GUWAHATI, India — Anilya Boro may not have won the crown at India’s Miss Trans NE pageant this year, but having her parents there in support was a validation in its own right.
“I must prove to my parents that I can do something as a girl,” said the 22-year-old. “I didn’t win a title, but I am very happy that my parents were at the show to support me. Now they have accepted my decision to live as a girl and undergo surgery, but they don’t want me to rush through.”
Twenty transgender women sashayed on a stage dressed as ethnic and tribal characters in the beauty pageant, drawing rounds of applause from the audience. The contestants came from India’s remote eight northeastern states, some of them nestled in the Himalayas in a relatively undeveloped region known for its stunning natural vistas.
The event on Wednesday promoted the beauty and uniqueness of the northeastern region and community pride to uplift the transgender community, said Ajan Akash Barauah, the organizer.
It wasn’t easy to hold the show with no corporate funding. Ajan turned to friends and organizations supporting the transgender cause to finance the pageant.
Sexual minorities across India have gained a degree of acceptance, especially in big cities, and transgender people were guaranteed equal rights as a third gender in 2014. But prejudice persists and the community continues to face discrimination and rejection by their families. They’re often denied jobs, education and health care.
Ajan lived in the Indian capital for 13 years as a fashion designer and moved to her hometown of Guwahati in northeastern Assam state after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country.
She had won the title of Trans Queen in 2014, in a pageant held in the southern city of Vishakhapatnam, and later decided to help the community in the northeastern region.
“The Miss Trans NE pageant on Nov. 30 was only for men who identified themselves as women. Next year, it will include transgender men as well,’’ Ajan said.
Anilya is keeping her sights high, dreaming of one day winning the Miss Universe title. Her mother, Aikon Boro, said Anilya wore only girl’s clothes since she was 6 or 7, feeling the most comfortable in them.
“Everybody in the family tried to change her habits and behavior but she didn’t listen. Now the family members have accepted her as a transgender person,’’ she said.
The top prize at Miss Trans NE went to Lucey Ham from Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh state which borders on China, while Aria Deka and Rishidhya Sangkarishan, both from Assam in the far northeast, were runners-up.
“I am overwhelmed with joy. I have nothing to say. I will never forget the biggest moment of my life,” Ham said after she was crowned the winner.
Creating awareness about transgender people and educating them about their rights was what got Ajan involved with the event.
“They should know about gender equality everywhere. Even when you go to the office or a hotel or a public toilet you have the right to ask for proper facilities,” Ajan said.
Florida lawmakers are reviewing ways to restore some of the privileges that the state stripped from Walt Disney Co., still reducing the company’s benefits dramatically without going as far as ending them all, a key legislator said.
Earlier this year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law that in 2023 would dissolve a special government district that’s granted sweeping benefits to Disney for half a century, called Reedy Creek, unless it’s reinstated by the legislature. The move was triggered by what the Republican governor saw as Disney’s criticism of a law he signed that limits elementary school teachings about gender identity.
The sponsor of the law axing the entertainment giant’s Florida perks, state Representative Randy Fine, said he’s encouraged by last month’s ouster of Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Chapek, who led opposition to DeSantis’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law. Fine said discussions were helped by signs that Disney’s returning CEO Bob Iger will steer clear of Florida politics.
“I think Mr. Iger has already said it probably was a misstep on the company’s part and how they handled it,” Fine said in an interview. “I don’t think we’d be in this situation if Bob Iger had been CEO.”
The move pitted DeSantis against one of Florida’s largest and most powerful employers, known for several iconic theme parks in Orlando. DeSantis, who’s widely believed to be plotting a run for president in 2024, has made the blow against Disney a key part of his so-called “anti-woke” agenda. The Florida governor has vowed repeatedly to go after corporations that side against him on culture-war fights over race, gender identity and abortion. Fighting what he called “the woke” was the foundation of a reelection campaign that gave DeSantis one of the largest landslide victories of any Republican in the US midterm elections in November.
DeSantis won’t make any “U-turns” from the law he signed this year, his chief spokesman said. The governor will not reverse pledges to remove “the extraordinary benefit given to one company,” Press Secretary Bryan Griffin said in an emailed statement. “A plan is in the works and will be released soon.”
Iger to ‘quiet things down’ in Florida
One goal would be to ensure that Disney would be responsible for paying back the nearly $1 billion in municipal bonds issued by the special district, DeSantis has said. “We will have an even playing field for businesses in Florida, and the state certainly owes no special favors to one company,” Griffin said. “Disney’s debts will not fall on the taxpayers of Florida.”
A Disney spokesperson declined comment. In a recent hall meeting with Disney employees, Iger, said: “Do I like the company being embroiled in controversy? Of course not.”
“It can be distracting and have a negative impact on the company. To the extent I can quiet things down, I’m going to do that,” he said, adding that he’s still getting “up to speed” on the situation with Reedy Creek and that he doesn’t have all the details about the ramifications of Florida’s decision.
Legislation to replace Reedy Creek will seek to strip away benefits that no other company except Disney enjoys, said Fine, who said he’s involved in discussions among lawmakers and the governor. Fine declined to comment on details of the discussions or what privileges might be on the chopping block once a new law is proposed in the legislature.
But he cited perks Disney has enjoyed such as government-like powers to seize land via eminent domain and to sell bonds. The Reedy Creek tax district was created by the legislature in 1967 in a deal that led to the construction of Disney World. It gave Disney self-governing power over 25,000 acres, including overseeing its own building code and permits, which helped the company build faster.
“I think what you’ll likely see is some of the things that just made no sense,” said Fine. “You know, it isn’t going to be, ‘Oops, let’s go back to the way it was.’ You’re gonna see something substantially different.”
Iger, in the wide-ranging meeting with employees, said he’s not going to back down on having Disney be a “good citizen of the world,” which is sometimes mistakenly branded as political.
“I think there’s a misperception here about what politics is,” he explained. “I think that some of the subjects that have proven to be controversial as it relates to Disney have been branded political, and I don’t necessarily believe they are.”
—With assistance from Thomas Buckley
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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — In a crowded brewery, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis embraced Richard Fierro, the veteran hailed as a hero after tackling a shooter who killed five people and injured 17 others at the LGBTQ enclave Club Q last week.
There was a festive atmosphere Tuesday at Atrevida Beer, owned by Fierro, where patrons clutched pints of beer, a long line stretched across the room to the door, and above the bar was printed a message: “Diversity, it’s on tap.”
Fierro’s event, where Polis and the Colorado Springs mayor both made an appearance, was the paradigm of a catchphrase Fierro has repeated since the shooting: “Be nice, hug each other, take care of your neighbor.”
The hugs seemed contagious. Fierro squeezed Wyatt Kent, a drag queen whose 23rd birthday was being celebrated the night of the shooting, and chatted with his family.
Kent, who’s drag name is Potted Plant, was still reeling from the horrific night. Kent remembered shots, then collapsing below Kelly Loving, who had been shot in the chest. Squeezing her hand as they asked Siri to call 911, Kent then held Loving’s head, repeating “one more breath, just one more breath” before paramedics arrived.
The bleeding from Loving’s chest, was “like a hole in an air mattress,” said Kent, pausing and looking away. Loving was among the five dead, along with Daniel Aston, who Kent was in a relationship with. Aston had left strawberries, roses and a card for Kent’s birthday before he was killed.
Kent, who’d written 119 poems about Aston, went completely numb in the days afterward. Then, they began connecting with Aston’s family and friends, those “who loved him, it’s really healing,” they said.
