Tag: lgbtq people

Legitimacy of ‘customer’ in Supreme Court gay rights case raises ethical, legal flags

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A Christian graphic artist who the Supreme Court said can refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples pointed during her lawsuit to a request from a man named “Stewart” and his husband-to-be. The twist? Stewart says it never happened.

The revelation has raised questions about how Lorie Smith’s case was allowed to proceed all the way to the nation’s highest court with such an apparent misrepresentation and whether the state of Colorado, which lost the case, has any legal recourse.

It has served as another distraction at the end of a highly polarizing term for a Supreme Court marked by ethical questions and contentious rulings along ideological lines that rejected affirmative action in higher education and President Joe Biden’s $400 billion plan to cancel or reduce federal student loan debts.

Here’s a look at the legal questions surrounding the mysterious would-be customer, “Stewart:”

WHAT ROLE DID THE CLAIM PLAY IN THE CASE?

About a month after Smith filed the case in Colorado federal court in 2016, lawyers for the state said it should be dismissed partly because she hadn’t been harmed by the state’s anti-discrimination law. Smith — who did not plan to start creating wedding websites until her case was resolved — would first have to get a request from a gay couple and refuse, triggering a possible complaint against her, the state argued.

Smith’s lawyers maintained that she didn’t have to be punished for violating the law before challenging it. In a February 2017 filing, they revealed that though she did not need a request to pursue the case, she had, in fact, received one. An appendix to the filing included a website request form submitted by Stewart on Sept. 21, 2016, a few days after the lawsuit was filed. It also included a Feb. 1, 2017 affidavit from Smith stating that Stewart’s request had been received.

Two documents Smith filed with the Supreme Court briefly mention that she had received at least one request to create a website celebrating a same-sex wedding but do not elaborate.

The request stated that Stewart and his fiancé Mike were looking for design work on things like invitations and place setting cards for their upcoming wedding. “We might also stretch to a website,” the form said.

Lawyers for Colorado wrote in their brief to the Supreme Court in August that it did not amount to an actual request for a website and the company did not take any steps to verify that a “genuine prospective customer submitted the form.” It’s not clear whether the state took any steps to verify whether Stewart — whose contact information was included in court papers — was a real potential customer.

Stewart told The Associated Press last week that he didn’t even know his name had been invoked in the case until he was contacted by a reporter for The New Republic, which first reported his denial. Stewart, who declined to give his last name for fear of harassment and threats, said he was incredibly surprised, adding he has been married to a woman for 15 years.

COULD THE REVELATION IMPACT THE CASE NOW?

It’s highly unlikely. The would-be customer’s request was not the basis for Smith’s original lawsuit, nor was it cited by the high court as the reason for ruling in her favor. Legal standing, or the right to bring a lawsuit, generally requires the person bringing the case to show that they have suffered some sort of harm. But pre-enforcement challenges — like the one Smith brought — are allowed in certain cases if the person can show they face a credible threat of prosecution or sanctions unless they conform to the law.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reviewed the case before the Supreme Court, found that Smith had standing to sue. That appeals court noted that Colorado had a history of past enforcement “against nearly identical conduct” and that the state decline to promise that it wouldn’t go after Smith if she violated the law.

“If there are other places where you can get standing, then legally speaking I don’t think it actually does make a difference,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School.

However, it could have affected the case by undermining the credibility of Smith’s legal team, potentially causing the judge to look more skeptically at everything else they filed, Levinson said. It could also result in potential sanctions against Smith’s legal team if it turns out they knew Stewart’s request was false, Levinson said.

Smith’s lawyer, Kristen Waggoner, said Friday that Smith doesn’t have a way of doing background checks on those requesting business nor is it her responsibility to do so. She also suggested it could have been a troll making the request.

While the revelation cannot change the decision, “it’s something that should’ve come up in the litigation,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law, “because then what the court should have done is say we have doubts about this, we can’t resolve it, we send it back to the federal district court.”

HAS ANYTHING LIKE THIS HAPPENED BEFORE?

An error like this — especially at the level of the Supreme Court — is highly unusual, legal experts say. But lawyers have had to walk back statements made to the court before.

The solicitor general, who represents the government before the Supreme Court, apologized in a court filing this year for an “inaccurate statement” made to the court during oral arguments over a 2017 patent case. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote that the lawyer was given wrong information by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, adding: “We regret any misimpression inadvertently created by the answer that was given.”

The court has also included errors in its own rulings. In 2017, ProPublica published a review of several dozen cases in which they found several “false or wholly unsupported factual claims.” Among them was an error in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. The publication reported that Chief Justice John Roberts included incorrect data in a comparison of voter registration among Black people and white people in certain states.

____

Associated Press reporter Jesse Bedayn contributed from Denver.

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July 3, 2023
Drag queens are out, proud and loud in a string of coal towns, from a bingo hall to blue-collar bars

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SHAMOKIN, Pa. — Deep in Pennsylvania coal country, the Daniels drag family is up to some sort of exuberance almost every weekend.

They’re hosting sold-out bingo fundraisers at the Nescopeck Township Volunteer Fire Co.’s social hall, packed with people of all ages howling with laughter and singing along. Or they’re lighting up local blue-collar bars and restaurants with Mimosas & Heels Drag Brunches for bridal parties, members of the military, families and friends.

Or they’re reading in gardens to children dressed in their Sunday best — Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors” is a favorite book for performers and kids alike.

In a string of towns running along a coal seam, the sparkle of small-town drag queens and kings colors a way of life rooted in soot, family and a conservative understanding of the world.

Here two very old traditions mingle — and mostly happily, it seems, in contrast to the fierce political winds ripping at drag performances and the broader rights of LGBTQ+ people in red states from Utah and Texas to Tennessee and Florida.

One tradition is the view of family as mom, dad and kids, plain and simple.

The other, back to before Shakespearian times, is drag, a loud, proud and seismically flamboyant artistic expression of gender fluidity. Not plain, not simple, but also bedrock, rising above ground only in culturally adventurous cities.

Yet the Daniels drag family is firmly woven in the fabric of the larger community in this area, where voters went solidly for Donald Trump, a Republican, in the last election. Their trouble is more apt to come from politicians who are increasingly passing laws restricting what they can do.

Alexus Daniels, the matriarch, was the child of a coal miner and a textile worker who was “born with a female spirit.” She works at the local hospital as an MRI aide tech.

Jacob Kelley, who performs as drag queen Trixy Valentine, is an LGBTQ+ activist and educator with a master’s in human sexuality.

Harpy Daniels, Trixy’s twin, is a U.S. Navy sailor who’s had three deployments on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Soon that seaman, Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua Kelley, who just reenlisted, moves from a base in Norfolk, Virginia, to one in Spain, with plans to pack a wig “and maybe one or two cute outfits but nothing over the top” for Harpy-style shore leave.

Apart from the twins, the drag performers in this circle are family by choice, not genes. Theirs is an oasis of belonging.

“I never had a person like me growing up,” Trixy said, “and now I get to be that for everyone else.

“There was a curse being a queer person in a rural town — the curse is that we’ll move … because there’s no one like us here, there’s no one that can understand us.

“And drag now can be a place or a thing to show people like you that you don’t have to go to the cities. It’s here in your backyard.”

The Associated Press followed the Daniels family for more than a year. Among them:

Alexus Daniels, drag queen

Daniels’ first memory is of her great-grandmother’s jewelry box. With Cyndi Lauper and the Pointer Sisters blasting, she would wrap herself in knitted blankets to lip-sync and dance for her family. “I had no idea that it was drag or gay,” she says. “I was just having a day!”

