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  • Notable US Supreme Court Decisions Fast Facts | CNN

    Notable US Supreme Court Decisions Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at some of the most important cases decided by the US Supreme Court since 1789.

    1803 – Marbury v. Madison
    This decision established the system of checks and balances and the power of the Supreme Court within the federal government.

    Situation: Federalist William Marbury and many others were appointed to positions by outgoing President John Adams. The appointments were not finalized before the new Secretary of State James Madison took office, and Madison chose not to honor them. Marbury and the others invoked an Act of Congress and sued to get their appointed positions.

    The Court decided against Marbury 6-0.

    Historical significance: Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, “An act of the legislature repugnant to the constitution is void.” It was the first time the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a law that had been passed by Congress.

    1857 – Dred Scott v. Sandford
    This decision established that slaves were not citizens of the United States and were not protected under the US Constitution.

    Situation: Dred Scott and his wife Harriet sued for their freedom in Missouri, a slave state, after having lived with their owner, an Army surgeon, in the free Territory of Wisconsin.

    The Court decided against Scott 7-2.

    Historical significance: The decision overturned the Missouri Compromise, where Congress had prohibited slavery in the territories. The Dred Scott decision was overturned later with the adoption of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in 1865 and the 14th Amendment in 1868, granting citizenship to all born in the United States.

    1896 – Plessy v. Ferguson
    This decision established the rule of segregation, separate but equal.

    Situation: While attempting to test the constitutionality of the Separate Car Law in Louisiana, Homer Plessy, a man of 1/8 African descent, sat in the train car for whites instead of the blacks-only train car and was arrested.

    The Court decided against Plessy 7-1.

    Historical significance: Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote, “The argument also assumes that social prejudice may be overcome by legislation and that equal rights cannot be secured except by an enforced commingling of the two races… if the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.” The Court gave merit to the “Jim Crow” system. Plessy was overturned by the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In January 2022 Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards granted a posthumous pardon to Homer Plessy. The pardon comes after the Louisiana Board of Pardons voted unanimously in November 2021 in favor of a pardon for Plessy, who died in his 60s in 1925.

    1954 – Brown v. Board of Education
    This decision overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and granted equal protection under the law.

    Situation: Segregation of the public school systems in the United States was addressed when cases in Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware and Virginia were all decided together under Brown v. Board of Education. Third-grader Linda Brown was denied admission to the white school a few blocks from her home and was forced to attend the blacks-only school a mile away.

    The Court decided in favor of Brown unanimously.

    Historical significance: Racial segregation violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

    1963 – Gideon v. Wainwright
    This decision guarantees the right to counsel.

    Situation: Clarence Earl Gideon was forced to defend himself when he requested a lawyer from a Florida court and was refused. He was convicted and sentenced to five years for breaking and entering.

    The Court decided in favor of Gideon unanimously.

    Historical significance: Ensures the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee to counsel is applicable to the states through the 14th Amendment’s due process clause.

    1964 – New York Times v. Sullivan
    This decision upheld the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

    Situation: The New York Times and four African-American ministers were sued for libel by Montgomery, Alabama, police commissioner L.B. Sullivan. Sullivan claimed a full-page ad in the Times discussing the arrest of Martin Luther King Jr., and his efforts toward voter registration and integration in Montgomery were defamatory against him. Alabama’s libel law did not require Sullivan to prove harm since the ad did contain factual errors. He was awarded $500,000.

    The Court decided against Sullivan unanimously.

    Historical significance: The First Amendment protects free speech and publication of all statements about public officials made without actual malice.

    1966 – Miranda v. Arizona
    The decision established the rights of suspects against self-incrimination.

    Situation: Ernesto Miranda was convicted of rape and kidnapping after he confessed, while in police custody, without benefit of counsel or knowledge of his constitutional right to remain silent.

    The court decided in favor of Miranda 5-4.

    Historical significance: Upon arrest and/or questioning, all suspects are given some form of their constitutional rights – “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

    1973 – Roe v. Wade
    This decision expanded privacy rights to include a woman’s right to choose pregnancy or abortion.

    Situation: “Jane Roe” (Norma McCorvey), single and living in Texas, did not want to continue her third pregnancy. Under Texas law, she could not legally obtain an abortion.

    The Court decided in favor of Roe 7-2.

    Historical significance: Abortion is legal in all 50 states. Women have the right to choose between pregnancy and abortion.

    1974 – United States v. Nixon
    This decision established that executive privilege is neither absolute nor unqualified.

    Situation: President Richard Nixon’s taped conversations from 1971 onward were the object of subpoenas by both the special prosecutor and those under indictment in the Watergate scandal. The president claimed immunity from subpoena under executive privilege.

    The Court decided against Nixon 8-0.

    Historical significance: The president is not above the law. After the Court ruled on July 24, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned on August 8.

    1978 – Regents of the U. of California v. Bakke
    This decision ruled that race cannot be the only factor in college admissions.

    Situation: Allan Bakke had twice applied for and was denied admission to the University of California Medical School at Davis. Bakke was white, male and 35 years old. He claimed under California’s affirmative action plan, minorities with lower grades and test scores were admitted to the medical school when he was not, therefore his denial of admission was based solely on race.

    The Court decided in Bakke’s favor, 5-4.

    Historical significance: Affirmative action is approved by the Court and schools may use race as an admissions factor. However, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment works both ways in the case of affirmative action; race cannot be the only factor in the admissions process.

    2012 – National Federation of Independent Business et al v. Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services et al

    Situation: The constitutionality of the sweeping health care reform law championed by President Barack Obama.

    The Court voted 5-4 in favor of upholding the Affordable Care Act.

    Historical significance: The ruling upholds the law’s central provision – a requirement that all people have health insurance or pay a penalty.

    2013 – United States v. Windsor
    This decision ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined the term “marriage” under federal law as a “legal union between one man and one woman” deprived same-sex couples who are legally married under state laws of their Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection under federal law.

    Situation: Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer were married in Toronto in 2007. Their marriage was recognized by New York state, where they lived. Upon Spyer’s death in 2009, Windsor was forced to pay $363,000 in estate taxes, because their marriage was not recognized by federal law.

    The court voted 5-4 in favor of Windsor.

    Historical significance: The court strikes down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, ruling that legally married same-sex couples are entitled to federal benefits.

    2015 – King et al, v. Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al

    Situation: This case was about determining whether or not the portion of the Affordable Care Act which says subsidies would be available only to those who purchase insurance on exchanges “established by the state” referred to the individual states.

    The Court ruled 6-3 in favor of upholding the Affordable Care Act subsidies.

    Historical significance: The court rules that the Affordable Care Act federal tax credits for eligible Americans are available in all 50 states, regardless of whether the states have their own health care exchanges.

    2015 – Obergefell et al, v. Hodges, Director, Ohio Department of Health, et al.

    Situation: Multiple lower courts had struck down state same-sex marriage bans. There were 37 states allowing gay marriage before the issue went to the Supreme Court.

    The Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Obergefell et al.

    Historical significance: The court rules that states cannot ban same-sex marriage and must recognize lawful marriages performed out of state.

    2016 – Fisher v. University of Texas

    Situation: Abigail Fisher sued the University of Texas after her admission application was rejected in 2008. She claimed it was because she is white and that she was being treated differently than some less-qualified minority students who were accepted. In 2013 the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower courts for further review.

    The Court ruled 4-3 in favor of the University of Texas. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself from the case, presumably because she dealt with it in her previous job as solicitor general.

    Historical Significance: The court rules that taking race into consideration as one factor of admission is constitutional.

    2020 – Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia

    Situation: Gerald Bostock filed a lawsuit against Clayton County for discrimination based on his sexual orientation after he was terminated for “conduct unbecoming of its employees,” shortly after he began participating in a gay softball league. Two other consolidated cases were also argued on the same day.

    The 6-3 opinion in favor of the plaintiff, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, states that being fired “merely for being gay or transgender violates Title VII” of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

    Historical Significance: Federal anti-bias law now protects people who face job loss and/or discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

    2022 – Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

    Situation: Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, passed in 2018 and which greatly restricts abortion after 15 weeks, is blocked by two federal courts, holding that it is in direct violation of Supreme Court precedent legalizing abortion nationwide prior to viability, which can occur at around 23-24 weeks of pregnancy, and that in an “unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion cases have established (and affirmed and re-affirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability.” The court said states may “regulate abortion procedures prior to viability” so long as they do not ban abortion. “The law at issue is a ban,” the court held. 

    Mississippi appeals the decision to the Supreme Court.

    The 6-3 opinion in favor of the plaintiff, written by Justice Samuel Alito states that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start…Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”

    In a joint dissenting opinion, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan heavily criticized the majority, closing: “With sorrow – for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection – we dissent.”

    Historical Significance: The ruling overturns Roe v. Wade and there is no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion, leaving abortion rights to be determined by states.

    1944 – Korematsu v. United States – The Court ruled Executive Order 9066, internment of Japanese citizens during World War II, is legal, 6-3 for the United States.

    1961 – Mapp v. Ohio – “Fruit of the poisonous tree,” evidence obtained through an illegal search, cannot be used at trial, 6-3 for Mapp.

    1967 – Loving v. Virginia – Prohibition against interracial marriage was ruled unconstitutional, 9-0 for Loving.

    1968 – Terry v. Ohio – Stop and frisk, under certain circumstances, does not violate the Constitution. The Court upholds Terry’s conviction and rules 8-1 that it is not unconstitutional for police to stop and frisk individuals without probable cause for an arrest if they have a reasonable suspicion that a crime has or is about to occur.

    2008 – District of Columbia v. Heller – The Second Amendment does protect the individual’s right to bear arms, 5-4 for Heller.

    2010 – Citizens United v. FEC – The Court rules corporations can contribute to PACs under the First Amendment’s right to free speech, 5-4 for Citizens United.

    2023 – Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard together with Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina – Colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis in admissions. The majority opinion, written by Justice John Roberts, claims the court is not expressly overturning prior cases authorizing race-based affirmative action and suggests that how race has affected an applicant’s life can still be part of how their application is considered.

    2024 – Donald J. Trump v. Norma Anderson, et al – The Court rules former President Donald Trump should appear on the ballot in Colorado in a decision that follows months of debate over whether Trump violated the “insurrectionist clause” included in the 14th Amendment.

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  • Pride flags would be largely banned in Tennessee classrooms in bill advanced by GOP lawmakers

    Pride flags would be largely banned in Tennessee classrooms in bill advanced by GOP lawmakers

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A bill that would largely ban displaying pride flags in public school classrooms was passed by the GOP-led Tennessee House on Monday after Republicans cut a heated debate short.