Club Q’s community had been a steadfast support network, said Kent, one which has continued to undergird the community’s healing since the tragedy.
“If I pour myself out into others they will pour themselves out back into me,” said Kent, “and that’s what this community has always done.”
The broader Colorado Springs community is pouring out support for the survivors, too. At his brewery, Fierro was honored with $50,000 from a local credit union.
“I’ve never had that much money in my life,” said an astonished Fierro, who reiterated that “everyone in (Club Q) was a hero.”
Matt Gendron, chief engagement officer at Ent Credit Union and who’s employee had been in Club Q that night, said that Fierro “saved the lives of many people, including one of our family members.”
Earlier that day, Polis solemnly walked along a line of flowers, crosses and signs bearing the photos and names of the victims outside Club Q in Colorado Springs.
When he reached the end, he picked up a piece of pink chalk and drew a heart and wrote “We remember” on the pavement in front of the memorial, which had been covered with tarps to protect it from snow until his arrival.
“Five people are lost forever. We celebrate their lives. We mourn them,” Polis said while speaking to reporters afterward at the site.
Polis, who spoke earlier in the day to relatives of those killed as well as the injured, wore a gay pride ribbon pinned to the zipper of his puffy jacket. The Democrat, who became the first openly gay man elected governor in the U.S. in 2018, said he was concerned about rhetoric associating mainly transgender people with grooming and pedophilia and feared it could “inspire acts against the LGBTQ community.”
But he was also optimistic about the future of the club, a sanctuary for the LGBTQ community in the mostly conservative city of 480,000, located about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Denver.
“Club Q will be back and the community will be back,” he said.
The attacker opened fire Nov. 19 with a semiautomatic rifle inside the gay nightclub before being subdued by patrons and arrested by police who arrived within minutes, authorities have said.
The motive remains under investigation and one person is in custody.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, was being held without bond on suspicion of murder and hate crimes. Aldrich was arrested at the club after being stopped and beaten by patrons.
Hate crime charges would require proving that the shooter was motivated by bias, such as against the victims’ actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
Prosecutors have not yet filed formal charges against Aldrich, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, according to court filings by his lawyers.
Aldrich was arrested last year after a relative reported Aldrich was threatening her with a homemade bomb and other weapons, according to authorities.
Ring doorbell video obtained by The Associated Press shows Aldrich arriving at their mother’s front door with a big black bag the day of the 2021 bomb threat, telling her the police were nearby and adding, “This is where I stand. Today I die.”
Authorities at the time said no explosives were found.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A psychiatrist called to the stand by Arkansas as the state defends its ban on gender-affirming care for children said Monday he was concerned about the impact the law could have on some transgender youth who would see their treatments cut off.
Dr. Stephen Levine, a psychiatrist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Ohio, testified as the nation’s first trial over such a ban continued before a federal judge after a five-week break.
Arkansas’ law, which was temporarily blocked last year, would prohibit doctors from providing gender-affirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old. It also would prohibit doctors from referring patients elsewhere for such care.
Levine criticized the use of gender-affirming medical treatment for minors, but under cross examination acknowledged his concerns about the psychological impacts of cutting off such care for some trans youth already receiving it. Levine said it could be “shocking and devastating” for some youth receiving the care.
“My concern with the law, the way it was originally written, is it seemed to leave out what you’re talking about,” Levine testified.
Republican lawmakers in Arkansas enacted the ban last year, overriding a veto by GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Hutchinson, who leaves office in January, also said that the law went too far by cutting off treatments for children currently receiving such care. Arkansas was the first state to enact such a ban.
Multiple medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose the bans and experts say the treatments are safe if properly administered. The American Psychiatric Association has supported the ruling blocking Arkansas’ ban, saying denying such care to adolescents who need it could harm their mental health.
But Levine said he recommends psychotherapy over gender-affirming care for the treatment of gender dysphoria, criticizing the current standard of care as using psychotherapy as “cheerleading” for such treatments.
Levine, however, testified that he wasn’t aware of what protocols are followed by doctors who provide such care in Arkansas.
The state has argued that the prohibition is within its authority to regulate the medical profession. People opposed to such treatments for children argue they are too young to make such decisions about their futures.
Levine echoed that argument, saying minor patients “really have very little concept of what their future holds.”
A similar ban has been blocked by a federal judge in Alabama, and other states have taken steps to restrict such care. Florida medical officials earlier this month approved a rule banning gender-affirming care for minors, at the urging of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
A judge in Texas has blocked that state’s efforts to investigate gender-confirming care for minors as child abuse. Children’s hospitals around the country have faced harassment and threats of violence for providing gender-confirming care.
The families of four transgender youth sued challenging Arkansas’ ban. Last month, a 17-year-old testified that his life has been transformed by the hormone therapy he’s been receiving and said ending the treatments could force his family to leave the state.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The co-owner of the Colorado Springs gay nightclub where a shooter turned a drag queen’s birthday celebration into a massacre said he thinks the shooting that killed five people and injured 17 others is a reflection of anti-LGBTQ sentiment that has evolved from prejudice to incitement.
Nic Grzecka’s voice was tinged with exhaustion as he spoke with The Associated Press on Wednesday night in some of his first comments since Saturday night’s attack at Club Q, a venue Grzecka helped build into an enclave that sustained the LGBTQ community in conservative-leaning Colorado Springs.
Authorities haven’t said why the suspect opened fired at the club before being subdued into submission by patrons, but they are facing hate crime charges. The suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, has not entered a plea or spoken about the incident.
Grzecka said he believes the targeting of a drag queen event is connected to the art form being cast in a false light in recent months by right-wing activists and politicians who complain about the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children. Even though general acceptance of the LGBTQ community has grown, this new dynamic has fostered a dangerous climate.
“It’s different to walk down the street holding my boyfriend’s hand and getting spit at (as opposed to) a politician relating a drag queen to a groomer of their children,” Grzecka said. “I would rather be spit on in the street than the hate get as bad as where we are today.”
Earlier this year, Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill barring teachers from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation with younger students. A month later, references to “pedophiles” and “grooming” in relation to LGBTQ people rose 400%, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign.
“Lying about our community, and making them into something they are not, creates a different type of hate,” said Grzecka.
Grzecka, who started mopping floors and bartending at Club Q in 2003 a year after it opened, said he hopes to channel his grief and anger into figuring out how to rebuild the support system for Colorado Springs’ LGBTQ community that only Club Q had provided.
City and state officials have offered support and President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden reached out to Grzecka and co-owner Matthew Haynes on Thursday to offer condolences and reiterate their support for the community as well as their commitment to fighting back against hate and gun violence.
Grzecka said Club Q opened after the only other gay bar in Colorado Springs at that time shuttered. He described that era as an evolution of gay bars. Decades ago, dingy, hole-in-the-wall gay venues were meant largely for finding a hookup or date, said Grzecka. But he said once the internet offered anonymous ways to find love online, the bars transitioned into well lit, clean non-smoking spaces to hang out with friends. Club Q was at the vanguard of that transition.
Once he became co-owner in 2014, Grzecka helped mold Club Q into not merely a nightlife venue but a community center – a platform to create a “chosen family” for LGBTQ people, especially for those estranged from their birth family. Drag queen bingo nights, friendsgiving and Christmas dinners, birthday celebrations became staples of Club Q which was open 365 days a year.
In the aftermath of the shooting, with that community center having been torn away, Grzecka and other community leaders said they are channeling grief and anger into reconstituting the support structure that only Club Q had offered.