Alexus hit high school and upped her Halloween game. She soon entered her first drag performance in the small Pennsylvania coal town of Weishample.

“I still was not out at this point,” Alexus says. “I wasn’t even sure if I was gay. I knew I was attracted to boys and loved all things feminine! I kept this side of me to myself and my best friends growing up, who really didn’t see anything strange about it.”

Trixy Valentine, aka Jacob Kelley

In their teens, Joshua was the first to turn to drag. Jacob started about six months later, in a white Marilyn Monroe dress at an amateur pageant in 2014.

Trixy’s drag style is eclectic, but whether silly or fierce, there’s glitter: “I just want to shine when the light hits me.”

“I came out as non-binary a few years ago because I started learning, like, what do I love so much about drag?” Kelley says. “It’s that femininity, that so-simple touch.”

“I’m not a man,” Kelley says. “I never will see myself as a man. And I don’t see myself as a woman, either. But I see myself as beyond that.”

In March, the Daniels drag family hosted bingo at the Nescopeck fire hall, packed with more than 300 people in a fund-raiser for a nearby theater.

A small group of protesters could be watched on social media from the bingo hall, holding signs and praying the rosary across from the theater. Trixy addressed the bingo crowd.

“There’s hundreds of us in this room and only nine of them on that street,” Trixy said. “So all I have to say is I don’t care what you believe in. But do not force it down my throat and tell me I shouldn’t be here because you think I’m wrong.

“The Lord gave birth to me, too.”

Trixy was in a long blue wig and Morgan Wells catsuit with an overskirt, a raised fist in the colors of the Pride flag on the chest.

“Alright, let’s call some numbers!” Trixy said. “Let’s play some bingo!” The crowd cheered.

Harpy Daniels, aka Joshua Kelley, U.S. Navy petty officer first class, drag queen

Until 2011, the armed forces applied the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which accepted LGBTQ+ people only if they stayed mum about their sexual orientation.

But after Kelley enlisted in 2016, he encountered the opposite — call it “ask and tell.” A commander asked what pronoun they prefer. Joshua, relieved by the acceptance implied by the question, told him any pronoun will do.

Now, the sailor is a social media sensation who was named a “digital ambassador” by the Navy, doing outreach to the LGBTQ+ community and others who have been marginalized: “I’m very proud to wear this uniform.”

Kitty DeVil, aka Emily Poliniak, drag queen

Kitty, a trans woman, describes her drag style as “punk and a lot of storytelling.” Her inspiration: Adore Delano, a 2014 finalist on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

“She was what I wanted to be — this badass punker chick looking gorgeous without sacrificing her style,” Kitty says.

Kitty says her performances are high-energy fun but also “a lighthouse.”

“Because even in our LGBTQ community, there are outcasts and people who don’t feel like they’re like anybody else,” Kitty says. “So I wanted to make a beacon for all those people who feel weird and feel different and can’t really find their place in society.”

Xander Valentine, aka Gwen Bobbie, drag king

More than a decade after she was transfixed by seeing her first drag show, Xander was invited by Trixy to join the drag family.

Xander has an energetic, family-friendly side as well as a sexy, sultry side. Confusing people about gender is intentional, a barrier-breaker.

“I try to create a consistent theme of masculinity in my performances,” Xander says. “Although I paint my face, wear wigs and adorn myself with rhinestones, I usually perform to songs sung by men and tailor my costumes more toward suits and ties.

“My personal goal as a king is to have the audience question my off-stage gender identity.”

Why? It’s to convey the message, Xander says, that “it’s OK to not immediately know how a person identifies or who they are attracted to, and still be kind to them.

“It’s OK to accept someone as different, even if you don’t fully understand it.”

___

Woodward reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Lynn Berry contributed to this report from Washington.

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July 3, 2023
Drag queens are out, proud and loud in a string of coal towns, from a bingo hall to blue-collar bars

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SHAMOKIN, Pa. — Deep in Pennsylvania coal country, the Daniels drag family is up to some sort of exuberance almost every weekend.

They’re hosting sold-out bingo fundraisers at the Nescopeck Township Volunteer Fire Co.’s social hall, packed with people of all ages howling with laughter and singing along. Or they’re lighting up local blue-collar bars and restaurants with Mimosas & Heels Drag Brunches for bridal parties, members of the military, families and friends.

Or they’re reading in gardens to children dressed in their Sunday best — Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors” is a favorite book for performers and kids alike.

In a string of towns running along a coal seam, the sparkle of small-town drag queens and kings colors a way of life rooted in soot, family and a conservative understanding of the world.

Here two very old traditions mingle — and mostly happily, it seems, in contrast to the fierce political winds ripping at drag performances and the broader rights of LGBTQ+ people in red states from Utah and Texas to Tennessee and Florida.

One tradition is the view of family as mom, dad and kids, plain and simple.

The other, back to before Shakespearian times, is drag, a loud, proud and seismically flamboyant artistic expression of gender fluidity. Not plain, not simple, but also bedrock, rising above ground only in culturally adventurous cities.

Yet the Daniels drag family is firmly woven in the fabric of the larger community in this area, where voters went solidly for Donald Trump, a Republican, in the last election. Their trouble is more apt to come from politicians who are increasingly passing laws restricting what they can do.

Alexus Daniels, the matriarch, was the child of a coal miner and a textile worker who was “born with a female spirit.” She works at the local hospital as an MRI aide tech.

Jacob Kelley, who performs as drag queen Trixy Valentine, is an LGBTQ+ activist and educator with a master’s in human sexuality.

Harpy Daniels, Trixy’s twin, is a U.S. Navy sailor who’s had three deployments on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Soon that seaman, Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua Kelley, who just reenlisted, moves from a base in Norfolk, Virginia, to one in Spain, with plans to pack a wig “and maybe one or two cute outfits but nothing over the top” for Harpy-style shore leave.

Apart from the twins, the drag performers in this circle are family by choice, not genes. Theirs is an oasis of belonging.

“I never had a person like me growing up,” Trixy said, “and now I get to be that for everyone else.

“There was a curse being a queer person in a rural town — the curse is that we’ll move … because there’s no one like us here, there’s no one that can understand us.

“And drag now can be a place or a thing to show people like you that you don’t have to go to the cities. It’s here in your backyard.”

The Associated Press followed the Daniels family for more than a year. Among them:

Alexus Daniels, drag queen

Daniels’ first memory is of her great-grandmother’s jewelry box. With Cyndi Lauper and the Pointer Sisters blasting, she would wrap herself in knitted blankets to lip-sync and dance for her family. “I had no idea that it was drag or gay,” she says. “I was just having a day!”

Alexus hit high school and upped her Halloween game. She soon entered her first drag performance in the small Pennsylvania coal town of Weishample.

“I still was not out at this point,” Alexus says. “I wasn’t even sure if I was gay. I knew I was attracted to boys and loved all things feminine! I kept this side of me to myself and my best friends growing up, who really didn’t see anything strange about it.”

Trixy Valentine, aka Jacob Kelley

In their teens, Joshua was the first to turn to drag. Jacob started about six months later, in a white Marilyn Monroe dress at an amateur pageant in 2014.

Trixy’s drag style is eclectic, but whether silly or fierce, there’s glitter: “I just want to shine when the light hits me.”

“I came out as non-binary a few years ago because I started learning, like, what do I love so much about drag?” Kelley says. “It’s that femininity, that so-simple touch.”