    The 70-24 vote sends the legislation to the Senate, where a final vote could happen as early as this week. The motion to cut off debate prompted Democratic Rep. Justin Jones, of Nashville, to yell that House Speaker Cameron Sexton was out of order and ignoring people’s requests to speak. Republicans in turn scolded Jones by voting him out of order, halting his immediate comments.

    Before that, at least two people against the bill were kicked out of the gallery due to talking over the proceedings as Democrats and other opponents blasted the legislation as unfairly limiting a major symbol of the LGBTQ+ community in schools.

    “I am proud when I walk into the public schools in my city, to see the LGBTQ flag in the classrooms, proudly put up by teachers who understand the suffering that many of their students go through,” said Rep. Jason Powell, a Nashville Democrat. “We should be welcoming and celebrating our students, not hating on them.”

    The legislation says “displaying” a flag by a school or employee means to “exhibit or place anywhere students may see the object.”

    The proposal would allow certain flags to be displayed, with exceptions for some scenarios. Among those approved would be the flags of the United States; Tennessee; those deemed protected historical items under state law; Native American tribes; local governments’ armed forces and prisoners of war or those missing in action; other countries and their local governments; colleges or universities; or the schools themselves.

    Other flags could be temporarily displayed as part of a “bona fide” course curriculum, and certain groups allowed to use school buildings can show their flags while using the grounds under the bill.

    The legislation sets up an enforcement system that relies on lawsuits by parents or guardians of students who attend, or are eligible to attend, public school in a district in question. The lawsuits could challenge the display of flags by a school, employee or its agents that wouldn’t fall under proposed criteria for what would be allowed in classrooms.

    Republican Rep. Gino Bulso, the bill sponsor from Williamson County south of Nashville, said parents reached out to him with complaints about “political flags” in classrooms. When pressed about whether the bill would allow the Confederate flag to be on display in classrooms, Bulso said the bill would not change the current law about when such a symbol could be shown. He said the bill’s exceptions could be applied on Confederate flags for approved curriculum and certain historical items that already cannot be removed without extensive state approval.

    “What we’re doing is making sure parents are the ones who are allowed to instill in their children the values they want to instill,” Bulso said.

    The proposal marks another development in the ongoing political battle over LGBTQ+ rights in Tennessee, where the state’s conservative leaders have already moved to restrict classroom conversations about gender and sexuality, ban gender-affirming care and limit events where certain drag performers may appear.

    The Senate’s version of the bill would be more restrictive about who could sue over a flag, limiting it to that specific school’s students, parents or guardians of those students or employees there.

    Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to town, school, and school district officials who have implemented or are considering flag bans or other pride displays. The group warned that under First Amendment court precedent, “public schools may prohibit private on-campus speech only insofar as it substantially interferes with or disrupts the educational environment, or interferes with the rights of other students.”

    Bulso contended that displaying the pride flag does not constitute protected free speech for school employees.

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  • Greece becomes first Orthodox Christian country to legalize same-sex civil marriage

    Greece becomes first Orthodox Christian country to legalize same-sex civil marriage

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    ATHENS, Greece — Greece on Thursday became the first Orthodox Christian country to legalize same-sex civil marriage, despite opposition from the influential, socially conservative Greek Church.

    A cross-party majority of 176 lawmakers in the 300-seat parliament voted late Thursday in favor of the landmark bill drafted by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis ‘ center-right government. Another 76 rejected the reform while two abstained from the vote and 46 were not present in the house.

    Mitsotakis tweeted after the vote that Greece “is proud to become the 16th (European Union) country to legislate marriage equality.”

    “This is a milestone for human rights, reflecting today’s Greece — a progressive, and democratic country, passionately committed to European values,” he wrote.

    Scores of supporters of the reform who had gathered outside parliament and were watching the debate on a screen cheered loudly and hugged as the vote result was announced.

    “This took a long time to be adopted in our country … but at least it happened and that’s what is important,” said a man who only gave his first name, Nikolas. “We are no longer invisible.”

    Earlier, people opposed to the bill had also protested nearby, holding prayer books and religious icons.

    Opinion polls suggest that most Greeks support the reform by a narrow margin, and the issue has failed to trigger deep divisions in a country more worried about the high cost of living.

    The bill was backed by four left-wing parties, including the main opposition Syriza.

    “This law doesn’t solve every problem, but it is a beginning,” said Spiros Bibilas, a lawmaker from the small left-wing Passage to Freedom party, who is openly gay.

    It was approved despite several majority and left-wing lawmakers abstaining or voting against the reform. Three small far-right parties and the Stalinist-rooted Communist Party rejected the draft law from the start of the two-day debate.

    “People who have been invisible will finally be made visible around us. And with them, many children (will) finally find their rightful place,” Mitsotakis told lawmakers ahead of the evening vote.

    “Both parents of same-sex couples do not yet have the same legal opportunities to provide their children with what they need,” he added. “To be able to pick them up from school, to be able to travel, to go to the doctor, or take them to the hospital. … That is what we are fixing.”

    The bill confers full parental rights on married same-sex partners with children. But it precludes gay couples from parenthood through surrogate mothers in Greece — an option currently available to women who can’t have children for health reasons.

    Many LGBTQ+ rights advocates have criticized that limitation, as well as the absence of any provision for transgender people.

    Psychologist Nancy Papathanasiou, scientific co-director of Orlando LGBT+, which advocates for LGBTQI mental health, echoed that concern but said the new law confers a very important sense of equality.

    “Discrimination is the most pervasive risk factor for mental health,” she said. “So just knowing that there is less discrimination is protective and promotive for LGBTQI mental health.”

    Maria Syrengela, a lawmaker from the governing New Democracy, or ND, said the reform redresses a long-standing injustice for same-sex couples and their children.

    “And let’s reflect on what these people have been through, spending so many years in the shadows, entangled in bureaucratic procedures,” she said.

    Dissidents among the governing party included former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, from ND’s conservative wing.

    “Same-sex marriage is not a human right … and it’s not an international obligation for our country,” he told parliament. “Children have a right to have parents from both sexes.”

    Polls show that while most Greeks agree to same-sex weddings they also reject extending parenthood through surrogacy to male couples. Same-sex civil partnerships have been allowed in Greece since 2015. But that only conferred legal guardianship to the biological parents of children in those relationships, leaving their partners in a bureaucratic limbo.

    The main opposition to the new bill has come from the traditionalist Church of Greece — which also disapproves of heterosexual civil marriage.

    Church officials have centered their criticism on the bill’s implications for traditional family values, and argue that potential legal challenges could lead to a future extension of surrogacy rights to gay couples.

    Church supporters and conservative organizations have staged small protests against the proposed law.

    Far-right lawmaker Vassilis Stigas, head of the small Spartans party, described the legislation Thursday as “sick” and claimed that its adoption would “open the gates of Hell and perversion.”

    Politically, the same-sex marriage law is not expected to harm Mitsotakis’ government, which won easy re-election last year after capturing much of the centrist vote.

    A stronger challenge comes from ongoing protests by farmers angry at high production costs, and intense opposition from many students to the planned scrapping of a state monopoly on university education.

    Nevertheless, parliament is expected to approve the university bill later this month, and opinion polls indicate that most Greeks support it.

    ___

    Associated Press reporters Derek Gatopoulos, Michael Varaklas, Lefteris Pittarakis and Theodora Tongas in Athens contributed to this report.

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  • For rights campaigner in Greece, same-sex marriage recognition follows decades of struggle

    For rights campaigner in Greece, same-sex marriage recognition follows decades of struggle

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    ATHENS, Greece — Years before starting a family of her own, Stella Belia was already waging a tireless campaign for legal recognition. Her fight may finally be over this week – a few months shy of her twin boys’ 17th birthday.

    Greek lawmakers are expected to legalize same-sex marriage in a parliament vote Thursday, with a rare display of cross-party collaboration.

    Approval would make Greece the first Orthodox Christian country to take that step, clearing multiple legal hurdles for gay couples who already have or want to have children.

    “I’ve been fighting for this ever since I figured out who I was,” says Belia, a 57-year-old drama teacher with a gruff voice and an easy laugh.

    “And it’s a great relief to say we’ve finally made it,” she said. “But it is tiresome, very tiresome to fight for something that’s an obvious right – to suffer for something that other people are just handed – and have to fight so hard to get it.”

    Belia split with her female partner when her sons were aged 11 but she considers her to be the boys’ other mother.

    Although civil partnerships were extended to gay couples in Greece nearly a decade ago, only the biological parents of children in those relationships are currently recognized as legal guardians.

    The issue of children’s rights, including the publicized plight of cancer survivors in a same-sex relationship, helped nudge public opinion toward narrowly favoring the bill that was sponsored by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ conservative government.

    But it also triggered a strong reaction from the country’s Orthodox Church. Representing Greece’s dominant faith, the Church argues the marriage bill would confuse parental roles and weaken the traditional family.

    The Church petitioned lawmakers to reconsider in a public appeal also read out at Sunday services.

    Several prominent bishops have taken a tougher line, warning that they will refuse to baptize the children of gay couples. They allied with far-right political parties and traditionalist groups to stage public demonstrations.

    Protester Chara Giannakantonaki said she felt compelled to attend a rally held in front of parliament last Sunday.

    “Every minority already has its rights guaranteed. There is no issue. They don’t need (same-sex) marriage. They just want to desecrate whatever has remained sacred in Greece: Our Church, our families and our children,” she said. “But children are a red line and we will never accept this.”

    The Mitsotakis government is facing dissent among conservatives over the bill and will need support from the centrist and left-wing opposition to secure the 151-vote minimum in the 300-member parliament.

    Dimitris Mavros, managing director of the market research firm MRB Hellas, said the timing of the bill appeared to be carefully calculated: Backing a measure that props up Mitsotakis’ centrist credentials but with the controversy likely to blow over before the European Union-wide elections in June.

    Greeks in 2024, Mavros said, have shown a sharp rise in financial anxiety, their worries reflected in recent strikes and ongoing farmers’ protests.

    “I think the farmers’ (protests) and high prices – and issues that hurt people’s pockets – are going to overshadow the same-sex couples issue,” he said. “We’re probably going to get past this calmly.”

    Chrysa Gkotsopoulou and Elena Kotsifi, both engineers, for years told their families and colleagues they were roommates and only came out as a couple after moving to England for work in 2015.

    They now have a young daughter, Ariadne, and all three travel to Greece using their U.K. passports.

    “We quickly realized that England offered us prospects as a couple that we had never previously imagined.” Kotsifi, 38, said. “We could be ourselves.”

    They flew to Athens at the weekend to celebrate the bill’s expected approval, and said that for the first time in nearly a decade, they now view returning home as a possibility.

