. Davis' attorney, Matthew Staver, previously told Newsweek he is optimistic the court will again rule on Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark case that guaranteed the right to same-sex marriage nationwide. William Powell, the attorney who represented the couple that sued Davis, previously wrote in a statement provided to Newsweek that he is "confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis' arguments do not merit further attention." Obergefell v. Hodges, as part of a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in June 2015, guaranteed that same-sex couples can marry by the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Prior the Court's ruling, equal rights and protections for same-sex marriage was already established in 36 states by statutes, court rulings, or voter initiatives. Davis made national headlines just two months after the Obergefell v. Hodges decision when she defied a U.S. federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. After being elected clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, in 2014, she was defeated by Democratic challenger Elwood Caudill Jr. in 2018."

"In an interview at Catholic University last week, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said what he’s clearly been thinking for the past 30 years: Supreme Court precedents don’t matter, and he’s making things up as he goes along to fulfill his own political agenda. He didn’t say it in that way, of course. People would have noticed that. Instead, he couched his self-serving philosophy in legal jargon that will fly under the radar of most people, including journalists. Here’s what he said: “At some point we need to think about what we’re doing with stare decisis.… [I]t’s not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say ‘stare decisis’ and not think, turn off the brain, right?” To translate: “Stare decisis” is a foundational legal principle in this country and all countries that follow a “common law” system. What it means, in simple terms, is that prior judicial rulings govern future judicial rulings. If a court rules, for instance, that “gay people have the same basic rights as everyone else in this country, including the right to marry other people,” then that ruling is supposed to govern all future cases concerning the rights of gay people. Thomas, apparently, doesn’t agree. Instead of respecting stare decisis and precedent, he is saying that older cases shouldn’t have the power to control newer ones. For Thomas, just because courts ruled that LGBTQ people should have rights in the past, including the right to marry, doesn’t mean he feels compelled to rule that they should keep them."

"We’ve seen this in Thomas’s opinions in recent years. In 2022, he declared, in a separate but supporting opinion in the Dobbs case, that Roe v. Wade was not respectful of our legal traditions, but Loving v. Virginia is. Why? Well because Roe gave women rights, while Loving gave Thomas the right to marry his white wife, and if you have a better legal difference between those cases other than Thomas’s own personal preferences, I’d love to hear you explain it. Thomas has also decided (in this case, writing for the majority) that simple gun registration laws are not respectful of our traditions in this country, but he signed on to an opinion giving the president the powers of the very king we revolted against. You simply cannot chart a course through what passes for logic in Thomas’s head without understanding his preferred policy outcomes. If Thomas were the only justice who thought like this, it would be a containable problem. But the entire Republican cabal on the Supreme Court rules exactly in the way Thomas is talking about, with no respect for precedent or stare decisis. This coming term, the Republicans on the court are likely to overturn a voting rights precedent they set for themselves only a couple of years ago. The Republicans literally cannot be trusted to respect their own rulings."