“I’m not a man,” Kelley says. “I never will see myself as a man. And I don’t see myself as a woman, either. But I see myself as beyond that.”

In March, the Daniels drag family hosted bingo at the Nescopeck fire hall, packed with more than 300 people in a fund-raiser for a nearby theater.

A small group of protesters could be watched on social media from the bingo hall, holding signs and praying the rosary across from the theater. Trixy addressed the bingo crowd.

“There’s hundreds of us in this room and only nine of them on that street,” Trixy said. “So all I have to say is I don’t care what you believe in. But do not force it down my throat and tell me I shouldn’t be here because you think I’m wrong.

“The Lord gave birth to me, too.”

Trixy was in a long blue wig and Morgan Wells catsuit with an overskirt, a raised fist in the colors of the Pride flag on the chest.

“Alright, let’s call some numbers!” Trixy said. “Let’s play some bingo!” The crowd cheered.

Harpy Daniels, aka Joshua Kelley, U.S. Navy petty officer first class, drag queen

Until 2011, the armed forces applied the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which accepted LGBTQ+ people only if they stayed mum about their sexual orientation.

But after Kelley enlisted in 2016, he encountered the opposite — call it “ask and tell.” A commander asked what pronoun they prefer. Joshua, relieved by the acceptance implied by the question, told him any pronoun will do.

Now, the sailor is a social media sensation who was named a “digital ambassador” by the Navy, doing outreach to the LGBTQ+ community and others who have been marginalized: “I’m very proud to wear this uniform.”

Kitty DeVil, aka Emily Poliniak, drag queen

Kitty, a trans woman, describes her drag style as “punk and a lot of storytelling.” Her inspiration: Adore Delano, a 2014 finalist on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

“She was what I wanted to be — this badass punker chick looking gorgeous without sacrificing her style,” Kitty says.

Kitty says her performances are high-energy fun but also “a lighthouse.”

“Because even in our LGBTQ community, there are outcasts and people who don’t feel like they’re like anybody else,” Kitty says. “So I wanted to make a beacon for all those people who feel weird and feel different and can’t really find their place in society.”

Xander Valentine, aka Gwen Bobbie, drag king

More than a decade after she was transfixed by seeing her first drag show, Xander was invited by Trixy to join the drag family.

Xander has an energetic, family-friendly side as well as a sexy, sultry side. Confusing people about gender is intentional, a barrier-breaker.

“I try to create a consistent theme of masculinity in my performances,” Xander says. “Although I paint my face, wear wigs and adorn myself with rhinestones, I usually perform to songs sung by men and tailor my costumes more toward suits and ties.

“My personal goal as a king is to have the audience question my off-stage gender identity.”

Why? It’s to convey the message, Xander says, that “it’s OK to not immediately know how a person identifies or who they are attracted to, and still be kind to them.

“It’s OK to accept someone as different, even if you don’t fully understand it.”

___

Woodward reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Lynn Berry contributed to this report from Washington.

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July 3, 2023
Stanley Tucci says he thinks straight actors should be able to play gay characters | CNN

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CNN
—

Stanley Tucci weighed in on the debate about straight actors portraying gay characters in a new interview with BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs on Saturday.

Tucci, who is married to actress Felicity Blunt, said he believes that as an actor, “you’re supposed to play different people.”

“You just are. That’s the whole point of it,” he told the program.

Tucci has portrayed gay characters in 2006’s “The Devil Wears Prada” and in the 2020 film “Supernova” alongside Oscar-winner Colin Firth. He went on to say, “Obviously, I believe that’s fine.”

“I am always very flattered when gay men come up to me and talk to me about ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ or they talk about ‘Supernova,’ and they say that, ‘It was just so beautiful,’ you know, ‘You did it the right way,’” he said. “Because often, it’s not done the right way.”

For decades, Hollywood has cast actors in heterosexual relationships for gay roles.

Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal played lovers in “Brokeback Mountain,” and Cate Blanchett fell in love with a shopgirl in “Carol.” Benedict Cumberbatch recently played a sexually repressed cowboy in Netflix’s 2021 Oscar contender “The Power of the Dog,” and previously played Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game.”

While Ledger, Gyllenhaal, Blanchett and Cumberbatch were all nominated for Academy Awards for their performances, former late night host James Corden, who is married to a woman, was criticized for his performance as a flamboyant faded Broadway star in “The Prom,” with critics calling his performance “insulting” and “offensively miscast.”

Minority actors have long spoken out about their struggles to get cast in Hollywood, even as producers say they can’t find the right actors for projects.

Conversations around inclusivity in casting transgender actors in transgender roles have also become pertinent, and casting cisgender actors for those roles has recently fallen out of popular practice.

CNN previously reported that LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD says casting this way “perpetuates this belief that trans people aren’t real.”

Straight actors playing gay roles, however, isn’t considered to be as “brave” in recent years as it’s been in the past, according to critic Guy Lodge, who told The Guardian in a 2021 interview: “The idea of being ‘brave’ for playing gay is going away.”

“I think that in itself is seen as fairly unremarkable now,” he added.

For the most part, Tucci and Firth received positive reviews for their performances in “Supernova,” where they played a longtime couple grappling with the dire challenge of early-onset dementia.

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July 2, 2023
Wider than websites? LGBTQ+ advocates fear broader discrimination after Supreme Court ruling

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A new U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing a Colorado Christian graphic artist to refuse to work with same-sex couples has LGBTQIA+ people across the country worried about just how far the consequences will reach.

The high court’s conservative majority sided with Lorie Smith, a designer of wedding websites for heterosexual couples who argued that a ruling against her would force writers, painters, musicians and other artists to do work that is against their beliefs. Opponents warned that a win for Smith would allow a range of businesses to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants.

“We’re treading into some weird territory as people. We’re starting to become the ‘Morality Police,’ and that’s not freedom as far as I am concerned,” Dallas Lyn Miller-Downes, a queer visual artist and activist based in Portland, Oregon, said Friday, hours after the court’s 6-3 ruling. “What I am scared of is that this goes beyond the art. Where do we stop with this?”

One of the court’s liberal justices wrote in a dissent that the decision’s effect is to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status” and that it opens the door to other discrimination.

In Topeka, Kansas, where several dozen people gathered Friday for a transgender rights rally, Kirby Evers, a 31-year-old bisexual Lawrence resident, said the ruling will make people more comfortable being openly rude or using slurs, particularly to trans people.

He called the Supreme Court “compromised by fascists,” adding, “They’re going to do as much destruction to our Constitution as possible.”

Raiden Gonzalez, a 22-year-old gay Salina, Kansas, resident participating in the rally, said he’s regularly gotten looks over how he walks and talks — and brusque treatment in stores and school, even occasionally from teachers.

“People in the LGBTQ community should be scared of this,” he said.

Miller-Downes said the ruling feels like just another way art is being used as a weapon against the queer community — with drag artists banned in some parts of the country and LGBTQ+ customers at risk of being banned from artistic businesses in others.

“Art should inspire people, heal people and start conversations. We should be known for how we love, not who we exclude — that’s a morality I can stand behind as a Christian and an artist,” Miller-Downes said. “We need to, as a society, celebrate businesses owned by marginalized people so other marginalized people, queer people, know where to get help.”

Legal analysts on both sides of the issue have said the decision is narrow and won’t apply to most businesses. Jennifer C. Pizer, the chief legal officer for Lambda Legal, said in a statement that the ruling applies specifically to businesses that create original artwork and pure speech, and then offer that work as limited commissions.