“When that system goes away, you realize how much more the bar was really providing,” said Justin Burn, an organizer with Pikes Peak Pride. “Those that may or may not have been a part of the Club Q family, where do they go?”
Burn said the shooting pulled back a curtain on a broader lack of resources for LGBTQ adults in Colorado Springs. Burn, Grzecka and others are working with national organizations to do an assessment of the community’s need as they develop a blueprint to offer a robust support network.
Grzecka is looking to rebuild the “loving culture” and necessary support to “make sure that this tragedy is turned into the best thing it can be for the city.”
“Everybody needs community,” he said.
———
Jesse Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The co-owner of the Colorado Springs gay nightclub where a shooter turned a drag queen’s birthday celebration into a massacre said he thinks the shooting that killed five people and injured 17 others is a reflection of anti-LGBTQ sentiment that has evolved from prejudice to incitement.
Nic Grzecka’s voice was tinged with exhaustion as he spoke with The Associated Press on Wednesday night in some of his first comments since Saturday night’s attack at Club Q, a venue Grzecka helped build into an enclave that sustained the LGBTQ community in conservative-leaning Colorado Springs.
Authorities haven’t said why the suspect opened fired at the club before being subdued into submission by patrons, but they are facing hate crime charges. The suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, has not entered a plea or spoken about the incident.
Grzecka said he believes the targeting of a drag queen event is connected to the art form being cast in a false light in recent months by right-wing activists and politicians who complain about the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children. Even though general acceptance of the LGBTQ community has grown, this new dynamic has fostered a dangerous climate.
“It’s different to walk down the street holding my boyfriend’s hand and getting spit at to a politician relating a drag queen to a groomer of their children,” Grzecka said. “I would rather be spit on in the street than the hate get as bad as where we are today.”
Earlier this year, Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill barring teachers from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation with younger students. A month later, references to “pedophiles” and “grooming” in relation to LGBTQ people rose 400%, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign.
“Lying about our community, and making them into something they are not, creates a different type of hate,” said Grzecka.
Grzecka, who started mopping floors and bartending at Club Q in 2003 a year after it opened, said he hopes to channel his grief and anger into figuring out how to rebuild the support system for Colorado Springs’ LGBTQ community that only Club Q had provided.
City and state officials have offered support and President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden reached out to Grzecka and co-owner Matthew Haynes on Thursday to offer condolences and reiterate their support for the community as well as their commitment to fighting back against hate and gun violence.
Grzecka said Club Q opened after the only other gay bar in Colorado Springs at that time shuttered. He described that era as an evolution of gay bars. Decades ago, dingy, hole-in-the-wall gay venues were meant largely for finding a hookup or date, said Grzecka. But he said once the internet offered anonymous ways to find love online, the bars transitioned into well lit, clean non-smoking spaces to hang out with friends. Club Q was at the vanguard of that transition.
Once he became co-owner in 2014, Grzecka helped mold Club Q into not merely a nightlife venue but a community center – a platform to create a “chosen family” for LGBTQ people, especially for those estranged from their birth family. Drag queen bingo nights, friendsgiving and Christmas dinners, birthday celebrations became staples of Club Q which was open 365 days a year.
In the aftermath of the shooting, with that community center having been torn away, Grzecka and other community leaders said they are channeling grief and anger into reconstituting the support structure that only Club Q had offered.
“When that system goes away, you realize how much more the bar was really providing,” said Justin Burn, an organizer with Pikes Peak Pride. “Those that may or may not have been a part of the Club Q family, where do they go?”
Burn said the shooting pulled back a curtain on a broader lack of resources for LGBTQ adults in Colorado Springs. Burn, Grzecka and others are working with national organizations to do an assessment of the community’s need as they develop a blueprint to offer a robust support network.
Grzecka is looking to rebuild the “loving culture” and necessary support to “make sure that this tragedy is turned into the best thing it can be for the city.”
“Everybody needs community,” he said.
———
Jesse Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
A loving boyfriend. A 28-year-old bartender who loved to perform. A mother visiting from a small town who enjoyed hunting. These are among the victims of the rampage at an LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs that left five people dead and 17 others with gunshot wounds.
Club regulars and newcomers — gay and straight, transgender and cisgender — flocked to Club Q over the weekend to dance, enjoy a comedy show or work behind the bar. What began as a typical Saturday evening of dancing and drinking at the preeminent LGBTQ establishment in the conservative-leaning Colorado city south of Denver ended in tragedy when a gunman entered and began spraying bullets before he was tackled and subdued.
The 22-year-old suspect is facing five murder charges and five charges of committing a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury.
Here are the five people killed:
DANIEL ASTON
Daniel Aston, 28, grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and moved to be closer to family in Colorado Springs two years ago. He worked as a bartender and entertainer at Club Q and cherished the venue as a sanctuary where as a transgender man he could be himself and perform to a lauding audience, his mother Sabrina Aston told The Associated Press.
The self-proclaimed “Master of Silly Business,” Aston had a propensity for making others laugh that started as a child when he would don elaborate costumes and write plays acted out by neighborhood kids. In college, where he was president of his school’s LGBTQ club, he put on fundraisers with ever-more flashy productions.
″(Daniel’s shows) are great. Everybody needs to go see him,” his mother said. “He lit up a room, always smiling, always happy and silly,” she said.
DERRICK RUMP
Derrick Rump, 38, a bartender at Club Q, was remembered as a loving person with a quick wit who adopted his friends as his family.
“He was living his dream and he would have wanted everyone to do the same,” said his mother, Julia Thames, who confirmed his death to ABC News.
She said in a statement that Rump was “a kind loving person who had a heart of gold.”
“He was always there for my daughter and myself when we needed him; also his friends from Colorado, which he would say was his family also,” she said in the statement.
Rump’s friend, Anthony Jaramillo, told CBS News that Rump was “loving, supportive, with a heavy hand in his drink pouring, and just a really good listener and would not be afraid to tell you when you were wrong instead of telling you what you wanted to hear and that was really valuable.”
KELLY LOVING
Kelly Loving, 40, had been talking to a friend on a FaceTime call from inside Club Q just minutes before the shooting started. Natalee Skye Bingham told The New York Times that the last thing she said to Loving was: “Be safe. I love you.”
“She was like a trans mother to me. I looked up to her,” Bingham said. “In the gay community you create your families, so it’s like I lost my real mother almost.”
Bingham, 25, said Loving had only recently moved to Denver and was visiting the club while on a weekend trip to Colorado Springs.
“She was a tough woman,” Bingham said. “She taught me how it was to be a trans woman and live your life day to day.”
Loving’s sister, Tiffany Loving, offered condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the shooting as well as those struggling for acceptance in the world.
“My sister was a good person. She was loving and caring and sweet. Everyone loved her. Kelly was a wonderful person,” she said in a statement.
RAYMOND GREEN VANCE
Raymond Green Vance, 22, went to Club Q on Saturday night with his girlfriend, Kassy Fierro, and her father, Rich, the co-owner of Atrevida Beer Co., a local brewery in Colorado Springs. The group was there to celebrate a friend’s birthday.
“My sweet baby. ill never be able to heal from this. i want to wake up from this horrendous nightmare. i pray u hear me when i call for you. im so sorry. ill never forgive myself for taking everyone there. i will love you til the day i get to come back home to your arms,” Kassy Fierro wrote in a Facebook post Monday accompanied by a photo of the couple.