    They hope to join the activist Belia and others Thursday night in the public gallery in parliament and celebrations set to follow.

    “If there’s room for us (in parliament), we’d like to go,” Gkotsopoulou said. “We feel joy, joy and pride that Greece is moving to the right side of history.”

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  • Angst over LGBTQ+ stories led to another canceled show. But in a Wyoming town, a play was salvaged

    Angst over LGBTQ+ stories led to another canceled show. But in a Wyoming town, a play was salvaged

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    WHEATLAND, Wyo. — Oliver Baez spent two months rehearsing a scene for a school play in which his character confronts another student about bullying a gay student who takes his own life.

    After much preparation, the 12-year-old’s small scene turned into a big problem among school officials in Wheatland, Wyoming. At the last minute they canceled the anti-bullying play, saying it did not conform to school values and leaving the young cast without a stage.

    “It was awful,” Baez said. “For the school to cancel it, it’s like saying that ‘LGBTQ should not be included in a society.’ Which is really awful and cruel.”

    Twenty-five years after a watershed moment for the gay rights movement — the murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old student in a university town not far from Wheatland — the canceled performances of “The Bullying Collection” show how far the LGBTQ+ community still has to go to gain acceptance in Wyoming and elsewhere.

    Wyoming is one of just two states without a hate crimes law; South Carolina is the other. Libraries around the country are facing community pressure to pull children’s books with LGBTQ+ stories, drag shows have been banned in some places and a University of Wyoming sorority was sued for admitting a transgender woman.

    Meanwhile, Wyoming lawmakers are preparing to consider a bill this session that would strictly define gender as one’s biological sex at birth, restricting the lives of trans and nonbinary residents.

    Located on the eastern Wyoming plains, Wheatland is a small farming and ranching community with about 3,500 residents. There are few restaurants, no department stores — not even a local Walmart — and few performance venues besides Wheatland High School.

    A local theater group, the Platte County Players, has permission to perform there and salvaged the rights to the play and sponsored the performance a month later at the high school, as originally planned.

    The students performed last week before a small gathering of people who braved icy roads and subzero temperatures to see the delayed show. But if they still grow up to have bad feelings about the whole thing, they would have fair reason.

    Community apathy, combined with snowy weather and extreme cold, made for a sparsely attended performance. Only about 50 people showed up, including half a dozen LGBTQ+ advocates and allies from Cheyenne, 70 miles (110 kilometers) away.

    Parents were thrilled to see the play ultimately performed after weeks of practice and then delay. It was sad the principal couldn’t stand up for what was right and got misguided by “old mindsets,” Oliver’s mom, Cassie Baez, said in an email.

    In a changing world, such limited mindsets are harmful for children after they grow up and venture away from small-town life, Cassie Baez added.

    “As a kid who has been bullied, Oliver knew this was important. So he was sad and even mad that the school still wasn’t backing him on a very important topic,” Cassie Baez wrote.

    The principal had the backing of school district leadership, however.

    “The board supports the administration,” school board chairperson Lu Lay said in an emailed statement, citing zero “negative” comments from the public on the cancellation decision.

    To the district’s superintendent, John Weigel, the play seemed more appropriate for high schoolers than middle schoolers. He said he hadn’t seen the play himself but heard from the principal that it confused some kids and some middle school teachers supported cancelation.

    The play featured 10-minute skits about bullying, including politicians and parents belittling one another and a teen being teased for carrying tampons at school. It also touched on a wide range of topics, including the risk of suicide for LGBTQ+ youths and students describing what it’s like to experience a school shooting.

    For school administrators, a scene in which a student eulogizes another student who killed himself was especially problematic. Baez walked onto the stage from the audience to chastise the girl for not mentioning the boy was gay and how she had participated in bullying him.

    “In my view, a play is supposed to be entertaining, that’s why I go,” Weigel said. “It seems to me this is more of a kind of, stir up some social issues, maybe, instead of kind of like being more entertaining.”

    When he canceled the show, Principal Robert Daniel worsened the sting by giving each cast member a $5 gift card to a Maverik convenience store, along with an apology letter saying they had done a “great job.” Daniel did not return phone messages seeking comment.

    One student tore up the letter and gave the card back. Another, Erica Biggs, 14, who played the role of the main bully opposite Baez, described the principal’s gesture as demeaning after all of their hard work.

    “We all kind of took it like they were trying to bribe us to feel better and not be mad about the play. But it didn’t really help,” Biggs said.

    Among attendees Friday night was Sara Burlingame, director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Wyoming Equality, who drove from Cheyenne to show support.

    “They’re doing exactly what we hope all students would, which is take very seriously how bullying affects their peers,” Burlingame said. “The irony is the people who are supposed to be their exemplars become their bullies.”

    This isn’t the first time kids in Wheatland have dealt with this. Just last spring, a high school performance of “Mean Girls” was canceled and the same local theater group stepped in to help produce the show to a full house.

    A decade earlier, the school board voted 4-3 to take down banners that read “No Place for Hate” in schools, because the Gay and Lesbian Fund of Colorado was among the sponsors of the campaign.

    “Here we go again,” said Jeran Artery, a former Wyoming Equality director who grew up in the town. “If there’s anything in Wheatland that has any kind of resemblance to any kind of association with the LGBTQ movement, it’s like, ‘This must come down immediately. Our kids must not see this.’”

    More than three decades ago at the high school, Artery practiced for the play “The Lion In Winter,” which was canceled over the existence of one gay character.

    “Just because there was a reference to homosexuality, there was an uproar in town, letters to the editor and things. And the drama director said, ‘This is not worth the hassle, I’m just going to cancel the play,’” Artery recalled.

    Yet some parents said they still weren’t sure why “The Bullying Collection” was canceled because school officials never explained the decision.

    “I read it all through,” said Melissa Rukavina, whose two daughters were in the play. “Unless you’re super closed-minded, I don’t see why you would do that.”

    Drama coach Stephanie Bradley, who also attended the high school, challenged the decision.

    “I was told that promoting the LGBTQ community is not in line with values of the school,” she said.

    “Most people in this part of Wyoming don’t come out early,” Bradley said of LGBTQ+ teens on the state’s rural plains. “They wait until they can escape, where they’ll be safe. I just want it to be a safe place for everybody.” ___

    This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

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  • Jordan Henderson set to move to Dutch club Ajax in blow to Saudi soccer league

    Jordan Henderson set to move to Dutch club Ajax in blow to Saudi soccer league

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    AMSTERDAM — England soccer international Jordan Henderson arrived in Amsterdam on Thursday amid reports he was about to sign a deal with struggling Dutch powerhouse Ajax to end his troubled six-month spell in the Saudi Pro League.

    Henderson was pictured in the Dutch city by British broadcaster Sky Sports, which said he met with Ajax representatives and would be signing a 2 1/2-year contract after taking a medical examination.

    The 33-year-old Henderson’s transfer is seen as a move to consolidate his place in the England squad ahead of the European Championship in Germany starting in June. But it also is a blow for the Saudi league, whose cashed-up clubs have signed a slew of big-name stars, most notably Cristiano Ronaldo.

    Henderson signed in July for Al-Ettifaq where he joined another former Liverpool captain in Steven Gerrard, who manages the team. The move sparked a fierce backlash from the LGBTQ+ community.

    Amnesty International cautions that in Saudi Arabia, members of the LGBT community, including foreigners “risk imprisonment and corporal punishment for same-sex relations, expressing their identity or support for LGBT rights.”

    Henderson had previously signaled his support for inclusivity by wearing rainbow-colored laces as part of an initiative by LGBTQ+ campaign group Stonewall.

    Henderson, who has made 81 appearances for England, struggled to lift his team in Saudi Arabia. Al-Ettifaq currently is in eighth place in the Saudi Pro League.

    Ajax, a four-time European champion, has struggled this season just to remain competitive with Dutch teams. Ajax is heading back toward the upper reaches of the Dutch top flight after a disastrous start to the season that saw the club part company with coach Maurice Steijn after just winning just one of its first seven games of the season.

    ___

    AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

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  • Ohio House overrides Republican governor's veto of ban on gender affirming care for minors

    Ohio House overrides Republican governor's veto of ban on gender affirming care for minors

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    COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Republican-dominated Ohio House voted Wednesday to override GOP Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of legislation banning gender-affirming care for minors and restricting transgender women’s and girls’ participation on sports teams, a move LGBTQ+ activists say would severely restrict the everyday lives of transgender youth in the state.

    The override propels closer to law a ban on gender-affirming surgeries and hormone therapies and sets restrictions on mental health care for transgender individuals under 18. The legislation also bans transgender girls and women from girls and women’s sports teams at both the K-12 and collegiate level.

    DeWine previously said he vetoed the legislation to protect parents and children from government overreach on medical decisions.

    The House voted to override the veto 65-28 along party lines. The Republican-majority Senate is expected take up their own override vote on Jan. 24.

    Rep. Gary Click, a Republican Baptist preacher from Sandusky County and sponsor of the bill, has maintained that the measures protect children who cannot provide informed consent for such life-altering care. He hopes that the override, and possible related future legislation, will encourage doctors and other individuals who may be afraid to testify against gender-affirming care for minors to come forward and speak their minds.

    “We have to get away from allowing our medical institutions to be captured by ideology,” Click said.

    Rep. Beth Liston, a Democrat and Columbus-area pediatrician, said on the floor that she was struggling to “comprehend the arrogance of the people in this room” who voted to override the veto and enact these bans, as they are not medical or mental health professionals.

    Liston went on to encourage the LGBTQ+ community, saying there was still hope and pointed to recent votes by Ohio citizens to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution and legalize marijuana as evidence that the people could still have impact on these bans.

    At least 22 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and many of those states face lawsuits. Courts have issued mixed rulings, with the nation’s first law, in Arkansas, struck down by a federal judge who said the ban on care violated the due process rights of transgender youth and their families. Enforcement is blocked in some states, and the laws have been enacted in others.

    The care has been available in the United States for more than a decade and is endorsed by major medical associations.

    At least 20 states have approved a version of a blanket ban on transgender athletes playing on K-12 and collegiate sports teams statewide, but a Biden administration proposal to forbid such outright bans is set to be finalized in March after two delays and much pushback. As proposed, the rule would establish that blanket bans would violate Title IX, the landmark gender-equity legislation enacted in 1972.

    DeWine vetoed the bill Dec. 29 of last year, then on Jan. 5, signed an executive order and announced proposed regulations designed to address some of the elements the bill covered while allowing non-surgical gender-affirming care for minors, such as puberty blockers and hormone treatments, to continue.