Still, she said, the ruling continued the court majority’s “dangerous siren call to those trying to return the country to the social and legal norms of the Nineteenth Century.”

Sarah Warbelow, legal director at Human Rights Campaign, said Friday’s ruling does not dismantle the public accommodations laws that protect people based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 22 states.

Those states can still enforce their nondiscrimination laws for employment, housing and buying goods that are not highly customizable with speech, she said. For instance, someone preparing for a same-sex marriage could still buy a wedding gown customized with colors.

But Warbelow said the ruling also opens the door to businesses being allowed to discriminate against people for reasons other than sexual orientation, like religion.

Many conservative religious leaders welcomed the ruling, including Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy wing.

“If the government can compel an individual to speak a certain way or create certain things, that’s not freedom — it’s subjugation. And that is precisely what the state of Colorado wanted,” said Leatherwood.

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for greater LGBTQ+ acceptance in the Catholic Church, said the decision “dangerously allows religious beliefs to be weaponized for discrimination.”

“Religion should be a tool to help unite people across ideological lines, not cause greater isolation into camps that oppose one another,” he said.

Christine Zuba, a transgender woman from Blackwood, New Jersey, has been active in seeking to increase acceptance of trans people in the Catholic Church. She said the justices who made the “extremely disappointing and concerning” ruling were “naïve” to think the decision wouldn’t lead to discrimination against other groups as well.

While some small businesses could use the ruling to stop serving some customers, they should be aware that there will be repercussions, said Gene Marks, owner of The Marks Group, a small business consulting firm in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.

“If you’re a business and you’re going to turn down customers just because they’re different or your religion doesn’t support their style of life, fair enough, but it’s going to be a loss of revenue to you not only from that customer, but also from their friends, their family, their community,” he said. “And it can also be potentially bad press regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.”

___

AP journalists Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; David Crary and Mae Anderson in New York; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; and Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this story. Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.

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July 2, 2023
An anti-Trump video shared by the DeSantis campaign is ‘homophobic,’ says a conservative LGBT group

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NEW YORK (AP) — A prominent group that represents LGBT conservatives says a video shared by Ron DeSantis ′ presidential campaign that slams rival Donald Trump for his past support of gay and transgender people “ventured into homophobic territory.”

The “DeSantis War Room” Twitter account shared the video on Friday — the last day of June’s LGBTQ+ Pride Month — that features footage of Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2016 saying he would “do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens.” Trump had been pledging protection from terrorist attacks weeks after the shootings at the Pulse Nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at that time.

The video also highlights “LGBTQ for Trump” T-shirts sold by the former president’s campaign and his past comments saying he would be comfortable with Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympic decathlete who came out as a transgender woman in 2015, using any bathroom at Trump Tower and OK with transgender women competing one day in the Miss Universe pageant, which Trump owned at the time of those remarks.

South Carolina’s heavily Republican Upstate is a popular stop for presidential candidates trying to attract support for the first-in-the-South primary in 2024.

The two leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination have courted conservative women at the Moms for Liberty conference in Philadelphia .

A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s request that he dismiss a New York columnist’s defamation claims against him on grounds that he is entitled to absolute presidential immunity.

Three Florida men have been charged with making $22 million through illegal insider trading before the public announcement that an acquisition firm was going to take former President Donald Trump’s media company public.

The video then suddenly veers in a different direction, accompanied by dark, thumping music and images of DeSantis, the Florida governor who is trailing Trump by wide margins in the polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

It promotes headlines that DeSantis signed “the most extreme slate of anti-trans laws in modern history” and a “draconian anti-trans bathroom bill.” The images are spliced together with footage of muscular, shirtless men and several Hollywood actors, including Brad Pitt, seen wearing a leather mask from the movie “Troy.”

“To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it,” the DeSantis campaign tweeted.

The video drew immediate criticism from prominent LGBTQ+ Republicans, including the Log Cabin Republicans, which bills itself as the nation’s “largest Republican organization dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives.”

“Today’s message from the DeSantis campaign War Room is divisive and desperate. Republicans and other commonsense conservatives know Ron Desantis has alienated swing-state and younger voters,” the group said in a tweet, adding that DeSantis’ “extreme rhetoric goes has just ventured into homophobic territory.”

The group said his “rhetoric will lose hard-fought gains in critical races across the nation. This old playbook has been tried in the past and has failed — repeatedly.” The post said DeSantis’ “naive policy positions are dangerous and politically stupid.”

Jenner accused DeSantis’ campaign of using “horribly divisive tactics!”

“DeSantis has hit a new low,” Jenner wrote on Twitter.

Representatives of the DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.

But Christina Pushaw, the campaign’s rapid response director, said in a tweet Friday night that, “Opposing the federal recognition of ‘Pride Month’ isn’t ‘homophobic.’ We wouldn’t support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation, either… It’s unnecessary, divisive, pandering.“

The video comes as Republicans have been wading into increasingly hostile anti-LGBTQ+ territory, attacking Pride month celebrations, trying to ban displays of rainbow Pride flags and passing legislation to limit drag shows, along with broad attacks on transgender rights.

That rhetoric has seeped into the GOP presidential campaign, taking a prominent role that had been absent during recent past competitive primaries, including in 2016, when Trump, a New York reality TV star, generally presented himself as a supporter of LGBT rights.

DeSantis leaned in on anti-LGBTQ+ legislation as he prepared to jump into the 2024 White House race. He signed legislation banning classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in all grades, banned gender-affirming care for minors, targeted drag shows, restricted discussion of personal pronouns in schools and forced people to use bathrooms that align with the sex assigned at birth. DeSantis also went after President Joe Biden for prominently displaying the Pride flag at the White House last month.

Trump himself pledged in a speech Friday that if elected, he would sign executive orders on his first day in office to cut federal money for any school pushing “transgender insanity” and to instruct federal agencies “to cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age.” Hospitals and health care providers offering gender-affirming care for minors should be deemed in violation of federal health and safety standards and lose federal funding, he said.

Both Trump and DeSantis have also railed against transgender women participating in women’s sports and have referred to gender-affirming care for minors as “mutilation.”

At Trump’s rally in Pickens, South Carolina, on Saturday, the crowd booed when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., referenced to Pride month.

“The rainbow belongs to God,” she said.

While such rhetoric appeals to the party’s conservative base, it risks alienating the more moderate and swing voters who generally decide the outcomes of general elections.

The video, originally posted by the pro-DeSantis “@ProudElephantUS” account, was shared hours after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled that a Christian graphic artist who wants to design wedding websites can refuse to work with same-sex couples.

The decision marked a major defeat for gay rights, with one of the court’s liberal justices writing in a dissent that the decision’s effect would be to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status.”

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July 2, 2023
‘Parental rights’ group Moms for Liberty plans nationwide strategy for school board races in 2024

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PHILADELPHIA — Moms for Liberty, a “parental rights” group that has sought to take over school boards in multiple states, is looking to expand those efforts across the country and to other education posts in 2024 and beyond. The effort is setting up for a clash with teachers unions and others on the left who view the group as a toxic presence in public schools.

The group’s co-founder, Tiffany Justice, said during its annual summit over the weekend in Philadelphia that Moms for Liberty will use its political action committee next year to engage in school board races nationwide. It also will “start endorsing at the state board level and elected superintendents.”

Her comments confirm that Moms for Liberty, which has spent its first two years inflaming school board meetings with aggressive complaints about instruction on systemic racism and gender identity in the classroom, is developing a larger strategy to overhaul education infrastructure across the country.