Vance’s family in a statement described him as a kind, selfless man with a promising future. He worked at a FedEx Distribution Center, loved video games and was “willing to go out of his way to help anyone,” the family said.
“Raymond was the victim of a man who unleashed terror on innocent people out with family and friends,” they wrote in the statement.
ASHLEY PAUGH
Ashley Paugh, 35, was a loving mother and wife with a “huge heart,” said her husband, Kurt Paugh. She volunteered with an organization that helped children in foster care and delivered Christmas trees to the homes in which they were placed to brighten their holiday seasons.
“She was my high school sweetheart — and she was just an amazing mother. Her daughter was her whole world,” her husband said in a statement.
She also enjoyed hunting, fishing and riding four-wheelers.
A resident of La Junta, a 7,500-person town about a two-hour’s drive from Colorado Springs, Paugh was visiting for the day with a friend when they went to Club Q on Saturday night for a comedy act. She was scheduled to organize the delivery of trees to homes with foster children in Pueblo and Colorado Springs this week, her husband said.
———
Associated Press News Researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York and reporter Jesse Bedayn in Colorado Springs contributed to this report. Bedayn is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The man suspected of opening fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs was being held on murder and hate crime charges Monday, while hundreds of people gathered to honor the five people killed and 17 wounded in the attack on a venue that for decades was a sanctuary for the local LGBTQ community.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, faces five murder charges and five charges of committing a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury in Saturday night’s attack at Club Q, online court records showed.
Authorities said the attack was halted by two club patrons including Richard Fierro, who told reporters Monday night that he took a handgun from Aldrich, hit him with it and pinned him down with help from another person.
Fierro, a 15-year U.S. Army veteran who owns a local brewery, said he was celebrating a birthday with family members when the suspect “came in shooting.” Fierro said during a lull in the shooting he ran at the suspect, who was wearing some type of armor plates, and pulled him down before severely beating him until police arrived.
“I tried to save people and it didn’t work for five of them,” he said. “These are all good people. … I’m not a hero. I’m just some dude.”
Fierro’s daughter’s longtime boyfriend, Raymond Green Vance, 22, was killed, while his daughter hurt her knee as she ran for cover. Fierro injured his hands, knees and ankle while stopping the shooter.
The suspect remained hospitalized with unspecified injuries but is expected to make his first court appearance in the next couple of days, after doctors clear him to be released from the hospital.
The charges against Aldrich were preliminary, and prosecutors had not filed formal charges in court yet. The hate crime charges would require proving that the gunman was motivated by bias, such as against the victims’ actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
Local and federal authorities during a Monday news briefing declined to answer questions about why hate crime charges are being considered, citing the ongoing investigation. District Attorney Michael Allen noted that the murder charges would carry the harshest penalty — life in prison — whereas bias crimes are eligible for probation.
“But it is important to let the community know that we do not tolerate bias motivated crimes in this community, that we support communities that have been maligned, harassed and intimidated and abused,” Allen said. “And that’s one way that we can do that, showing that we will put the money where our mouth is, essentially, and make sure that we try it that way.”
Additional charges are possible as the investigation continues, he said.
About 200 people gathered Monday night in the cold at a city park for a community vigil for the shooting victims. People held candles, embraced and listened as speakers on a stage expressed both rage and sadness over the shootings.
Jeremiah Harris, who is 24 and gay, said he went to Club Q a couple times a month and recognized one of the victims as the bartender who always served him. He said hearing others speak at the vigil was galvanizing following the attack at what for more than 20 years had been considered an LGBTQ safe spot in the conservative-leaning city.
“Gay people have been here as long as people have been here,” Harris said. “To everybody else that’s opposed to that … we’re not going anywhere. We’re just getting louder and you have to deal with it.”
The other victims were identified by authorities and family members as Ashley Paugh, 35, a mother who helped find homes for foster children; Daniel Aston, 28, who had worked at the club as a a bartender and entertainer; Kelly Loving, 40, whose sister described her as “caring and sweet”; and Derrick Rump, 38, another club bartender who was known for his quick wit and adopting his friends as his family.
Vance’s family said in a statement that the Colorado Springs native was adored by his family and had recently gotten a job at FedEx, where he hoped to save enough money to get his own apartment.
Thomas James was identified by authorities as the other patron who intervened to stop the shooter. Fierro said a third person also helped — a performer at the club who Fierro said kicked the suspect in the head as she ran by.
Court documents laying out Aldrich’s arrest have been sealed at the request of prosecutors. Information on whether Aldrich had a lawyer was not immediately available.
A law enforcement official said the suspect used an AR-15-style semi-automatic weapon. A handgun and additional ammunition magazines also were recovered. The official could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Thirteen victims remained hospitalized Monday, officials said. Five people had been treated and released.
Officials on Monday clarified that 18 people were hurt in the attack, not 25 as they said originally. Among them was one person whose injury was not a gunshot wound. Another victim had no visible injuries, they said.
Colorado Springs, a city of about 480,000, is 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Denver. Mayor John Suthers said there was “reason to hope” all of the hospitalized victims would recover.
The assault quickly raised questions about why authorities did not seek to take Aldrich’s guns away from him in 2021, when he was arrested after his mother reported he threatened her with a homemade bomb and other weapons.
Though authorities at the time said no explosives were found, gun-control advocates have asked why police didn’t use Colorado’s “red flag” laws to seize the weapons his mother says he had. There’s no public record prosecutors ever moved forward with felony kidnapping and menacing charges against Aldrich.
It was the sixth mass killing this month, and it came in a year when the nation was shaken by the deaths of 21 in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. It also rekindled memories of the 2016 massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that killed 49 people.
President Joe Biden talked to Colorado Gov. Jared Polis by phone and will continue to press Congress for an assault weapons ban “because thoughts and prayers are just not enough,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.
A makeshift memorial that sprang up in the hours after the attack continued to grow Monday, as a stream of mourners brought flowers and left messages in support of the LGBTQ community. The shooting site remained cordoned off.
“It’s a reminder that love and acceptance still have a long way to go,” Colorado Springs resident Mary Nikkel said at the site.
Since 2006, there have been 523 mass killings and 2,727 deaths as of Nov. 19, according to The Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S.
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Bedayn is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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Associated Press reporters Haven Daley in Colorado Springs, Colleen Slevin in Denver, Darlene Superville in Washington, Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Jeff McMillan in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, and news researcher Rhonda Shafner from New York contributed.
A couple participate in the gay pride parade in San Salvador, held before the state of emergency was declared on Mar. 27, under which the government is carrying out massive raids in search of suspected gang members. Members of the LGBTI community are among those arbitrarily detained, victims of police homophobia and transphobia. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
by Edgardo Ayala (san salvador)
Inter Press Service
SAN SALVADOR, Nov 21 (IPS) – Police raids against gang members in El Salvador, under a state of emergency in which some civil rights have been suspended, have also affected members of the LGBTI community, and everything points to arrests motivated by hatred of their sexual identity.
Personal accounts gathered by IPS revealed that some of the arrests were characterized by an attitude of hatred towards gays and especially transsexuals on the part of police officers.
“Cases like this, which reveal hatred towards gay or trans people, are happening, but the organizations are not really speaking out, because of the fear that has been generated by the ‘state of exception’,” an activist with Cultura Trans, a San Salvador-based organization of the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex) community, told IPS.
Hatred of homosexuals and transgender people
The activist, who asked to remain anonymous, said that another member of his organization, a gay man known as Carlos, has been detained since Jul. 13, after he complained about the arrest two months earlier of his sister Alessandra, a trans teenager.