    The executive order bans gender-affirming surgeries for minors, even though medical professionals say they weren’t occurring anyway.

    DeWine’s proposals, alongside his executive order, have garnered harsh criticism from supporters of the bans and their opponents alike. The proposals include mandating a “contractual relationship” with medical care teams for both transgender children and adults and comprehensive and lengthy mental health programs before any treatments or surgeries.

    None of DeWine’s rules tackle the sports ban provision. He told reporters last week that he would not address that particular ban and felt gender-affirming care was more important at this time. On the House floor, Republicans continued to push that such bans were about fairness and protection for girls and women and sports while Democrats categorized them as bullying kids.

    DeWine’s break from his party’s status quo, which he has touted as a “pro-life” decision, has drawn backlash from fellow Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, and conservative Christian groups even with his proposed regulations. Trump posted to Truth Social that DeWine had fallen to the “radical left,” that he was “done” with Ohio’s governor and urged legislators to override.

    Less than 24 hours before DeWine’s veto, Lt. Gov Jon Husted, who is currently running for governor in 2026, voiced his support of the bans on social media and said that he hoped the measure would become law.

    While opponents such as Democrats, families with transgender children and LGBTQ+ people are rallying against the veto, with possible legal challenges being explored after the Senate’s expected override, they are not happy with DeWine’s proposals either.

    Equality Ohio, an organization seeking to preserve rights of the LGBTQ+ community, said in a statement that “as drafted, the proposed rules fundamentally change how Ohio medical systems operate and disrupt care for existing patients, including adults” and that DeWine’s proposals would impose broader regulations on the transgender community.

    ___

    Samantha Hendrickson 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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  • Florida Republicans vote on removing party chairman accused of rape as DeSantis pins hopes on Iowa

    Florida Republicans vote on removing party chairman accused of rape as DeSantis pins hopes on Iowa

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    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Republican Party of Florida is scheduled to hold a special meeting Monday to vote on removing Chairman Christian Ziegler and select a new leader as police investigate a rape accusation against him, a vote that comes the week before Gov. Ron DeSantis competes in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucus.

    The party suspended Ziegler last month and demanded his resignation, saying he can’t effectively lead during a critical election year with the allegations, which Ziegler denies, swirling around him. Gov. Ron DeSantis, U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and other Republican leaders have called on Ziegler to step down, but he has refused.

    DeSantis is seeking the GOP nomination for president, but ahead of the Jan. 15 Iowa caucus he trails far behind former President Donald Trump, who also is a Floridian. Scott is running for re-election. Florida also will play a key role in determining control of the U.S. House.

    “We have to move past this and have to focus on 2024. Florida’s one of the most important states for the Republicans and we have to continue to bring home victories, especially for Rick Scott and the top of the ticket with Trump as our nominee, eventually,” said state Sen. Joe Gruters, who preceded Ziegler as party chair.

    The meeting is expected to be held behind closed doors at a Tallahassee conference center.

    Beyond the rape accusation, there is another troublesome element for the party. Under DeSantis, Florida has stripped rights away from LGBTQ+ Floridians and banned instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in schools.

    Ziegler and his wife, Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, have admitted to police that they previously had a consensual sexual relationship with Christian Ziegler’s accuser.

    The Sarasota Police Department is investigating the woman’s accusation that Ziegler raped her at her apartment in October. Police documents say the Zieglers and the woman had planned a sexual threesome that day, but Bridget Ziegler was unable to attend. The accuser says Christian Ziegler arrived anyway and assaulted her.

    Christian Ziegler has not been charged with a crime and says he is innocent, contending the encounter was consensual.

    Bridget Ziegler, an elected member of the Sarasota School Board, is not accused of any crime. The board voted to ask her to resign last month but she refused.

    The couple have been outspoken opponents of LGBTQ+ rights and their relationship with another woman has sparked criticism and accusations of hypocrisy.

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  • For transgender youth in crisis, hospitals sometimes compound the trauma

    For transgender youth in crisis, hospitals sometimes compound the trauma

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    CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Four days of waiting under the flickering fluorescent lights of UNC Hospitals’ emergency room left Callum Bradford desperate for an answer to one key question.

    The transgender teen from Chapel Hill needed mental health care after overdosing on prescription drugs. He was about to be transferred to another hospital because the UNC system was short on beds.

    With knots in his stomach, he asked, “Will I be placed in a girls’ unit?”

    Yes, he would.

    The answer provoked one of the worst anxiety attacks he had ever experienced. Sobbing into the hospital phone, he informed his parents, who fought for days to reverse the decision they warned would cause their already vulnerable son greater harm.

    Although they initially succeeded in blocking the transfer, the family had few remaining options when a second overdose landed Callum back in UNC’s emergency room a few months later. When the 17-year-old learned he was again scheduled to be sent to an inpatient ward inconsistent with his gender identity, he told doctors his urge to hurt himself was becoming uncontrollable, according to hospital records given by the family to The Associated Press.

    “I had an immense amount of regret that I had even come to that hospital, because I knew that I wasn’t going to get the treatment that I needed,” Callum said. “That moment of crisis and shock and fear, I would wish anything that that hadn’t happened, because I truly think that I took a step backwards from where I was before in terms of my mental health.”

    As the political debate over health care for transgender youth has intensified across the U.S., elected officials and advocates who favor withholding gender-affirming medical procedures for minors have often said parents are not acting in their children’s best interest when they seek such treatment.

    Major medical associations say the treatments are safe and warn of grave mental health consequences for children forced to wait until adulthood to access puberty-blocking drugs, hormones and, in rare cases, surgeries.

    Youth and young adults ages 10–24 account for about 15% of all suicides, and research shows LGBTQ+ high school students have higher rates of attempted suicide than their peers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Some transgender teens say the negative rhetoric popularized by many Republican politicians in recent years has become too much to bear. In North Carolina, legislators enacted new limits to gender-affirming care for trans youth this year while barely discussing flaws in the psychiatric care system. It’s one of at least 22 states that have passed laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. Most face legal challenges.

    North Carolina lacks uniform treatment standards across hospitals and runs low on money and staff with proper training to treat transgender kids in crisis. That means the last-resort measures to support patients like Callum often fail to help them, and sometimes make things worse.

    Sending a transgender child to a unit that does not align with their gender identity should be out of the question, no matter a hospital’s constraints, said Dr. Jack Turban, director of the gender psychiatry program at the University of California, San Francisco, and a researcher of quality care barriers for trans youth in inpatient facilities.

    “If you don’t validate the trans identity from day one, their mental health’s going to get worse,” Turban said. “Potentially, you’re sending them out at a higher suicide risk than they came in.”

    When North Carolina lawmakers allocated $835 million to shore up mental health infrastructure earlier this year, none of the money was specifically allocated to the treatment needs of trans patients. Though the funding may benefit everyone, a lack of direct action has left trans youth at the mercy of a system ill-equipped to help them when they need it most.

    A nationwide dearth of pediatric psychiatric beds was compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw an unprecedented number of people seeking emergency mental health services, according to a report by the American Psychiatric Association. Demand has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

    A “dire shortage” of at least 400 inpatient psychiatric beds for North Carolina youth has left UNC with no choice but to send patients to other facilities, even those that cannot accommodate specific needs, said Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, chair of the UNC Department of Psychiatry.

    Emergency rooms are not designed for boarding, nor can they provide comprehensive mental health treatment. That creates an immediate need to place patients left waiting in the ER for days or even weeks before a bed opens up, Meltzer-Brody said.

    While UNC’s own inpatient program assigns all children to individual rooms on co-ed floors, it sends overflow patients to some hospitals that don’t make such accommodations.

    “We have no choice but to refer people to the next available bed,” Meltzer-Brody said of the University of North Carolina-affiliated hospital. “If you’re talking about the LGBTQ+ community and seeking trans care, you may be sent to a place that is not providing care in a way that is going to be most optimal.”

    Callum exploded when he was told about plans to place him in a unit for girls, his records note. He shouted and cried hysterically until he ended up in an isolation room. Doctors later found him banging his head against the wall in a trance-like state.

    “It was almost as if sort of my brain had turned off because of such a shock,” he recalled. “I had never acted on such severe self-harm without even realizing that I was doing it.”

    UNC declined to comment on Callum’s case, despite the family’s willingness to waive its privacy rights. But Meltzer-Brody did broadly address barriers to gender-affirming treatment for all psychiatric patients.

    The public hospital system’s policy on gender-designated facilities recommends inpatient assignments based on a patient’s “self-identified gender when feasible.” But with the ER overrun in recent years, Meltzer-Brody said meeting that goal is a challenge.

    The issue extends beyond transgender youth, affecting patients with autism, addiction and acute psychiatric disorders who are sometimes sent to facilities unfit to provide specialized care.

    It doesn’t help, she said, that there is no national standard for how psychiatric hospitals must cater to transgender patients.

    The LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Lambda Legal has outlined best practices for hospitals treating transgender patients under the Affordable Care Act. The organization says denying someone access to a gender-affirming room assignment is identity-based discrimination, based on its interpretation of the law.

    But such cases rarely end up in court, because the burden falls on families to advocate for their rights while supporting a child in crisis, said Casey Pick, law and policy director at The Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on LGBTQ+ suicide prevention.

    “These are circumstances that are themselves often inherently traumatic, and adding a layer of trauma on top of that in the form of discrimination based on an individual’s gender identity just compounds the issue,” Pick said. “The last thing we should have to do is then add the additional trauma of going to court.”

    Parents including Callum’s father, Dan Bradford, describe feeling helpless while their children are receiving psychiatric care involuntarily, which isn’t uncommon after attempted suicide. Callum’s involuntary commitment designation also temporarily stripped his mother and father of many parental rights to make medical decisions for their son.

    A psychiatrist himself, Dan Bradford always has supported his son’s medical transition, which began with puberty-blocking drugs, followed by a low dose of testosterone that he still takes. Eventually, Callum underwent top surgery to remove his breasts. Irreversible procedures like surgery are rarely performed on minors, and only when doctors determine it’s necessary.

    “In Callum’s case, the gender dysphoria was so strong that not pursuing gender-affirming medical treatments, like pretty quickly, was going to be life-threatening,” his father said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Any risk that might be associated with the treatments seemed trivial, quite frankly, because we were afraid we’re going to lose our kid if we didn’t.”

    North Carolina law bars medical professionals from providing hormones, puberty blockers and gender-transition surgeries to anyone under 18. But some kids like Callum, who began treatment before an August cut-off date, can continue if their doctors deem it medically necessary.

    Although he retained access to hormones, Callum said it has been brutal seeing the General Assembly block his transgender friends from receiving the treatments he credits as life-saving.