As the group has amassed widespread conservative support and donor funding, its focus on education ensures that even as voters turn their attention to the 2024 presidential race, school board elections will remain some of the most contentious political fights next year.

Moms for Liberty started with three Florida moms upset with COVID-19 restrictions in 2021, but has quickly ascended as a national player in Republican politics. Its support for school choice and the “fundamental rights of parents” to direct their children’s education has drawn allies such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a leading GOP presidential contender, and the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The group has been labeled an “extremist” organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center for allegedly harassing community members, advancing anti-LGBTQ+ misinformation and fighting to scrub diverse and inclusive material from lesson plans.

Justice said in an interview that she and her co-founder, Tina Descovich, were two moms who “had faith in American parents to take back the public education system in America” and that they “fully intend on reclaiming and reforming” that system.

So far, the group has had mixed success at getting its preferred candidates elected. In 2022, slightly more than half of the 500 school board candidates it endorsed across the country won,. In the spring of 2023, fewer than one-third of the nearly 30 candidates it endorsed in Wisconsin were elected.

Focusing on state-level candidates could give Moms for Liberty an opportunity to assert its influence on some of the positions that have more control in determining curriculum, said Jon Valant, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has studied education policy.

A close partnership with the conservative training organization the Leadership Institute and added money from a growing donor base also could help the Moms for Liberty run more electable candidates and help them win in 2024.

Monty Floyd, vice chair of the Moms for Liberty chapter in Hernando County, Florida, knows what it’s like to have the group’s support in a political campaign. He ran for school board in 2022 and received the group’s endorsement, as well as $250 from its Florida-based PAC.

Floyd lost that race but plans to run again in 2026, he told The Associated Press at the summit. He looks forward to seeing how the group’s political influence grows and said that even more than the money, the national network of Moms for Liberty provides a “great resource” to a candidate.

“The wealth of knowledge they have and the network of support and just the advocacy tips that we’re learning from the speakers today,” he said. “They have good advice to give. So you kind of learn a lot about what you can improve in your messaging.”

Moms for Liberty may face obstacles, however, as its rising national presence has driven a countermovement of activists who oppose it, Valant said.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said she thinks groups such as Moms for Liberty have “created more action and more energy” among teachers unions.

“We have 41 new units that we have organized as the AFT this year. We’ve never had that,” she said. She said the union would “do what we have to do” during elections to show the contrast between its endorsed candidates and Moms for Liberty candidates.

Beyond unions, Moms for Liberty is likely to face opposition from grassroots groups and voters who “just don’t agree with their vision of what public education should be,” Valant said.

Martha Cooney, a Pennsylvania educator who was one of about 100 protesters dancing and holding signs outside the summit Saturday afternoon, agreed. She said that as Moms for Liberty tries to assert more political power, she and others will continue to stand in its way.

“They are a very small minority who are trying to act like they represent this whole nation, and they do not,” Cooney said.

Moms for Liberty did not answer questions on which races it would focus on in 2024, besides making it clear that it would not endorse in legislative races or the presidential election.

But even as the group says it will not get involved in the White House race, Republican candidates have tried to harness Moms for Liberty’s influence and broad network of more than 120,000 members in 45 states to woo its voting bloc and benefit their primary campaigns.

Five GOP candidates gave speeches during the gathering in Philadelphia, which ended Sunday. They included DeSantis and former President Donald Trump. The rivals tried to outflank each other with claims that “woke ideology” had overtaken education and that pronouns and “critical race theory” needed to be struck from classrooms.

“I think moms are the key political force for this 2024 cycle,” DeSantis said in his address to attendees Friday.

Other Republican presidential candidates who appeared at the summit included former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who brought his wife and two children to the stage Saturday. He pledged to prioritize parents’ rights and shutter the U.S. Department of Education if elected.

“The membership of this organization is just a small tip of the iceberg of a broader pro-parent movement, pro-children movement in our country,” Ramaswamy told reporters at the summit. “And so how important is that? You better believe it’s pretty darn important.”

___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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July 2, 2023
Climate activists disrupt London Pride march to protest corporate sponsorship

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Climate activists have briefly halted the dance-filled London Pride march by blocking a float sponsored by Coca-Cola

People gather to take part in the Pride in London parade, Saturday July 1, 2023. (Jordan Pettitt/PA via AP)

The Associated Press

LONDON — The technicolor, dance-filled London Pride march briefly came to a halt Saturday as climate activists blocked a Coca-Cola float to protest event organizers accepting sponsorship money from “high-polluting industries.”

Seven members of the group Just Stop Oil were arrested for public nuisance offenses, police said.

The demonstration was the latest in a long line of actions by the group to stop traffic or disrupt high profile events as part of its campaign to stop new oil and gas projects. Two protesters were arrested earlier in the week after charging onto the pitch of the Ashes Test cricket match at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London.

“These partnerships embarrass the LGBTQ+ community at a time when much of the cultural world is rejecting ties to these toxic industries,” the group said. “High-polluting industries and the banks that fund them now see Pride as a useful vehicle for sanitizing their reputations, waving rainbow flags in one hand whilst accelerating social collapse with the other.”

The protest halted the march that drew tens of thousands of participants. It was the 51st year of the march and the theme was “Never March Alone” in support of transgender and non-binary people.

Will De’Athe-Morris, a spokesperson for Pride in London, the organization that runs the U.K. capital’s Pride events, told the BBC he did not want the demonstration to distract from the parade’s message.

“Pride is a protest and pride is a celebration,” De’Athe-Morris said. “Anyone who tries to disrupt that protest and parade is really letting down those people who use this space once a year to come together to celebrate and protest for those rights.”

The Just Stop Oil demonstration began with a person laying down in front of the Coke float as participants danced to the thumping beat of “I Love It” by Icona Pop.

Two other protesters carrying gold-colored fire extinguishers began spraying pink and black paint on the road and the side of the sparkly red float truck. They then sat down with four others in front of the truck and chanted “Just stop oil!”

The protest lasted just over 15 minutes before police carried the protesters from the road. The crowd lining the route cheered when they were carried away and the march resumed.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of climate issues at https://apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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July 1, 2023
Wider than websites? LGBTQ+ advocates fear broader discrimination after Supreme Court ruling

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A new U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing a Colorado Christian graphic artist to refuse to work with same-sex couples has LGBTQIA+ people across the country worried about just how far the consequences will reach.

The high court’s conservative majority sided with Lorie Smith, a designer of wedding websites for heterosexual couples who argued that a ruling against her would force writers, painters, musicians and other artists to do work that is against their beliefs. Opponents warned that a win for Smith would allow a range of businesses to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants.

“We’re treading into some weird territory as people. We’re starting to become the ‘Morality Police,’ and that’s not freedom as far as I am concerned,” Dallas Lyn Miller-Downes, a queer visual artist and activist based in Portland, Oregon, said Friday, hours after the court’s 6-3 ruling. “What I am scared of is that this goes beyond the art. Where do we stop with this?”

One of the court’s liberal justices wrote in a dissent that the decision’s effect is to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status” and that it opens the door to other discrimination.

In Topeka, Kansas, where several dozen people gathered Friday for a transgender rights rally, Kirby Evers, a 31-year-old bisexual Lawrence resident, said the ruling will make people more comfortable being openly rude or using slurs, particularly to trans people.

He called the Supreme Court “compromised by fascists,” adding, “They’re going to do as much destruction to our Constitution as possible.”