The authorities have accused them of “illicit association,” the charge used to arrest alleged gang members or collaborators, under the state of emergency.
“The case against Carlos was staged, it was invented,” said the source. “He is a human rights activist in the trans community, we have documents that show that he participates in our workshops, in our activities.”
A police officer stops a young man in San Salvador and checks his back and other parts of his body for gang-related tattoos, one of the elements used by authorities to track down gang members in El Salvador. Since the state of emergency was declared, 58,000 people have been detained, in many cases arbitrarily, among them members of the LGBTI community. CREDIT: National Civil Police
The state of exception, under which some civil rights are suspended, has been in force in El Salvador since Mar. 27, when the government of Nayib Bukele launched a crusade against criminal gangs, with the backing of the legislature, which is controlled by the ruling New Ideas party.
Gangs have been responsible for the majority of crimes committed in this Central American country for decades.
According to the constitution, a state of exception can be in place for 30 days, and can be extended for another 30. But a legal loophole has allowed the government and Congress to renew the measure every month, under the argument that this was already done during the 1980-1992 civil war.
This interpretation could only be modified by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice. But Bukele, with the backing of the legislature, named five hand-picked magistrates to that chamber in May 2021, in what his critics say marked the beginning of a shift towards authoritarianism, two years into his term.
Since Mar. 27, the police and military have imprisoned some 58,000 people.
In most cases no arrest warrants were issued by a judge, and the arrests are generally based on gang members’ police files.
In addition, anonymous tips by the public to a hotline set up by the government have gradually expanded the number of people arrested.
“The state of emergency exposes you to an inefficient prosecutor, incapable of investigating and linking people to crimes,” William Hernández, director of Entre Amigos, an LGBTI organization founded in 1994, told IPS.
He added: “If a police officer decides to detain someone and make a report of the arrest, they go out to look for them, but there’s no record of who reported that individual, where the information came from, and no one knows who investigated them.”
Among the 58,000 detainees are some 40 people from the LGBTI community, according to a report made public in October by Cristosal and other human rights organizations that monitor abuses committed by the Salvadoran authorities under the state of exception.
These organizations have collected some 4,000 complaints of arbitrary detentions and other abuses, including torture, committed against detainees. Some 80 people have died in police custody and in prison.
Carlos is a gay man who spoke out against the arrest of his younger sister Alessandra, a trans woman seized in May by Salvadoran police, accused of belonging to a gang. In July he was also arrested and so far little is known about their situation, under the state of emergency in El Salvador, which has led to the imprisonment of 58,000 people. CREDIT: Courtesy of Cultura Trans
Police homophobia
In the case of Carlos, 32, and his sister Alessandra, 18, the information available is that she was arrested in May in one of the police sweeps, in a poor neighborhood in the north of San Salvador.
She was arrested for not having a personal identity card. She had recently turned 18, the age of majority, and she should have obtained the document, which is needed for any kind of official procedure.
The police officers who arrested Alessandra told her mother that she was only being taken for 72 hours, while the situation was clarified.
However, something that could have been easily investigated and resolved turned into an ordeal for her and her family, especially her mother, who was facing several health ailments, said the Cultura Trans activist.
“She was in the ‘bartolinas’ (dungeons) of the Zacamil (a police station in that poor neighborhood),” the source said. “We went to leave food for her, then they sent her to the Mariona prison. We realized that she had been beaten and sexually abused, because she was being held in a men’s facility.”
He added: “When they took Alessandra, her mother told us that the police told the girl ‘culero, we are going to take you to be raped, to be f**ked,’ which is what actually did happen. ‘We’re going to take you so that you learn not to dress like a woman’.”
Culero is a pejorative term used in El Salvador against gays.
Meanwhile, her brother Carlos spoke out against Alessandra’s arrest, during activities carried out by the LGBTI community.
In May, in a march against “homo-lesbo-transphobia” – hatred of gays, lesbians and trans people – he carried several handmade signs calling for his sister’s release from prison.
The authorities visited Carlos’ house, and threatened to arrest him as well, which they did on Jul. 13.
According to the source, the police and prosecutors put together a case and accused him of illicit association. They are asking for a 20-year prison sentence.
“It’s not because of illicit association, we know that very well. It’s because he’s a human rights activist in the LGBTI community, and because he has been demanding the release of his sister,” said the Cultura Trans activist.
“We want him back with us, and his sister too,” he said.
William Hernández, director of the association Entre Amigos, said that the police and the Attorney General’s Office stage raids against alleged gang members without carrying out proper investigations to substantiate the arrests or to release detainees if they are innocent. The Salvadoran government has been on a crusade against gangs since March, but in the process there have been numerous abuses and illegal detentions, according to human rights organizations. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
Underreporting hides the real number of cases
According to reports by the NGOs, while the 40 people from the LGBTI community who have been detained represent a small proportion of the total number of people arrested, there could be an underreporting of undocumented cases, especially in rural areas.
“In this country, although it’s small, there may be cases in remote places involving people who have never contacted an NGO. These are cases that remain invisible,” Catalina Ayala, a trans woman activist with Diké, an LGBTI organization whose name refers to justice in Greek mythology, told IPS.
Ayala said that, although she has not personally experienced transphobia from the authorities on the streets of San Salvador, and her organization has not received concrete reports of cases like Alessandra’s, she did not rule out that they could be happening.
“I think it’s a positive thing that the authorities are arresting gang members, but not people who have nothing to do with crime, or just because they are LGBTI,” she said.
The organization’s lawyer, Jenifer Fernández, said Diké has provided legal assistance to 12 people from the LGBTI community who have been detained, mainly because they were not carrying their identity documents.
In one of the cases, the police said things that could be construed as transphobic, although there was also a basic suspicion, since she was a trans woman without an identity document.
“She was a 25-year-old woman who had never had a DUI, an identity document, because she suffered from gender dysphoria and was afraid to go to register, afraid of being asked to cut her hair or to remove her make-up,” said Fernández.
Gender dysphoria is a sense of unease caused by a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity and has repercussions on their ability to function socially.
“The arrest report said that she was a gang member disguised as a woman, that they did not know who she was, that she gave a name but that it could not be proven without a DUI,” the lawyer explained.
But Fernández added that, in general, with or without a state of exception, trans women suffer the most from harassment, mockery and aggression.
Of the 12 cases, 11 of the individuals were released, and only one remains in custody because, according to the police, there is evidence that the person may have had ties to a gang, although the details of that evidence are unknown.
Call to stop abuses
On Nov. 11, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed concern over “the persistence of massive and allegedly arbitrary arrests” by Salvadoran authorities under the state of emergency.
It also reported non-compliance with judicial guarantees, and called on the government “to implement citizen security actions that guarantee the rights and freedoms established in the American Convention on Human Rights and in line with Inter-American standards.”
Among the constitutional rights suspended since the beginning of the state of emergency on Mar. 27 are the rights of association and assembly, although the government says this only applies to criminal groups meeting to plan crimes.
It also restricts the right to a defense and extends the period in which a person can be detained and presented in court, which Salvadoran law sets at a maximum of three days.
On Nov. 16, Congress, which is controlled by the governing party, approved a new extension of the state of emergency, which it has done at the end of each month.
New Ideas lawmakers have said that the restriction of civil rights will be extended as long as necessary, “until the last gang member is arrested.”
In this country of 6.7 million people, there are an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 gang members.