    “When these public policies are discussed or passed, that sends a really strong message to these kids that their government, their society and their community either accepts them and validates them or doesn’t,” said Turban, the researcher at UC San Francisco.

    His research has found that many medical providers still lack training about LGBTQ+ identities and make common mistakes, such as printing the wrong gender designation on a hospital wristband or placing a transgender patient in a single-occupancy room when everyone else has a roommate.

    Fearing the plan to place his son in a girls’ ward would be deeply traumatizing, Dan Bradford secured a spot at a residential treatment center in Georgia. He pleaded with UNC to release Callum early and convinced the North Carolina hospital that was supposed to take him to reject the transfer.

    The teen then spent 17 weeks in an individualized treatment program in Atlanta, recovering from the circumstances that landed him in the ER and the added trauma he endured there. He has since returned home and is taking care of his mental health by playing keyboard and rowing with his co-ed team on the calm waters of Jordan Lake. For the first time in years, Callum said he’s thinking about his future.

    There are some positive developments on the horizon for North Carolina youth facing mental health crises.

    The new state funding for mental health services approved in October has enabled UNC Hospitals to open a 54-bed youth behavioral health facility in Butner, 28 miles (45 kilometers) north of Raleigh. State Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kody Kinsley said the facility should alleviate some barriers to individualized care, including for transgender patients. And UNC has announced plans to open a freestanding children’s hospital within the next decade.

    Leaders of the Butner facility, which began its phased opening this month, have promised to take a whole-family approach so parents are not shut out of their child’s treatment plan. Nearly every patient will be placed in an individual room on a co-ed floor.

    The new facility and funding will allow more patients to stay in single-occupancy rooms at UNC, but overflow patients may still be sent elsewhere, Meltzer-Brody said. The hospital system has not changed its policies on transgender patient referrals, and other facilities across the state that receive those patients still lack uniform standards for treating them.

    Although Callum said his experiences eroded his trust in the state’s inpatient care network, he is optimistic that the new resources could give others a more gender-affirming treatment experience, if they are paired with policy changes.

    “I’m still here, and I’m happy to be here,” he said. “That’s all I want for all my trans friends.”

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Judge: DeSantis spread false information while pushing trans health care ban, restrictions

    Judge: DeSantis spread false information while pushing trans health care ban, restrictions

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    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A federal judge hearing a challenge to a transgender health care ban for minors and restrictions for adults noted Thursday that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly spread false information about doctors mutilating children’s genitals even though there’s been no such documented cases.

    The law was sold as defending children from mutilation when it is actually about preventing trans children from getting health care, Judge Robert Hinkle said to Mohammad Jazil, a lawyer for the state.

    “When I’m analyzing the governor’s motivation, what should I make of these statements?” Hinkle asked. “This seems to be more than just hyperbole.”

    Hinkle said he will rule sometime in the new year on whether the Legislature, the Department of Health and presidential candidate DeSantis deliberately targeted transgender people through the new law. He raised some skepticism about the state’s motivation as lawyers gave their closing arguments.

    The trial is challenging Florida’s ban on medical treatment for transgender children, such as hormone therapy or puberty blockers, a law DeSantis touted while seeking the presidency. The law also places restrictions on adult trans care.

    Jazil said the motivation behind the law was simply public safety in an area that needs more oversight and can have permanent consequences.

    “It’s about treating a medical condition; it’s not about targeting transgender individuals,” Jazil said.

    Jazil added that if the state was targeting transgender people, it could have banned all treatment for adults and children. Hinkle quickly replied that Jazil would have trouble defending such a law.

    Hinkle, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, has temporarily blocked enforcement of the law as it pertains to minors, pending the outcome of the trial. The lawsuit also challenges restrictions placed on adult trans care, which have been allowed to take effect during the trial.

    At least 22 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and many of those states face lawsuits. Courts have issued mixed rulings, with the nation’s first law, in Arkansas, struck down by a federal judge who said the ban on care violated the due process rights of transgender youth and their families.

    Enforcement is blocked in two states besides Florida, and enforcement is currently allowed in or set to go into effect soon in seven other states.

    Thomas Redburn, a lawyer representing trans adults and the families of trans children, said DeSantis and the Legislature have shown a pattern of targeting transgender people. He listed other recent laws that affect the community, including restrictions on pronoun use in schools, the teaching of gender identification in schools, restrictions on public bathrooms and the prohibition of trans girls from playing girls sports.

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  • EXPLAINER: How can Catholic priests bless same-sex unions?

    EXPLAINER: How can Catholic priests bless same-sex unions?

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    ROME — The Vatican document explicitly saying Catholic priests can bless same-sex unions lays out the conditions for what such blessings can, and cannot, involve.

    The overall goal is to make it abundantly clear to the couple and those around them that the blessing is not a liturgical or sacramental ritual, and that it in no way resembles a marriage. This is because the Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a lifelong sacramental union between a man and woman.

    Nothing has changed about the church’s position on marriage, its firm opposition to gay marriage, or its belief that any extramarital sex — gay or straight — is sinful.

    Here are some of the points in the document:

    — To avoid any confusion that the church was performing a same-sex marriage, the blessing should not be offered in conjunction with a civil union ceremony, gay or straight.

    — “Nor can it be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding.”

    — Such blessings can be offered during a visit to a Catholic shrine, during a meeting with a priest, a prayer recited in a group or during a pilgrimage.

    — The blessing should not be codified or in any way established by set procedures or rituals by dioceses or bishops’ conferences. Rather, priests should be trained to “spontaneously” offer blessings outside the church’s set of approved blessings.

    — To drive that point home, the document concludes that the Vatican has no plans to regulate details or practicalities about same-sex blessings, or respond to further questions about them, leaving it to individual priests to work out.

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  • Florida mother fears her family will be devastated as trial on trans health care ban begins

    Florida mother fears her family will be devastated as trial on trans health care ban begins

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    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The mother of a transgender girl sobbed in federal court Wednesday as she contemplated having to move away from her Navy officer husband to get health care for her 12-year-old if Florida’s ban on gender dysphoria treatments for minors is allowed to take affect.

    The woman, who testified as Jane Doe to protect the identity of her child, said her daughter went from being anxious and upset to a thriving, happy straight-A student after being allowed to live as a girl about eight years ago, a decision she made with her husband after multiple visits to their family’s doctor.

    But as the girl approaches puberty, she fears she will start turning into a boy. Without treatment, she and her family will be devasted, the mother said.

    “I will go to the end of the Earth to get my daughter the help she needs,” the woman testified through sobs as she pulled facial tissues from a box. “I think about, will our family get torn apart? Will we have to live somewhere else away from my husband?”

    The testimony came as a trial began challenging Florida’s ban on medical treatment for transgender children, such as hormone therapy or puberty blockers, a law pushed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has campaigned on the issue while seeking the presidency. The law also places restrictions on adult trans care.

    “This all started with the governor.” said Thomas Redburn, a lawyer representing trans adults and the families of trans children.

    He noted other laws DeSantis has pushed to show the governor and Republican lawmakers have attacked transgender rights, including restricting the use of pronouns in schools that don’t match peoples’ sex at birth.

    But lawyer Mohammad Jazil, representing the state, said the law is a matter of protecting people. He said in one case, a person was prescribed hormones after a 30-minute telehealth appointment. And other people have decided to detransition back to their birth sex and learned their treatment has caused permanent damage, he said.

    “This case isn’t about overregulation, it’s about under-regulation,” Jazil said.

    Judge Robert Hinkle has temporarily blocked enforcement of the law pending the outcome of the trial. The lawsuit also challenges restrictions placed on adult trans care, which are being allowed to take effect during the trial.

    At least 22 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and many of those states face lawsuits. Courts have issued mixed rulings, with the nation’s first law, in Arkansas, struck down by a federal judge who said the ban on care violated the due process rights of transgender youth and their families.

    Enforcement is blocked in two states besides Florida, and enforcement is currently allowed in or set to go into effect soon in seven other states.

    Redburn said in opening arguments that the Florida law is unconstitutional because it singles out an entire group of people. He pointed out that non-transgender adults can receive the same treatments, such as estrogen and testosterone, without having to jump through hoops.

    “The state of Florida has decided that people should not be transgender,” Redburn said. “The fewer transgender people, the better.”

    The girl’s mother testified that their family’s pediatrician diagnosed her daughter with gender dysphoria after she began gravitating towards girls’ toys and clothes as a 3-year-old. She described her daughter screaming and tearing off her clothes in her car seat while being driven to preschool. She and her husband have made four-hour roundtrips to the University of Florida so their daughter can get care from experts.

    As for risks like infertility that Jazil noted in opening statements, the woman said, “The benefits for my daughter far outweigh the potential of the risks. Her biggest fear is what she calls turning into a boy. I’ve assured her that won’t happen.”

    Jazil only questioned the girl’s mother briefly, including pointing out that the University of Florida health records didn’t list a height and weight for Jane Doe’s daughter.

    Redburn said gender dysphoria is real and not something people choose because of social media and the influence of the internet, as policymakers have argued. He pointed out that Republican lawmakers who pushed for the law described transgender people as evil and a cult. He noted that the bill’s sponsor argued that God doesn’t make mistakes.

    Separately Wednesday, a lawsuit was filed by three educators challenging the law restricting pronoun use in schools, saying that transgender and nonbinary teachers are prohibited from being themselves.

    Ironically, Jazil consistently referred to Jane Doe’s daughter as “her” and “she” despite the state forcing others to use pronouns that match birth sex in schools.

    The trial over trans health care is expected to last five days.

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  • Backlash to House testimony shines spotlight on new generation of Ivy League presidents

    Backlash to House testimony shines spotlight on new generation of Ivy League presidents

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    WASHINGTON — The university presidents called before a congressional hearing on antisemitism last week had more in common than strife on their campuses: The leaders of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and MIT were all women who were relatively new in their positions.

    In that sense, they represented the changing face of leadership at top-tier universities, with a record number of women leading Ivy League schools.

    Now Penn’s president has resigned over a backlash to comments that she said did not go far enough to condemn hate against Jewish students. And Harvard’s president is facing calls to step down from donors and some lawmakers.

    While the Israel-Hamas war has deepened rifts at campuses across the country, the three leaders were invited to testify as the public faces of universities embroiled in protest and complaints of antisemitism. The Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce chose the three presidents because their schools “have been at the center of the rise in antisemitic protests,” a committee spokesperson said in a statement.

    The presidents drew fire for carefully worded responses to a line of questioning from New York Republican Elise Stefanik, who repeatedly asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate the schools’ rules.