Raiden Gonzalez, a 22-year-old gay Salina, Kansas, resident participating in the rally, said he’s regularly gotten looks over how he walks and talks — and brusque treatment in stores and school, even occasionally from teachers.

“People in the LGBTQ community should be scared of this,” he said.

Miller-Downes said the ruling feels like just another way art is being used as a weapon against the queer community — with drag artists banned in some parts of the country and LGBTQ+ customers at risk of being banned from artistic businesses in others.

“Art should inspire people, heal people and start conversations. We should be known for how we love, not who we exclude — that’s a morality I can stand behind as a Christian and an artist,” Miller-Downes said. “We need to, as a society, celebrate businesses owned by marginalized people so other marginalized people, queer people, know where to get help.”

Legal analysts on both sides of the issue have said the decision is narrow and won’t apply to most businesses. Jennifer C. Pizer, the chief legal officer for Lambda Legal, said in a statement that the ruling applies specifically to businesses that create original artwork and pure speech, and then offer that work as limited commissions.

Still, she said, the ruling continued the court majority’s “dangerous siren call to those trying to return the country to the social and legal norms of the Nineteenth Century.”

Sarah Warbelow, legal director at Human Rights Campaign, said Friday’s ruling does not dismantle the public accommodations laws that protect people based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 22 states.

Those states can still enforce their nondiscrimination laws for employment, housing and buying goods that are not highly customizable with speech, she said. For instance, someone preparing for a same-sex marriage could still buy a wedding gown customized with colors.

But Warbelow said the ruling also opens the door to businesses being allowed to discriminate against people for reasons other than sexual orientation, like religion.

Many conservative religious leaders welcomed the ruling, including Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy wing.

“If the government can compel an individual to speak a certain way or create certain things, that’s not freedom — it’s subjugation. And that is precisely what the state of Colorado wanted,” said Leatherwood.

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for greater LGBTQ+ acceptance in the Catholic Church, said the decision “dangerously allows religious beliefs to be weaponized for discrimination.”

“Religion should be a tool to help unite people across ideological lines, not cause greater isolation into camps that oppose one another,” he said.

Christine Zuba, a transgender woman from Blackwood, New Jersey, has been active in seeking to increase acceptance of trans people in the Catholic Church. She said the justices who made the “extremely disappointing and concerning” ruling were “naïve” to think the decision wouldn’t lead to discrimination against other groups as well.

While some small businesses could use the ruling to stop serving some customers, they should be aware that there will be repercussions, said Gene Marks, owner of The Marks Group, a small business consulting firm in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.

“If you’re a business and you’re going to turn down customers just because they’re different or your religion doesn’t support their style of life, fair enough, but it’s going to be a loss of revenue to you not only from that customer, but also from their friends, their family, their community,” he said. “And it can also be potentially bad press regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.”

___

AP journalists Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; David Crary and Mae Anderson in New York; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; and Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this story. Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.

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July 1, 2023
Wider than websites? LGBTQ+ advocates fear broader discrimination after Supreme Court ruling

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A new U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing a Colorado Christian graphic artist to refuse to work with same-sex couples has LGBTQIA+ people across the country worried about just how far the consequences will reach.

The high court’s conservative majority sided with Lorie Smith, a designer of wedding websites for heterosexual couples who argued that a ruling against her would force writers, painters, musicians and other artists to do work that is against their beliefs. Opponents warned that a win for Smith would allow a range of businesses to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants.

“We’re treading into some weird territory as people. We’re starting to become the ‘Morality Police,’ and that’s not freedom as far as I am concerned,” Dallas Lyn Miller-Downes, a queer visual artist and activist based in Portland, Oregon, said Friday, hours after the court’s 6-3 ruling. “What I am scared of is that this goes beyond the art. Where do we stop with this?”

One of the court’s liberal justices wrote in a dissent that the decision’s effect is to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status” and that it opens the door to other discrimination.

In Topeka, Kansas, where several dozen people gathered Friday for a transgender rights rally, Kirby Evers, a 31-year-old bisexual Lawrence resident, said the ruling will make people more comfortable being openly rude or using slurs, particularly to trans people.

He called the Supreme Court “compromised by fascists,” adding, “They’re going to do as much destruction to our Constitution as possible.”

Raiden Gonzalez, a 22-year-old gay Salina, Kansas, resident participating in the rally, said he’s regularly gotten looks over how he walks and talks — and brusque treatment in stores and school, even occasionally from teachers.

“People in the LGBTQ community should be scared of this,” he said.

Miller-Downes said the ruling feels like just another way art is being used as a weapon against the queer community — with drag artists banned in some parts of the country and LGBTQ+ customers at risk of being banned from artistic businesses in others.

“Art should inspire people, heal people and start conversations. We should be known for how we love, not who we exclude — that’s a morality I can stand behind as a Christian and an artist,” Miller-Downes said. “We need to, as a society, celebrate businesses owned by marginalized people so other marginalized people, queer people, know where to get help.”

Legal analysts on both sides of the issue have said the decision is narrow and won’t apply to most businesses. Jennifer C. Pizer, the chief legal officer for Lambda Legal, said in a statement that the ruling applies specifically to businesses that create original artwork and pure speech, and then offer that work as limited commissions.

Still, she said, the ruling continued the court majority’s “dangerous siren call to those trying to return the country to the social and legal norms of the Nineteenth Century.”

Sarah Warbelow, legal director at Human Rights Campaign, said Friday’s ruling does not dismantle the public accommodations laws that protect people based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 22 states.

Those states can still enforce their nondiscrimination laws for employment, housing and buying goods that are not highly customizable with speech, she said. For instance, someone preparing for a same-sex marriage could still buy a wedding gown customized with colors.

But Warbelow said the ruling also opens the door to businesses being allowed to discriminate against people for reasons other than sexual orientation, like religion.

Many conservative religious leaders welcomed the ruling, including Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy wing.

“If the government can compel an individual to speak a certain way or create certain things, that’s not freedom — it’s subjugation. And that is precisely what the state of Colorado wanted,” said Leatherwood.

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for greater LGBTQ+ acceptance in the Catholic Church, said the decision “dangerously allows religious beliefs to be weaponized for discrimination.”

“Religion should be a tool to help unite people across ideological lines, not cause greater isolation into camps that oppose one another,” he said.

Christine Zuba, a transgender woman from Blackwood, New Jersey, has been active in seeking to increase acceptance of trans people in the Catholic Church. She said the justices who made the “extremely disappointing and concerning” ruling were “naïve” to think the decision wouldn’t lead to discrimination against other groups as well.

While some small businesses could use the ruling to stop serving some customers, they should be aware that there will be repercussions, said Gene Marks, owner of The Marks Group, a small business consulting firm in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.

“If you’re a business and you’re going to turn down customers just because they’re different or your religion doesn’t support their style of life, fair enough, but it’s going to be a loss of revenue to you not only from that customer, but also from their friends, their family, their community,” he said. “And it can also be potentially bad press regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.”

___

AP journalists Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; David Crary and Mae Anderson in New York; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; and Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this story. Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.

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July 1, 2023
Louisiana governor vetoes anti-LGBTQ+ legislation including a gender-affirming care ban

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BATON ROUGE, La. — Democratic Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards blocked a package of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation from becoming law Friday, including the state’s version of what critics call Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and a ban on gender-affirming medical care for young transgender people.

The effort by Republicans to enact the legislation into Louisiana law is likely far from over. Multiple GOP state lawmakers say they anticipate convening for a veto session mid-July in an attempt to override the governor’s decision.