Bukele’s party holds 56 seats in the 84-member legislature, and thanks to three allied parties they have a total of 60 votes, which gives them a large absolute majority.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — On a typical night at the Club Q, a bastion for LGBTQ people in the largely conservative city of Colorado Springs, Daniel Aston could be seen letting loose and sliding across the stage on his knees tailed by his mullet to whoops and hollers.
The venue provided Aston, a 28-year-old transgender man and the self-proclaimed “Master of Silly Business,” with the liberating performances he had long sought. But on Saturday it became the site of the latest mass shooting in the U.S. when a gunman with a semiautomatic rifle opened fire and killed Aston and four others. Twenty-five others were injured.
His mother, Sabrina Aston, vacillated between past and present tense as she discussed her son Sunday night in their Colorado Springs home. Aston’s father, Jeff Aston, sat nearby listening to his wife’s stories and alternating between tightly clasping his hands and cupping his forehead.
“We are in shock, we cried for a little bit, but then you go through this phase where you are just kind of numb, and I’m sure it will hit us again,” she said. “I keep thinking it’s a mistake, they made a mistake, and that he is really alive,” she added.
Her son’s eagerness to make people laugh and cheer started as a child in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he would don elaborate costumes, including the beast from “Beauty and the Beast,” cycle through weird hats, and write plays acted out by neighborhood kids.
Aston preferred dressing as a boy at a young age until teasing from other kids pushed him to try girls clothing. While Sabrina Aston enjoyed helping style her son, she said the fashion led to weight loss. “He was miserable,” she said.
After coming out to his mother, he attended Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and became president of its LGBTQ club. He put on fundraisers with ever-more flashy productions (“He didn’t just stand and lip-sync,” Sabrina Aston made clear) and fanned over ’80s hair bands.
Two years ago, Aston moved from Tulsa to Colorado Springs — where his parents had settled — and started at Club Q as a bartender and entertainer, where his parents would join in the cheers at his shows.
“(Daniel’s shows) are great. Everybody needs to go see him,” his mother said. “He lit up a room, always smiling, always happy and silly,” she said.
Members of Colorado Spring’s LGBTQ community say Club Q has been one of only a few havens where they could be fully authentic in one of the state’s more conservative metros. Sabrina Aston said that’s why her son took to the club; it gave his identity room to breathe and “he liked helping the LGBT community.”
She first heard about the attack and that her son had been shot at 2 a.m. on Sunday when the phone rang. It was one of her son’s friends breaking the news that a shooting had occurred at Club Q and their son was in Memorial Hospital.
Sabrina and Jeff Aston rushed to the hospital, where they were first asked to wait outside, then in a waiting room and finally in a private room where detective asked them questions as authorities worked to identify the bodies.
Sabrina Aston told the detective about her son’s tattoos, including a heart on his left arm, pierced by an arrow, and wrapped in a ribbon reading “Mom.”
The couple was sent home without any update and sat in a stupor, their minds cycling through hope, then the worst, then hope that it wasn’t the worst.
“We thought he had just gotten hurt — you can fix hurt,” his mother said.
When a detective and a patient advocate knocked on their door later that morning, Sabrina Aston said she thought of the soldiers walking towards the homes of yet-unaware widows during wartime. She knew what had happened.
The parents went into shock, the tears flowed and they went numb.
“It’s just a nightmare that you can’t wake up from,” she said.
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Bedayn is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the death sentence Wednesday for an inmate who argued her attorneys didn’t properly raise in her defense trauma she experienced, including gender dysphoria.
The court ruled 6-1 to uphold Victoria Drain’s conviction and death sentence in the 2019 beating death of Christopher Richardson, a fellow inmate in the residential treatment unit at Warren Correctional Institution in southwestern Ohio.
Drain attempted to enlist Richardson in a plot to kill an inmate Drain believed was a convicted child molester, court records show. When Richardson backed out, Drain killed him to keep him from exposing her plan, records show.
Drain killed Richardson by beating, stabbing and strangling him, according to court records.
Drain had been placed on the unit, which provides inmate psychiatric services, “due to her attempt to self-castrate because she is transgender,” Drain’s attorneys said in a court filing in March 2021.
At the time of the slaying, Drain was serving a 38-year sentence for stabbing and strangling a man to death in Hancock County in 2016.
An attorney for Drain, whose execution has not been scheduled, promised a comment later Wednesday.
In their Supreme Court filing, Drain’s attorneys presented evidence of self-harm dating to childhood because of gender dysphoria, or the distress felt when someone’s gender expression does not match their gender identity. Attorneys describe Drain as a transwoman in court documents.
Warren County prosecutors argued that Drain had “persistently rebuffed” any efforts by her attorneys to present evidence to the three-judge panel weighing her sentence that would have benefited her case. In January 2020, Drain wrote a letter explaining she didn’t want the evidence on her behalf used, prosecutors said.
Drain’s attorneys on her appeal countered that her original lawyers didn’t investigate the connection between her gender dysphoria and her mental health and acts of self-harm.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court placed more weight on Drain’s refusal to allow evidence presented on her behalf.
Justice Sharon Kennedy, writing for the majority, noted that Drain insisted, against her attorneys’ advice, on pleading no contest and made clear she didn’t want 1,900 pages gathered by her attorneys about her life presented to the court.
“Rather, the record shows Drain’s longstanding determination to plead no contest and to have the proceedings over as quickly as possible,” Kennedy wrote.
Justice Jennifer Brunner, the lone dissenting vote, said Drain’s refusal to allow evidence presented on her behalf related mainly to reluctance to present details of a dysfunctional childhood or testimony from Drain’s daughter.
There was significant other evidence available to Drain’s attorneys, Brunner said, “including evidence concerning her gender dysphoria, her mental-health issues and diagnosed disorders, her history of substance abuse, her medical history and the effect that it has had on her mental health and decision-making, and her time spent in juvenile facilities and other facilities.”
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The nation’s first trial over a state’s ban on gender-confirming care for children begins in Arkansas this week, the latest fight over restrictions on transgender youth championed by Republican leaders and widely condemned by medical experts.
U.S. District Judge Jay Moody will hear testimony and evidence starting Monday over the law he temporarily blocked last year prohibiting doctors from providing gender-confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old. It also prevents doctors from referring patients elsewhere for such care.
The families of four transgender youth and two doctors who provide gender-confirming care want Moody to strike down the law, saying it is unconstitutional because it discriminates against transgender youth, intrudes on parents’ rights to make medical decisions for their children and infringes on doctors’ free speech rights. The trial is expected to last two weeks.
“As a parent, I never imagined I’d have to fight for my daughter to be able to receive medically necessary health care her doctor say she needs and we know she needs,” said Lacey Jennen, whose 17-year-old daughter has been receiving gender-confirming care.
Arkansas was the first state to enact such a ban on gender-confirming care, with Republican lawmakers in 2021 overriding GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s veto of the legislation. Hutchinson, who had signed other restrictions on transgender youth into law, said the prohibition went too far by cutting off the care for those currently receiving it.
Multiple medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose the bans and experts say the treatments are safe if properly administered.
But advocates of the law have argued the prohibition is within the state’s authority to regulate medical practices.
“This is about protecting children,” Republican Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said. “Nothing about this law prohibits someone after the age of 18 from making this decision. What we’re doing in Arkansas is protecting children from life-altering, permanent decisions.”
A similar law has been blocked by a federal judge in Alabama, and a Texas judge has blocked that state’s efforts to investigate gender-confirming care for minors as child abuse. Children’s hospitals around the country have faced harassment and threats of violence for providing gender-confirming care.