    “If the speech turns into conduct it can be harassment, yes,” Magill said. Pressed further, Magill told Stefanik, “It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman.” Gay gave a similar response, saying that when “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies.”

    Some observers pointed out the dynamics when three women — one Black and one Jewish — were placed before a group of GOP lawmakers eager for a political fight.

    Questions of bias surfaced again when billionaire Bill Ackman, a Harvard alumnus pushing for Gay’s resignation, suggested on X, formerly Twitter, that she was hired to fulfill diversity and equity goals.

    Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton said Ackman’s comments set back inclusion efforts only months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in higher education in a case involving Harvard. “Now we have one of the richest men in America attacking a Black woman whose academic credentials are impeccable,” he said.

    In some ways, the three women brought before the House committee represent a new era of Ivy League leadership, which has long been dominated by men, most of them white.

    Before Magill’s resignation, women led six of the eight Ivy League universities, all but Princeton and Yale. In the last two years, Columbia and Dartmouth each hired women for the top job for the first time.

    The shift has mostly been limited to the upper tiers of higher education, however. Men still outnumber women two-to-one in college presidencies, and women of color account for just 1 in 10 presidents, according to a survey by the American Council on Education this year.

    That backdrop is sure to be on the minds of Harvard’s governing leaders as they weigh Gay’s future. Some commenters have noted that firing Harvard’s first Black president would bring its own political backlash, especially for something that some view as a political misstep.

    Firing Gay could also be seen as bowing to Republican lawmakers who have long had attacked elite universities as hubs of liberal “woke-ism.” That message was delivered to Harvard leaders in a petition signed by more than 600 faculty members calling to keep Gay in command.

    The petition urges Harvard’s governing body to resist political pressures “that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom.” It’s seen not as a defense of Gay’s actions but as an attempt to insulate the school from the intrusion of political pressure.

    “We have lawmakers getting intimately involved in trying to dictate governance on campus, and this seems unacceptable,” said Melani Cammett, a professor of international affairs who helped organize the petition. Harvard needs to reckon with campus polarization, she added, but “that’s not something that should be controlled by external actors.”

    Faculty aim to counter a letter from 70 members of Congress, most of them Republican, calling for the resignation of Gay and the other two presidents at the hearing.

    Those backing the faculty petition include some professors who have been critical of Gay. Among them is Laurence Tribe, a legal scholar who described Gay’s testimony as “hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive.”

    Still, he endorsed the petition. “It’s dangerous for universities to be readily bullied into micromanaging their policies,” he said in an interview. But his view on Gay hasn’t changed.

    “I think she now has a great deal to prove, and I’m not at all sure that she will be able to prove it,” he said. “I don’t think she is out of the woods by any means.”

    Harvard’s highest governing body was scheduled to meet Monday and had not issued a public statement since the hearing. On Thursday, MIT’s governing body issued a statement declaring “full and unreserved support” for President Sally Kornbluth, who is Jewish and whose testimony also drew scathing criticism.

    ___

    The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Military-themed brewery wants to open in a big Navy town. An ex-SEAL is getting in the way

    Military-themed brewery wants to open in a big Navy town. An ex-SEAL is getting in the way

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    NORFOLK, Va. — NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — A former U.S. Navy SEAL who says he shot Osama bin Laden is at the center of a much different fight in Virginia, where plans for a military-themed brewery are drawing opposition over his alleged racist and homophobic remarks.

    Robert J. O’Neill has a small ownership stake in Armed Forces Brewing Company and has served as its brand ambassador. His recent social media complaint about a Navy sailor who performs as a drag queen and a police report alleging he used a racial slur are fueling efforts to stop the brewery from opening in military-friendly Norfolk.

    The company, which markets itself with politically conservative ads, has dismissed claims of bigotry and toned down O’Neill’s public-facing role. But last month, Norfolk’s planning commission recommended the City Council deny permits for the planned taproom and distribution center, which would be only a few miles (kilometers) from the nation’s largest Navy base.

    The nonbinding 4-to-2 vote came after nearly 800 public comments were filed, many of which opposed the venture. The brewery also failed to get the support of the local neighborhood association, which serves the largely Black community of Park Place.

    The City Council could vote as soon as Tuesday on the brewery’s conditional use permits. The company has warned it will sue if the application is rejected.

    In a letter to Norfolk’s attorney, brewery lawyer Tim Anderson said the planning commission’s vote was based on the owners’ political views.

    “What is 100% clear to me is that if my client was an activist brewery positively engaged in promoting LGBTQ ideas — the application would have sailed through planning,” Anderson said.

    In some ways, the matter resembles an inverse, if miniature, version of the uproar over Bud Light sending a commemorative can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Sales of the brand plunged amid a conservative backlash, although Bud Light’s parent Anheuser-Busch also angered supporters of transgender rights who believed the company later abandoned Mulvaney.

    Opponents say Armed Forces Brewing would be a glaringly bad fit for the city of about 230,000 people on the Chesapeake Bay. They argue its ownership doesn’t reflect the diversity of the U.S. military, veterans or liberal-leaning Norfolk.

    Robert Bracknell, an attorney and former Marine, said the company made no effort to win over surrounding neighborhoods while relying on conservative identity politics for its branding. Community opposition is not anti-military but “anti-intolerance and anti-hate,” he said.

    “These guys are not the Navy,” said Bracknell, who lives less than 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the proposed taproom. “They’re a really small sliver of a veteran community that doesn’t represent the rest of us.”

    Opponents cited O’Neill’s August arrest in Frisco, Texas, in which police said he assaulted a hotel security officer while intoxicated and used a racial slur. O’Neill, who faces misdemeanor assault and public intoxication charges, later posted on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter: “I categorically deny ever using this horrible language recently reported.”

    In response to news that an active-duty sailor who moonlights as a drag queen was helping Navy recruitment efforts, O’Neill posted on X in May: “Alright. The U.S. Navy is now using an enlisted sailor Drag Queen as a recruiter. I’m done. China is going to destroy us. YOU GOT THIS NAVY. I can’t believe I fought for this bull.”

    O’Neill, who is now a public speaker and podcaster, did not respond to a request for comment sent through his website, LinkedIn profile or Facebook page.

    Brewery opponents also focused on shareholder and advisor Gretchen Smith. The Air Force veteran posted on X that Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of killing George Floyd, was innocent.

    Another Smith post cited the “Great Reset,” a conspiracy theory that the Anti-Defamation League said can have antisemitic overtones, although she voiced support for Israel in other posts.

    The company’s promotional videos also drew criticism. Some involve the firing of lots of guns. And a tongue-in-cheek ad for investors warned off anyone who has ever watched “The View” television show or loves “taking your 5-year-old child to drag shows.”

    In response to efforts to get comment from Smith, Armed Forces Brewing said she was out of the country. But the company said in an email: “Gretchen is disliked by the vocal minority because she holds political views that tens of millions of conservative Americans hold — and which she has the First Amendment right to express on her personal social media.”

    Planning commissioner Kim Sudderth voted against the brewery, citing reservations about antisemitism and violent hate speech.

    “I’m genuinely concerned that you may not comply with city conditions and partner successfully with the community,” Sudderth said at a meeting last month.

    Alan Beal, Armed Forces Brewing’s CEO, told the commission that O’Neill and Smith aren’t part of daily operations. Although O’Neill still sits on its board, he is no longer the brewery’s director of military services, Beal said, noting that O’Neill recently sought treatment in Mexico for post-traumatic stress.

    “Despite the rumors that the opposition is spreading around town, no one is running around the brewing facility with AR-15s or guns and there’s no barbed wire up on the fence,” Beal told the commission last month. “The military is diverse. And yes, everyone is welcome at Armed Forces Brewing Company.”

    In a promotional video, Beal said the goal is to brew beer for the military community while employing veterans and supporting their causes.

    Anderson, the brewery’s attorney, told the planning commission that the business needs to open for people to realize it’s not the “boogeyman.”

    “This is not going to be some place that’s going to hold rallies against the LGBTQ community or anything distasteful,” Anderson said. “Everything’s going to calm down.”

    Jeff Ryder, president of Hampton Roads Pride, is skeptical. He said the community will continue raising concerns while trying to establish a relationship with the brewery.

    “But they haven’t really given me any indication they want that,” Ryder said.

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  • Massachusetts attorney general files civil rights lawsuit against white nationalist group

    Massachusetts attorney general files civil rights lawsuit against white nationalist group

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    Massachusetts’ attorney general has filed a lawsuit accusing a white nationalist group of civil rights violations, saying it repeatedly subjected LGBTQ+ events and facilities sheltering migrant families to intimidation and harassment

    ByMICHAEL CASEY Associated Press

    December 8, 2023, 1:14 PM

    FILE – Andrea Campbell, Attorney General of Massachusetts, answers a question during an interview at the State Attorneys General Association meetings, Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023, in Boston. Campbell has filed a lawsuit on Thursday, Dec. 7, accusing a white nationalist group of civil rights violations, saying it repeatedly subjected LGBTQ+ events and facilities sheltering migrant families to intimidation and harassment. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

    The Associated Press

    BOSTON — Massachusetts’ attorney general has filed a lawsuit accusing a white nationalist group of civil rights violations, saying it repeatedly subjected LGBTQ+ events and facilities sheltering migrant families to intimidation and harassment.

    The complaint filed Thursday against NSC-131 and two of its leaders, Christopher Hood of Newburyport and Liam McNeil of Waltham, accuses the group of engaging “in violent, threatening, and intimidating conduct that violated state civil rights laws and unlawfully interfered with public safety.”

    “NSC-131 has engaged in a concerted campaign to target and terrorize people across Massachusetts and interfere with their rights. Our complaint is the first step in holding this neo-Nazi group and its leaders accountable for their unlawful actions against members of our community,” Attorney General Andrea Campbell said in a statement.

    According to the complaint, the group repeatedly targeted drag story hours around the state between July 2022 and January 2023, attempting to shut down the events and attacking members of the public. The group also targeted migrant shelters from October 2022 and October 2023, prosecutors allege.

    The Associated Press wasn’t able to reach Hood or McNeil for comment about the lawsuit or determine if either has an attorney. A number listed for Hood had been disconnected and a number could not be found for McNeil. The group didn’t immediately respond to messages sent through Gab and Telegram.

    The Anti-Defamation League describes NSC-131 as a New England-based neo-Nazi group founded in 2019 that “espouses racism, antisemitism and intolerance” and whose “membership is a collection of neo-Nazis and racist skinheads, many of whom have previous membership in other white supremacist groups.”

    Earlier this year, a New Hampshire judge dismissed trespassing complaints against the group. Prosecutors there said the group displayed “Keep New England White” banners from an overpass without a permit in July.