Louisiana’s culture divide over LGBTQ+-related legislation echoes what has been seen in GOP-led statehouses across the country. Bills targeting transgender people have topped conservative agendas, and LGBTQ+ advocates say a dangerous and blatant attack is happening on their community. This year alone, more than 525 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced in 41 states, according to data collected by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization.

During the waning days of Louisiana’s legislative session, lawmakers passed a series of controversial bills: a ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors that includes puberty-blockers, hormone treatment and surgery; a “Don’t Say Gay” bill that broadly bars teachers from discussing gender identity and sexual orientation in public school classrooms; and a measure requiring public school teachers to use the pronouns and names that align with what students were assigned at birth. Edwards vetoed all three bills.

Edwards — who is in his final six months of office, unable to seek reelection this year due to consecutive term limits — has repeatedly described the bills as wrong, divisive and targeting a vulnerable group of people.

State lawmakers will soon decide by majority vote whether they will return to the Capitol for a veto session, which would begin July 18. Although Louisiana has only held two such sessions since 1974, it seems increasingly realistic that one will occur this year. Multiple GOP lawmakers from both chambers have said they anticipate the gathering.

Once in special session, a two-thirds approval from both the House and Senate is needed to override the governor’s decision. Republicans currently hold a two-thirds majority in both chambers. Additionally, during the regular session, all three bills passed with more than a two-thirds vote — largely along party lines.

Marked by misinformation, religious arguments and hours of emotional testimony from the LGBTQ+ community, one of the most discussed bills was the ban on gender-affirming care — something that has been available in the United States for more than a decade and is endorsed by major medical associations. At one point, the bill was presumed dead after a veteran Republican lawmaker cast a tie-breaking vote to kill the bill. However, amid mounting pressure from Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is a GOP gubernatorial frontrunner, and the Republican Party of Louisiana, the bill was resurrected and passed.

At least 20 states, including all three bordering Louisiana, have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. Most of those states face lawsuits.

A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ ban as unconstitutional, and federal judges have temporarily blocked bans in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. Oklahoma has agreed to not enforce its ban while opponents seek a temporary court order blocking it. A federal judge has blocked Florida from enforcing its ban on three children who have challenged the law.

The Louisiana legislature also passed a bill broadly banning K-12 public school employees in Louisiana from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in the classroom. It is similar to a law enacted in Florida last year that critics dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.” So far, three other states — Alabama, Arkansas and Iowa — have enacted similar laws, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Additionally, lawmakers passed legislation requiring Louisiana public school teachers to use the pronouns and name that align what students were assigned at birth. Under the bill, a parent can give written consent for pronouns not consistent with the student’s sex assigned at birth to be used. A teacher can override the parent’s request “if doing so would violate the employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Republicans maintain that they are trying to protect children with these bills. Opponents argue it would do the opposite, leading to heightened risks of stress, depression and suicidal thoughts among an already vulnerable group.

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June 30, 2023
Trump and DeSantis court Moms for Liberty in a sign of the group’s rising influence over the GOP

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PHILADELPHIA — PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Former President Donald Trump praised Moms for Liberty, a group that fiercely opposes instruction related to race and gender identity in the nation’s classrooms and has been labeled “extremist,” as “joyful warriors” as he headlined their annual conference Friday.

The two-year-old group, which was founded in Florida in 2021 to fight local COVID school mask mandates and quarantine requirements, has quickly become a force in conservative politics as an advocate for “parental rights.” But it has also been accused of preaching hate, with the Southern Poverty Law Center recently labeling it an “extremist” group for allegedly harassing community members, advancing anti-LGBTQ+ misinformation and fighting to scrub diverse and inclusive material from lesson plans.

The conference, being held at a downtown Philadelphia hotel, has nonetheless drawn leading Republican presidential candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running second to Trump and kicked off the gathering by casting 2024 as the year that parents “finally fight back.”

DeSantis praised the group for “coming under attack by the left,” saying it was “a sign that we are winning this fight.” He ran through his efforts in Florida to ban discussions of race and sexual identity in classrooms as well as certain books from school libraries. And he pledged to “fight the woke” as president.

“I think what we’ve seen across this country in recent years has awakened the most powerful political force in the country: Mama bears. And they’re ready to roll,” he said, predicting moms would be “the key political force for this 2024 cycle.”

“2024 is going to be the year when the parents across the country finally fight back,” he said.

Trump, too, accused the “radical left” of “slandering Moms for Liberty as a so-called hate group.”

“But Moms for Liberty is no hate group,” he said. “You are joyful warriors, you are fierce, fierce patriots. You’re not a threat to America. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to America. Joe Biden and the Democrat communists are the threat to America. And together, we are going to throw them out of office on Election Day of 2024.”

The high interest in the event among GOP hopefuls underscores the influence of Moms for Liberty, which has made connections with powerful GOP organizations, politicians and donors to become a major player in 2024. The group has said it doesn’t plan to endorse any presidential candidate in the primary election.

The group has transformed from three Florida moms opposing COVID-19 mandates in 2021 to claiming 285 chapters across 45 states. Along the way, it has found a close ally in DeSantis, who was presented with a “liberty sword” at the group’s first annual meeting last year and has signed multiple bills that Moms for Liberty supported.

Beyond remarks from the candidates and other speakers, the summit will feature strategy sessions on such topics as “protecting kids from gender ideology” and “comprehensive sex education: sex ed or sexualization.”

Summit attendees said they liked what they were hearing so far.

“I love Moms for Liberty,” said Debbie McGinley, who is running for the school board in Methacton School District outside Philadelphia. As a parent of three kids who lost her business as a hairdresser during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said she appreciated that the group is “fighting for our kids.”

Lucy Reyna, a treasurer for a local Moms for Liberty chapter in Indiana, said she traveled to the conference to learn more about the national organization.

“What am I a part of? I need to know those things,” Reyna said, adding that if the group leaned too partisan in one direction, it would make her reconsider her participation.

Outside, roughly 100 parent activists and LGBTQ+ advocates gathered to protest, citing the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designation of the group as an “anti-government extremist” organization. They chanted, “Not in our city” and “Let’s say gay” while holding signs that read, “Hate is not patriotic” and “Philly is the LGBTQest city.”

Some protesters said specific incidents prompted their activism, including an Indiana Moms for Liberty chapter publishing an Adolf Hitler quote in its newsletter before apologizing and removing it, and a Tennessee chapter complaining about lessons on Black civil rights figures Martin Luther King Jr. and Ruby Bridges.

“I think they stand for fear. And that turns into hate very quickly,” said Molly Roses, a Philadelphia resident who joined the protest.

In the days before the conference, several historical associations, state senators, activists and employees at Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution had pleaded unsuccessfully with the museum to cancel a welcome event for the conference Thursday night. The event went on as planned.

The museum told The Associated Press that “because fostering understanding within a democratic society is so central to our mission, rejecting visitors on the basis of ideology would in fact be antithetical to our purpose.”

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, another GOP candidate who appeared Friday, railed against transgender women athletes competing on women’s sports teams — an issue that has become a major flashpoint for the right and that she called “one of the biggest women’s issues of our time.”

“They are literally trying to erase all the progress we have made in all of this time,” she said. “We have to fight for our girls.”

Haley in her speech acknowledged the protesters, saying she “appreciates that” as an expression of free speech.

People for the American Way was among several groups rallying against the gathering Friday. Its “Grandparents for Truth” campaign was mobilizing grandparents and other supporters “who are fighting for the next generation’s freedom to learn.”