“This latest wave of anti-trans fever that is now spreading to other states started in Arkansas and it needs to end in Arkansas,” said Holly Dickson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the families.
A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August upheld Moody’s preliminary injunction blocking the ban’s enforcement. But the state has asked the full 8th Circuit appeals court to review the case.
Bindya Rana, a Karachi-based transgender activist and founder and president of Gender Interactive Alliance (GIA), and Shahzadi Rai, a Karachi-based transgender person, believe that the debate over the law protecting the rights of transgender persons is problematic. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS
by Zofeen Ebrahim (karachi)
Inter Press Service
Karachi, Oct 06 (IPS) – It has taken four years for some politicians to oppose a landmark law protecting the rights of transgender persons, saying it’s against Islam and the country’s constitution.
“This is an imposed, imported, anti-Islam, anti-Quran legislation,” said Senator Mushtaq Ahmed, a Pakistani politician belonging to the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), spearheading the campaign. “The West is hitting at the two strongest institutions of the Muslim Ummah – the family and marriage; they want to weaken us,” he told IPS from Peshawar, adding that this will “open the road” for homosexuality and same-sex marriage.
According to Ahmed, for the last four years, the government, with support from non-governmental organizations, was “shamelessly pushing the agenda of Europe and America,” terming it “cultural terrorism.”
Other politicians have also joined in voicing their concerns. For instance, PTI senator, Mohsin Aziz, said transgender people were homosexuals, and “Qaum-e Loot” referred to homosexuality introduced by the people of Sodom. “The longer we take in making amends, the longer the wrath of God will be upon us,” he added. He is among those who have recently presented amendments to the law.
“Using religion to stoke people’s sentiments sets a very dangerous precedence,” warned Shahzadi Rai, a Karachi-based transgender person. “Spare us; our community cannot fight back.”
Rai asked that the issue not be seen through the “prism of religion,” adding, “even we do not accept homosexuality.”
Physician Dr Sana Yasir, who has a special interest in gender variance and bodily diversity and offers gender-affirming healthcare services, said there was no mention of homosexuality in the Act.
“The right-wing politicians need such issues to keep their politics alive,” said Anis Haroon, commissioner for the National Commission for Human Rights, which was part of consultations on the Act and fully supported it.
Ahmed had presented certain amendments to the Act last year, and earlier this month, he introduced a brand-new bill for the protection of khunsa, an Arabic word he said was for people “born with birth defects in the genitalia.” If passed, the Act will apply to the entire country and come into force immediately.
In the proposed bill, khunsa is defined as a person who has a “mixture of male and female genital features or congenital ambiguities.” The person will have the right to register as a male or female based on certification from a medical board.
“I studied the old law for a good two years after it was enacted; held discussions with many jurists, even international ones, medical doctors, religious scholars. Based on the information gathered, I came up with amendments to the 2018 law,” Ahmed said, defending his stance and explaining why it took four years to oppose a law passed by a two-thirds majority in the Senate and the Parliament. He has also filed a petition in the Federal Shariat Court against the 2018 Act.
The right-wing Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI-Fazl) and parliamentarians belonging to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) have also voiced their concern and opposed the 2018 act.
“Allah has just mentioned sons and daughters in the Quran; there is no mention of another gender,” said PTI’s senator, Fauzia Arshad, speaking to IPS. He has also presented amendments to the Senate’s standing committee on human rights.
The country’s top religious advisory body, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), has also termed it unIslamic law.
“We respect the rights of the transgenders given in the 2018 Act, but when it transgresses beyond biology, and psychology and sociology come into play, we have reservations,” said Dr Qibla Ayaz, chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology, talking to IPS from Islamabad. He also said the council was never approached when the bill was debated.
The law, instead of defining gender, has defined gender identity: A person’s innermost and individual sense of self as male, female, or a blend of both or neither, that can correspond or not to the sex assigned at birth. It also refers to gender expression: A person’s presentation of their gender identity and/or the one others perceive.
JI, meanwhile, has defined gender as a “person’s expression as per his or her sex which is not different than the sex assigned to him or her at the time of birth or as per the advice of a medical board.”
“We do not believe in self-perceived gender identity of a person and are asking for a medical board to be constituted to ascertain that,” said Ahmed.
Arshad endorsed this: “The sex of a person is determined from where the person urinates and should be determined by a medical board.”
“Self-perception of who you think you want to be, and not what you are born as is not in the Quran.”
“CII has some reservations about the self-perceived identity,” said Ayaz.
To rule out “real from fake” transgender people, Ahmed’s bill has recommended constituting a gender reassignment medical board in every district, which would include a professor doctor, a male and a female general surgeon, a psychologist, and a chief medical officer.
“Any sex reassignment surgery to change the genitalia will be prohibited if the person is diagnosed with a psychological disorder or gender dysphoria,” he said. Arshad agreed with this view.
“A medical board can help people figure out their gender identity by offering them personality tests and blood works. They can help decrease the intensity of gender dysphoria by offering non-medical and medical interventions,” said Yasir.
But the board cannot reject someone’s “experienced gender,” she asserted.
Yasir added there was no mention of a geneticist, a psychiatrist, or those trained in transgender health on the board.
Healthcare professionals argue that constituting medical boards in Pakistan’s 160 districts is nearly impossible. The complex issue requires genetic testing (from abroad), which is expensive for a resource-stretched country like Pakistan, and meticulous diagnosis by scarce experts.
The trans community has rejected the option of the constitution of a medical board outright.
“We will never allow anyone to examine us,” said Bindya Rana, a Karachi-based transgender activist and founder and president of Gender Interactive Alliance (GIA). “We know, who we are, just like the men and women in this country know who they are!”
If this debate has done one thing, it is to validate and increase transphobia.
“Harassment, discrimination, and violence have increased due to the negative propaganda led by Jamat-e-Islami,” said Reem Sharif, a trans activist based in Islamabad.
“A week ago, one transgender was murdered. The alleged murderer is behind bars, but during interrogation, he told the police that he was on jihad as killing transgenders would take him straight to heaven. He is sure he will be released and will finish off the job,” said Rai.
She also recalled the horrific attack on three well-known transwomen in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Swabi two weeks back. “They received several bullets, but fortunately, all survived,” she said. The attack spread panic and fear among the community. Rai said the transphobia was “contained, but now it is out in the open.”
“There is a definite backlash,” agreed Lahore-based Moon Chaudhary. “Ten days ago, in Lahore, a few trans persons were publicly harassed at a posh locality. They were forcefully disrobed, asked about their gender, and then raped,” she said.
According to Mughal, the “more visible trans activists” like her, are increasingly feeling vulnerable. “Bullying is going on, and people are openly threatening. She gets scores of text messages from unknown numbers referring to her as a “man,” causing “mental torment.”
Rai said she feared for her life since she was actively participating in defending the law on various TV channels, and participating in debates organized by clerics. “I’m worried and have told my flatmates to be vigilant and take extra precautions in letting in their friends.”
Transgender activists are also fighting on another front – cyberspace.
“I am being misgendered on national television; then the same clips are shared on social media, which go viral. I am accused of being a man and feigning as a woman,” said Mughal. She said some are provoking people to go on a jihad against them and setting a “dangerous precedent.”
“I thought I was strong and would be able to handle online abuse, but it is taking a toll and affecting my mental health,” Rai admitted. For instance, of the 900 comments on a video clip on social media, 600 were abusive. There were some that were downright violent in nature, calling for her murder or burning her to death. “My photos are being circulated with vulgar messages attached,” she added.