    In March 2022, about a dozen masked members of NSC-131 attended South Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day parade as spectators and held up a banner that said “Keep Boston Irish.” The parade’s organizers and Mayor Michelle Wu denounced the group’s appearance.

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  • Police raid Moscow gay bars after Supreme Court LGBTQ+ ruling

    Police raid Moscow gay bars after Supreme Court LGBTQ+ ruling

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    Russian security forces raided gay clubs and bars across Moscow Friday night, less than 48 hours after the country’s top court banned what it called the “global LGBTQ+ movement” as an extremist organization.

    Police searched venues across the Russian capital, including a nightclub, a male sauna, and a bar that hosted LGBTQ+ parties, under the pretext of a drug raid, local media reported.

    Eyewitnesses told journalists that clubgoers’ documents were checked and photographed by the security services. They also said that managers had been able to warn patrons before police arrived.

    The raids follow a decision by Russia’s Supreme Court to label the country’s LGBTQ+ “movement” as an extremist organization.

    The ruling, which was made in response to a lawsuit filed by the Justice Ministry, is the latest step in a decadelong crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights under President Vladimir Putin, who has emphasized “traditional family values” during his 24 years in power.

    Activists have noted the lawsuit was lodged against a movement that is not an official entity, and that under its broad and vague definition authorities could crack down on any individuals or groups deemed to be part of it.

    Several LGBTQ+ venues have already closed following the decision, including St. Petersburg’s gay club Central Station. It wrote on social media Friday that the owner would no longer allow the bar to operate with the law in effect.

    Max Olenichev, a human rights lawyer who works with the Russian LGBTQ+ community, told The Associated Press before the ruling that it effectively bans organized activity to defend the rights of LGBTQ+ people.

    “In practice, it could happen that the Russian authorities, with this court ruling in hand, will enforce (the ruling) against LGBTQ+ initiatives that work in Russia, considering them a part of this civic movement,” Olenichev said.

    Before the ruling, leading Russian human rights groups had filed a document with the Supreme Court that called the Justice Ministry lawsuit discriminatory and a violation of Russia’s constitution. Some LGBTQ+ activists tried to become a party in the case but were rebuffed by the court.

    In 2013, the Kremlin adopted the first legislation restricting LGBTQ+ rights, known as the “gay propaganda” law, banning any public endorsement of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors. In 2020, constitutional reforms pushed through by Putin to extend his rule by two more terms also included a provision to outlaw same-sex marriage.

    After sending troops into Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin ramped up a campaign against what it called the West’s “degrading” influence. Rights advocates saw it as an attempt to legitimize the war. That same year, a law was passed banning propaganda of “nontraditional sexual relations” among adults, also, effectively outlawing any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ people.

    Another law passed this year prohibited gender transitioning procedures and gender-affirming care for transgender people. The legislation prohibited any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records.

    Russian authorities reject accusations of LGBTQ+ discrimination. Earlier this month, Russian media quoted Deputy Justice Minister Andrei Loginov as saying that “the rights of LGBT people in Russia are protected” legally. He was presenting a report on human rights in Russia to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, arguing that “restraining public demonstration of nontraditional sexual relationships or preferences is not a form of censure for them.”

    The Supreme Court case is classified and it remains unclear how LGBTQ+ activists and symbols will be restricted.

    Many people will consider leaving Russia before they become targeted, said Olga Baranova, director of the Moscow Community Center for LGBTQ+ Initiatives.

    “It is clear for us that they’re once again making us out as a domestic enemy to shift the focus from all the other problems that are in abundance in Russia,” Baranova told the AP.

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  • For a male sexual assault survivor, justice won in court does not equal healing

    For a male sexual assault survivor, justice won in court does not equal healing

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    When Sam Schultz was sexually assaulted, it felt like a part of them died.

    It took eight years and the burgeoning #MeToo movement to spur them to go public and make a police report, and an additional five years for their attackers to plead guilty.

    Now, as much as Schultz hopes there’s a reckoning coming in gay and queer communities, too, it feels like they are the one shouldering the blame, not the attackers: for coming forward, for harming the men’s reputations.

    Instead of being able to focus on recovery, Schultz has been saddled with worries from other gay men that talking about sexual abuse in their community will hurt the fight for LBGTQ+ rights.

    The pain of the assault and ensuing public attention and court proceedings have taken a huge toll.

    “It is an exhausting and horrifying journey that I almost quit because it just takes way too much of a person,” Schultz said in an interview with The Associated Press. “And to any person who has pursued justice and quit along the way, I get it. The system is not built for us. The system is built to protect certain people.”

    As many as 95% of male sexual violations go unreported, according to research cited in a review of scientific literature about male victims of sexual assault, published in April in the journal Behavioral Sciences. Four of five men who reported assaults regretted doing so, saying that police were often unsympathetic and disinterested and that the process just added more trauma.

    Men may fail to report sexual assault because of stigma, shame, guilt and embarrassment; fear of not being believed; privacy concerns; and worries that their sexual orientation or masculinity will be questioned, according to research cited in the article.

    For gay men and other LGBTQ+ people, “their friends and family may not be aware of how they identify. They’re afraid that that this will tip people off, to disclose something they’re not ready to disclose,” said Scott Berkowitz, president of RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. “There’s in some places a disbelief that this really happens to LGBTQ people.”

    Prominent male sexual abuse and assault survivors have come forward in recent years, including actor Anthony Edwards, of “ER” fame, who serves as the board chair and national spokesperson for the nonprofit 1in6 — so named because of research indicating that at least 1 in 6 men have experienced sexual abuse or assault.

    A similar group, MaleSurvivor, formed in 1995, says it is committed to helping boys and men who have experienced sexual abuse.

    And the National Women’s Law Center, administrator of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which provides legal assistance to survivors of workplace sexual harassment and abuse, also offers help to men. The fund helped pay Schultz’s legal fees. Still, just 4% of the people who have sought its support since 2018, or about 200, identify as male.

    “We have such strong and well-worn stereotypes and ideas about who is a survivor in this country, stereotypes that don’t match reality,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. “And men as a category don’t meet that stereotype, even though all the research has shown us that at least 9% of sexual assault survivors are male.”

    __

    This story includes discussion of sexual assault. If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or go to https://hotline.rainn.org.

    __

    Schultz, now 37, described a wrenching and maddening journey from assault, when they were 23, to adjudication and beyond.

    Schultz was an aspiring opera singer and a graduate student at Houston’s Rice University when they met David Daniels, a famous countertenor, and Scott Walters, a conductor, through the city’s music circles. Schultz remembers admiring Daniels for being a “proud gay man” in a conservative art form.

    The two invited Schultz to the closing of the Houston Grand Opera’s “Xerxes,” in which Daniels was starring, Schultz said. Later that night at a cast party, the couple invited Schultz to their apartment afterward, cautioning the young singer not to tell anyone, lest others get jealous.

    Schultz was handed a drink and later woke up in an unfamiliar room, naked and bleeding. Shock and then fear set in.

    “Was I supposed to go to the police? Was I supposed to go to the hospital? Was I supposed to go home? The police didn’t feel like a safe option. The hospital certainly didn’t feel like a safe option. I went home and I stared at a wall,” they said.

    Schultz discussed the assault with relatives, friends and a therapist but didn’t go public until 2018, when the #MeToo movement provided more comfort in making a report.

    Daniels and Walters were arrested in 2019 and maintained the encounter with Schultz was consensual until, just as the two were going to trial on charges of first-degree aggravated sexual assault, they accepted a deal to plead guilty to sexual assault of an adult, a second-degree felony. Both were sentenced to eight years’ probation and required to register as sex offenders.

    The men still tell others in the opera community that they aren’t guilty, Schultz said, and that the plea was just to avoid prison. Schultz saw others in the opera community rally around the attackers, and was criticized for besmirching the reputation of prominent gay men.

    It hurts to see people place more value on their own friendship with the attackers than the hurt they’ve caused.

    “You’re failing to recognize how they’ve criminally impacted my life,” Schultz said.

    Ted Gideonse, an associate professor of teaching of health, society and behavior at the University of California, Irvine, public health program, noted that for gay and bisexual men, lines of consent have been historically muddy. That doesn’t make it right.

    The longtime illicit nature of sexual encounters between men meant that by necessity they had to be coded.

    Gay men often gather in bars – spaces they feel safe to be themselves. But bars are a place that are already sexually heightened, said Gideonse, a researcher in medical and psychological anthropology.

    “There is virtually no sort of admission that gay men or men who have sex with men have a completely different way of interacting around sex than heterosexuals do,” Gideonse said.

    Differences in what constitutes consent and predation, particularly for things like unwanted touching, are changing generationally, he said.

    “The older men are much more like, ‘Are you kidding, this is really typical stuff that no one has been bothered with before,’ and the younger people saying, ‘They just didn’t tell you they were bothered,’” Gideonse said.

    Schultz agrees there’s a need for a discussion about consent within the gay community. In a recent essay in the Washington Blade, an LGBTQ online news magazine, Schultz spoke about the sexualization of young people, and the problems it creates.

    “As young queer people, many of us are objectified and reduced to conquests by often older or more powerful peers,” Schultz wrote. “We learn to believe that our primary value to many is sex rather than equal treatment and respect.”

    Just last month, the BBC published a report after a two-year investigation that uncovered stories alleging that Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, used a middleman to exploit young adult men for sex at events he hosted at his home in New York and at hotels in Paris, London and elsewhere.

    A dozen men described events involving sex acts that were run for Jeffries and his partner, Matthew Smith, from 2009 to 2015. Jeffries stepped down from Abercrombie & Fitch in 2014.

    Schultz hopes that it’s a sign of things changing, and that allegations of men being abused are taken seriously.

    After Schultz first told their own story, a man in his 60s heard it on the radio and realized he had been sexually assaulted in college, too.

    “He wrote to me that he broke down crying at the breakfast table and for the first time started to understand what had happened to him when he was in college,” Schultz said. “And I think a lot of men push experiences away so they don’t ever have to deal with them.”

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  • What’s Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2023? Hint: Be true to yourself

    What’s Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2023? Hint: Be true to yourself

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    NEW YORK — In an age of deepfakes and post-truth, as artificial intelligence rose and Elon Musk turned Twitter into X, the Merriam-Webster word of the year for 2023 is “authentic.”

    Authentic cuisine. Authentic voice. Authentic self. Authenticity as artifice. Lookups for the word are routinely heavy on the dictionary company’s site but were boosted to new heights throughout the year, editor at large Peter Sokolowski told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview.

    “We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity,” he said ahead of Monday’s announcement of this year’s word. “What we realize is that when we question authenticity, we value it even more.”

    Sokolowski and his team don’t delve into the reasons people head for dictionaries and websites in search of specific words. Rather, they chase the data on lookup spikes and world events that correlate. This time around, there was no particularly huge boost at any given time but a constancy to the increased interest in “authentic.”

    This was the year of artificial intelligence, for sure, but also a moment when ChatGPT-maker OpenAI suffered a leadership crisis. Taylor Swift and Prince Harry chased after authenticity in their words and deeds. Musk himself, at February’s World Government Summit in Dubai, urged the heads of companies, politicians, ministers and other leaders to “speak authentically” on social media by running their own accounts.

    “Can we trust whether a student wrote this paper? Can we trust whether a politician made this statement? We don’t always trust what we see anymore,” Sokolowski said. “We sometimes don’t believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognizing that authenticity is a performance itself.”

    Merriam-Webster’s entry for “authentic” is busy with meaning.

    There is “not false or imitation: real, actual,” as in an authentic cockney accent. There’s “true to one’s own personality, spirit or character.” There’s “worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact.” There is “made or done the same way as an original.” And, perhaps the most telling, there’s “conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features.”

    “Authentic” follows 2022’s choice of “gaslighting.” And 2023 marks Merriam-Webster’s 20th anniversary choosing a top word.

    The company’s data crunchers filter out evergreen words like “love” and “affect” vs. “effect” that are always high in lookups among the 500,000 words it defines online. This year, the wordsmiths also filtered out numerous five-letter words because Wordle and Quordle players clearly use the company’s site in search of them as they play the daily games, Sokolowski said.

    Sokolowski, a lexicologist, and his colleagues have a bevy of runners-up for word of the year that also attracted unusual traffic. They include “X” (lookups spiked in July after Musk’s rebranding of Twitter), “EGOT” (there was a boost in February when Viola Davis achieved that rare quadruple-award status with a Grammy) and “Elemental,” the title of a new Pixar film that had lookups jumping in June.

    Rounding out the company’s top words of 2023, in no particular order:

    RIZZ: Slang for “romantic appeal or charm” and seemingly short for charisma. Merriam-Webster added the word to its online dictionary in September and it’s been among the top lookups since, Sokolowski said.

    KIBBUTZ: There was a massive spike in lookups for “a communal farm or settlement in Israel” after Hamas militants attacked several near the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7. The first kibbutz was founded circa 1909 in what is today Israel.

    IMPLODE: The June 18 implosion of the Titan submersible on a commercial expedition to explore the Titanic wreckage sent lookups soaring for this word, meaning “to burst inward.” “It was a story that completely occupied the world,” Sokolowski said.

    DEADNAME: Interest was high in what Merriam-Webster defines as “the name that a transgender person was given at birth and no longer uses upon transitioning.” Lookups followed an onslaught of legislation aimed at curtailing LGBTQ+ rights around the country.

    DOPPEL​GANGER: Sokolowski calls this “a word lover’s word.” Merriam-Webster defines it as a “double,” an “alter ego” or a “ghostly counterpart.” It derives from German folklore. Interest in the word surrounded Naomi Klein’s latest book, “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World,” released this year. She uses her own experience of often being confused with feminist author and conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf as a springboard into a broader narrative on the crazy times we’re all living in.

    CORONATION: King Charles III had one on May 6, sending lookups for the word soaring 15,681% over the year before, Sokolowski said. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the act or occasion of crowning.”

    DEEPFAKE: The dictionary company’s definition is “an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.” Interest spiked after Musk’s lawyers in a Tesla lawsuit said he is often the subject of deepfake videos and again after the likeness of Ryan Reynolds appeared in a fake, AI-generated Tesla ad.

    DYSTOPIAN: Climate chaos brought on interest in the word. So did books, movies and TV fare intended to entertain. “It’s unusual to me to see a word that is used in both contexts,” Sokolowski said.

    COVENANT: Lookups for the word meaning “a usually formal, solemn, and binding agreement” swelled on March 27, after a deadly mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter was a former student killed by police after killing three students and three adults.

    Interest also spiked with this year’s release of “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant” and Abraham Verghese’s long-awaited new novel, “The Covenant of Water,” which Oprah Winfrey chose as a book club pick.

    More recently, soon after U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson ascended to House speaker, a 2022 interview with the Louisiana congressman recirculated. He discussed how his teen son was then his “accountability partner” on Covenant Eyes, software that tracks browser history and sends reports to each partner when porn or other potentially objectionable sites are viewed.

    INDICT: Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on felony charges in four criminal cases in New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C., in addition to fighting a lawsuit threatening his real estate empire.

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  • Coldplay concert in Malaysia can be stopped by organizers if the band misbehaves, government says

    Coldplay concert in Malaysia can be stopped by organizers if the band misbehaves, government says

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    KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Organizers of Wednesday’s Coldplay concert in Malaysia can stop the show if the British rock band misbehaves, a minister said as the government rejected Muslim conservatives’ calls to cancel the show.

    Led by the country’s opposition bloc, Muslim conservatives have protested the concert over Coldplay’s support for the LGBTQ+ community. Recently, they also pushed for the concert to be halted in solidarity with Palestinians killed in the Israel-Hamas war.

    Communication and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil said he doesn’t foresee any problem with Coldplay’s first concert in Malaysia later in the night. Security has been beefed up for the show that is expected to draw some 75,000 people at a stadium outside Kuala Lumpur.

    “Yes, it’s one of the things we have discussed with the organizer,” Fahmi said when asked if a ‘kill switch” to cut off power supply will be used.

    “The prime minister has also said the band, you know, is very supportive of Palestine. So, we are upbeat about the concert today,” he added.

    Malaysia introduced the kill switch measure recently after a controversy sparked by British band The 1975 in Kuala Lumpur in July. The band’s lead singer slammed the country’s anti-gay laws and kissed a male bandmate during their performance, sparking a backlash among Muslims and prompted the government to cut short a three-day music festival.

    Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has justified allowing the Coldplay concert, telling Parliament on Tuesday that “Coldplay is actually among the bands that support Palestine.” He noted that the previous administration, before he took power in November 2022, had approved the concert. Anwar said pro-Palestinian groups also approached his office in support of the Coldplay concert.

    The opposition Islamic party PAS slammed Anwar’s stance. While Coldplay supports the Palestinian cause, it also encourages hedonism, said its information chief Ahmad Fadhli Shaari.

    “This is not about whether they purely support the Palestinian cause or not but the issue of hedonism culture that they bring to our community,” he said Tuesday in Parliament. PAS, which has expanded its influence following strong Muslim support in the 2022 elections, often protests concerts by international artists that it said were incompatible with Muslim values.

    Officials from concert organizer Live Nation Malaysia couldn’t be immediately reached for comment. It issued a statement to concert-goers a few days ago, reminding them to be “mindful of local cultures and sensitivities” and refrain from displaying props or items that may cause discomfort to others.

    Police have warned the public to refrain from any sort of provocation and inciting unrest at the concert, which is part of Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour.

    Coldplay also met with resistance from Muslims when they performed in Indonesia earlier this month. Protesters held rallies right up to the day of its concert, slamming the band as an LGBTQ+ “propagandist” whose stance damages “faith and morals.”

    Coldplay is renowned for interlacing its values with its shows, such as the band’s push for environmental sustainability. Lead singer Chris Martin has been known to wear rainbow colors and wave gay pride flags during performances.

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  • Carlton Pearson, founder of Oklahoma megachurch who supported gay rights, dies at age 70

    Carlton Pearson, founder of Oklahoma megachurch who supported gay rights, dies at age 70

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    OKLAHOMA CITY — The founder of a former megachurch in Oklahoma who fell from favor and was branded a heretic after he embraced the idea that there is no hell and supported gay rights has died, his agent said Monday.

    Bishop Carlton Pearson died Sunday night in hospice care in Tulsa due to cancer, said his agent, Will Bogle. Pearson was 70.

    Early in his ministry he was considered a rising star on the Pentecostal preaching circuit and frequently appeared on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, bringing him to an international audience.

    From a ministry he started in 1977, Pearson in 1981 founded Higher Dimensions Family Church in Tulsa — later known as New Dimensions Church, whose membership numbered about 6,000 by the turn of the century.

    Membership plummeted to a few hundred by 2008 after Pearson began teaching what he called “the gospel of inclusion,” a form of universalism, which does not recognize hell.

    Bogle said Pearson told him that he did not believe he had made a mistake with his theological change.

    “People were forced to question what they were saying” about salvation, Bogle said. “And as polarizing as Bishop Person has been his whole life … he was a really good guy, he didn’t take himself seriously, he cared about people.”

    In 2007, Pearson helped lead hundreds of clergy members from across the nation in urging Congress to pass landmark hate crime and job discrimination measures for gay people.

    Pearson was shunned by other evangelical leaders, branded a heretic and later became a United Church of Christ minister. Higher Dimensions ultimately lost its building to foreclosure and Pearson preached his final sermon there in September 2008as the church was absorbed into All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa.

    He is now listed as an affiliate minister with All Souls.

    After the collapse of his old ministry, his story was chronicled in a lengthy episode of public radio’s “This American Life,” which became the basis for the 2018 Netflix movie, “Come Sunday,” starring Chiwetel Ejiofor.

    Pearson’s beliefs also led to his resignation from the board of regents of his alma mater, Oral Roberts University, and a split with the university’s founder and his mentor — evangelist Oral Roberts.

    Pearson ran unsuccessfully for Tulsa mayor in 2002, a defeat he blamed on public reaction to his teachings.

    He most recently was a life coach with New Dimensions with a weekly live broadcast on Facebook and YouTube.

    Pearson, in August, posted a social media video from what appeared to be a hospital room and he said he had been fighting cancer for 20 years.

    In a September video he said was diagnosed with prostate cancer two decades ago, but was diagnosed with bladder cancer over the summer.

    “I am facing death … I’m not afraid of death, I’m not even afraid of dying,” Pearson said.

    “I don’t fear God and if I was going to fear anybody, I’d fear some of his so-called people because they can be some mean sons of biscuit eaters, as my brother used to say,” Pearson said.

    In 1995, Pearson called Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” for preaching the opposite of Martin Luther King Jr. and criticized the upcoming “Million Man March” to Washington, D.C., that Farrakhan organized to promote African American unity and family values.

    Pearson in 2000 was among a group of 30 clergy who advised then President-elect George W. Bush on faith-based social programs.

    Pearson also authored books, including “The Gospel of Inclusion: Reaching Beyond Religious Fundamentalism to the True Love of God” and was in the documentary film American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel.

    Pearson is survived by his mother, a son, a daughter and his former wife, Bogle said.

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