Although Rana admitted the campaign against the 2018 law has brought “irreparable damage” to the transgender cause, she is confident the newly-presented bill by JI was just to create a storm in a teacup and will not see the light of day.
“All that we worked for, for years, has come to naught,” she lamented. While the law prohibited discrimination against transgender persons seeking education, healthcare, employment, or trade, Rana said, “we never benefitted on any score” except the right to change the name and gender on the national identity card, the driving license, and the passport. For us, even that was a big win,” she said. About 28,000 transgender persons had their gender corrected. But now, even that right is in danger.
Ahmed said his struggle would continue. “If the khunsa bill finds no takers, we will take it to the Supreme Court of Pakistan and start street protests,” he warned, adding: “It’s a ticking time bomb!”
DE SOTO, Kan. (KCTV) – Another local school district is wrangling with how to handle gender identity in school.
Monday night, several students expressed their concern to the De Soto school board over a document sent to teachers titled, “Guidance Related to Preferred Names, Pronouns and Gender Identity.” Some of the guidance is due to a new state law that could affect other districts.
De Soto High School senior Lee Barth told the board that his very first teacher there offered a get-to-know-you card asking his preferred name and pronoun.
“While this was a very minor question – it was only being seen by the teacher – it really meant a lot to me,” said Barth.
Now, teachers have been told not to ask about pronouns, though the student can volunteer it. It’s partly about respecting students’ privacy, but it’s also about a new Kansas law passed in May.
Section 27 of House Bill 2567, the school funding bill, specifies that: “A nonacademic test, questionnaire, survey or examination containing any questions about the student’s personal and private attitudes, values, beliefs or practices … shall not be administered … unless the parent or guardian of the student … [is] notified in writing … [and gives] written consent.”
“The request about preferred pronouns could be considered a survey of deeply held beliefs, so we ask teachers not to ask for preferred pronouns,” explained De Soto USD 232 Superintendent Frank Harwood. “But teachers have always asked, ‘Is there a name you’d like to go by other than what’s in the grade book?’ And they can still do that. That’s fine.”
But, there’s also the issue of notifying a parent when a student voluntarily asks to use their preferred name or the gender they align with.
Alexander Shields, who is a senior at Mill Valley High School, first started using the name Alexander during summer camp before 7th grade.
“It was just a way for me to test the waters,” he described. “It was a lot easier to come up to my friends first because I knew they were going to something no matter what. And if they didn’t, I could just ditch them.”
He did the same when he got to school. He hadn’t told his parents yet. He had a hard time getting a read on how they might respond. Then they got a call from the school, he said. He said they are supportive now, but he wishes he could have come out to them on his own terms.
Another student, Apollo Kouns, said his parents were supportive but he knows many are not.
“For some students, this can create an unsafe home environment,” Kouns told the board.
A change in the guidance from an August document to a September iteration allowed that not every student request regarding gender identity dictate a parental notification.
The September guidance indicates that “teachers may use a student’s preferred name informally upon student request” without parental consent, “as it is common for students to use a name other than their legal name of record” (such as someone named Robert who wants to be called Bobby).
A more permanent change, like using a “preferred name in the school yearbook…” or “…updat[ing] the gender identity field” in school records still does require parental notification and consent.
That’s meant to happen only after a social worker “meets with the student and gauges the level of family involvement.” The idea is not to “out” a student without having a discussion that allows the student to decide to go a different direction.
“We’re not going to withhold information from parents. We’re also not going to seek that out without the student’s understanding. Our goal is to support the students through what’s going to be a very difficult situation,” explained Harwood.
Some students noted that it’s not so easy to say, “If you don’t want your parents to know, just use your legal name.” That’s also referred to in the trans community as a “dead name,” as in the one you have left for dead. It can cause mental health strain, said Kouns, which can cause poor performance in school or worse.
Others said the process of involving the student before notifying a parent has not always worked that way. Barth’s parents were notified this year, he said, even though he had turned 18. He said school social workers have enough on their plate besides having to check students’ dates of birth before making calls.
Mill Valley High School Gay-Straight Alliance President Sean Olin described the whole process as odious and burdensome.
“They have to go through all these hoops that other students just plain do not have to go through,” he told the board.
Harwood approached the students after the public comment session, saying he’d like their input on a possible revision. He later told KCTV5 he doesn’t plan to change the specifics, but he’d like to discuss with students why the district is taking the action, then get feedback on that and any circumstances that might be unclear. An updated document, he said, might include clarifying language in that regard.
A copy of the September guidance can be found here.
Traveling can be complicated for anyone who doesn’t fall into society’s rigid norms. LGBTQ+ and trans people face discrimination right from the security gate, and don’t even get me started on what disabled folx go through to catch a flight. It appears that Virgin Atlantic is one of the airlines trying to address these issues.
Last week, Virgin announced that it was changing its uniform and name badge policies for employees. Now other airlines are considering making their own changes. Call me an optimist, but I think these seemingly small shifts could revolutionize the way we get to experience travel.
Back in April, Virgin gave us a sneak peek into how it was evolving when it released a commercial featuring disabled travelers, gender-nonconforming passengers, and, well, folx who just presented as gay. Many applauded Virgin for its inclusion then, and now the airline has taken it a step further with a new gender-flexible uniform policy unveiled in an announcement featuring RuPaul’s Drag Race star Michelle Visage.
The airline’s new policy will permit employees to choose the uniform — designed by Vivienne Westwood, no less — that they feel best represents their gender. The company will also offer non-obligatory pronoun badges to airline staff and passengers, let employees show their tattoos, and make makeup optional for all genders. This is a massive upgrade to the archaic and discriminatory uniform policies of many airlines.
“People feel empowered when they are wearing what best represents them, and this gender identity policy allows people to embrace who they are and bring their full selves to work,” Visage said in a statement about the uniform change.
But it’s not just Virgin employees who will benefit. The employees of other, less progressive airlines who are hoping for change will see these chic getups, too. Hell, if the media explosion surrounding the uniforms continues, everyone who reads the news is going to see this red-hot Westwood situation. This level of representation really matters, particularly when schools and companies around the globe are grappling with how to create more gender-affirming dress code policies.
A simple they/them pin may seem like no big deal to the cis-het crowd, but as a trans nonbinary person who regularly faces a sea of “ma’am” when I travel, I’m here to tell you that it’s huge. It is every kind of exhausting to deal with pronoun-challenged people when I’m just trying to make my gate. And the idea of seeing more people like me at the airport — people who aren’t trying to prove their bizarre allegiance to the gender binary — actually makes me want to go to the airport. Let’s be honest, who wants to go to an airport?
Virgin’s announcement has not come without controversy. Of course, there are haters calling for boycotts of the company — that’s to be expected. But some former Virgin Atlantic employees aren’t thrilled, either. Jaianni Russo, a nonbinary person in Nottingham, U.K., alleged on Facebook that they were erased from the uniform campaign that they say was originally their idea. Neither Russo nor Virgin Atlantic have publicly commented, but honestly, it looks more like an unfortunate HR situation than a corporate conspiracy to dehumanize Russo to me.
I, for one, am ready to be optimistic about the potential these kinds of changes have for the future. “I’m proud to be involved in this new announcement from Virgin Atlantic,” Visage wrote on Instagram. “Let’s change the world — one pressed, fabulous uniform at a time! The world is our runway!”
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