One such grandparent, Maureen Carreño, said she wasn’t taught a diverse history as a child and wants something different for her five grandkids.

“I would hope that we teach the totality of history,” she said. “And, yes, it might make you feel a little bad or sad or something, but that’s part of history.”

In her remarks ahead of DeSantis’ speech, Moms for Liberty National Director of Engagement Tia Bess rejected claims that the group is racist.

“Do I look like a racist to y’all?” Bess, who is Black, told the overwhelmingly white audience.

Tiffany Justice, one of the group’s co-founders, responded sarcastically to the SPLC’s “extremist” label onstage Friday, referring to herself as “the face of domestic terrorism, apparently.”

Though Moms for Liberty says it is nonpartisan, it has largely drawn conservative support. The group also has fought to elect conservative candidates to school boards around the country.

While the group’s status as a 501(c)4 nonprofit means it doesn’t have to disclose its funders, its public donors include conservative powerhouses such as the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute, a national political training organization.

Patriot Mobile, a far-right Christian cellphone company paying to sponsor Trump’s remarks at the conference, has a political action committee that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to take charge of Texas school boards.

Mom for Liberty’s Florida-based PAC also has received a $50,000 donation from Julie Fancelli, a Republican donor whose family owns Publix grocery stores and who helped fund Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally, according to House Jan. 6 committee findings. Fancelli didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running in the Democratic presidential primary, had been scheduled to speak at the group’s summit, but his “campaign told us his schedule changed,” Justice said.

Kennedy’s press team said he dropped out “for family reasons.” Hours later, Kennedy said during a town hall with NewsNation that he “made a mistake by accepting that invitation” and that once he learned of Moms for Liberty’s positions on LGBTQ+ issues, he “declined to go.”

___

Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and video journalist David R. Martin in Philadelphia contributed reporting.

___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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June 30, 2023
The Supreme Court rules for a designer who doesn’t want to make wedding websites for gay couples

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WASHINGTON — In a defeat for gay rights, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled on Friday that a Christian graphic artist who wants to design wedding websites can refuse to work with same-sex couples. One of the court’s liberal justices wrote in a dissent that the decision’s effect is to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status” and that it opens the door to other discrimination.

The court ruled 6-3 for designer Lorie Smith despite a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender and other characteristics. Smith had argued that the law violates her free speech rights.

Smith’s opponents warned that a win for her would allow a range of businesses to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants. But Smith and her supporters had said that a ruling against her would force artists — from painters and photographers to writers and musicians — to do work that is against their beliefs.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court’s six conservative justices that the First Amendment “envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.” Gorsuch said that the court has long held that “the opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished liberties and part of what keeps our Republic strong.”

In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.” She was joined by the court’s two other liberals, Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Sotomayor said that the decision’s logic “cannot be limited to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.” A website designer could refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial couple, a stationer could refuse to sell a birth announcement for a disabled couple, and a large retail store could limit its portrait services to “traditional” families, she wrote.

The decision is a win for religious rights and one in a series of cases in recent years in which the justices have sided with religious plaintiffs. Last year, for example, the court ruled along ideological lines for a football coach who prayed on the field at his public high school after games.

The decision is also a retreat on gay rights for the court. For nearly three decades, the court has expanded the rights of LGBTQ people, most notably giving same-sex couples the right to marry in 2015 and announcing five years later in a decision written by Gorsuch that a landmark civil rights law also protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from employment discrimination.

Even as it has expanded gay rights, however, the court has been careful to say those with differing religious views needed to be respected. The belief that marriage can only be between one man and one woman is an idea that “long has been held — and continues to be held — in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the court’s gay marriage decision.

The court returned to that idea five years ago when it was confronted with the case of a Christian baker who objected to designing a cake for a same-sex wedding. The court issued a limited ruling in favor of the baker, Jack Phillips, saying there had been impermissible hostility toward his religious views in the consideration of his case. Phillips’ lawyer, Kristen Waggoner, of the Alliance Defending Freedom, also brought the most recent case to the court. On Friday, she said the Supreme Court was right to reaffirm that the government cannot compel people to say things they do not believe.

“Disagreement isn’t discrimination, and the government can’t mislabel speech as discrimination to censor it,” she said in a statement.

Smith, who owns a Colorado design business called 303 Creative, does not currently create wedding websites. She has said that she wants to but that her Christian faith would prevent her from creating websites celebrating same-sex marriages. And that’s where she runs into conflict with state law.

Colorado, like most other states, has a law forbidding businesses open to the public from discriminating against customers. Colorado said that under its so-called public accommodations law, if Smith offers wedding websites to the public, she must provide them to all customers, regardless of sexual orientation. Businesses that violate the law can be fined, among other things. Smith argued that applying the law to her violates her First Amendment rights. The state disagreed.

The case is 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 21-476.

___

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June 30, 2023
The Supreme Court rules for a designer who doesn’t want to make wedding websites for gay couples

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WASHINGTON — In a defeat for gay rights, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled Friday that a Christian graphic artist who wants to design wedding websites can refuse to work with same-sex couples.

The court ruled 6-3 for designer Lorie Smith despite a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender and other characteristics. Smith had argued that the law violates her free speech rights.

Smith’s opponents warned that a win for her would allow a range of businesses to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants. But Smith and her supporters had said that a ruling against her would force artists — from painters and photographers to writers and musicians — to do work that is against their beliefs.

“The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court’s six conservative justices.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent that was joined by the court’s other liberals. “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class,” Sotomayor wrote.

The decision is a win for religious rights and one in a series of cases in recent years in which the justices have sided with religious plaintiffs. Last year, for example, the court ruled along ideological lines for a football coach who prayed on the field at his public high school after games.

The decision is also a retreat on gay rights for the court. For two decades, the court has expanded the rights of LGBTQ people, most notably giving same-sex couples the right to marry in 2015 and announcing five years later that a landmark civil rights law also protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from employment discrimination. That civil rights law decision was also written by Gorsuch.

Even as it has expanded gay rights, however, the court has been careful to say those with differing religious views needed to be respected. The belief that marriage can only be between one man and one woman is an idea that “long has been held — and continues to be held — in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the court’s gay marriage decision.

The court returned to that idea five years ago when it was confronted with the case of a Christian baker who objected to designing a cake for a same-sex wedding. The court issued a limited ruling in favor of the baker, Jack Phillips, saying there had been impermissible hostility toward his religious views in the consideration of his case. Phillips’ lawyer, Kristen Waggoner, of the Alliance Defending Freedom, also brought the most recent case to the court.

Smith, who owns a Colorado design business called 303 Creative, does not currently create wedding websites. She has said that she wants to but that her Christian faith would prevent her from creating websites celebrating same-sex marriages. And that’s where she runs into conflict with state law.

Colorado, like most other states, has a law forbidding businesses open to the public from discriminating against customers. Colorado said that under its so-called public accommodations law, if Smith offers wedding websites to the public, she must provide them to all customers, regardless of sexual orientation. Businesses that violate the law can be fined, among other things. Smith argued that applying the law to her violates her First Amendment rights. The state disagreed.

The case is 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 21-476.

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

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June 30, 2023
Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney says Bud Light didn’t support her during backlash

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Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney says she felt abandoned by Bud Light after facing “more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined” over her partnership with the beer giant

FILE – Dylan Mulvaney arrives at the 76th annual Tony Awards on Sunday, June 11, 2023, at the United Palace theater in New York. Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney on Friday, June 30 she felt abandoned by Bud Light after facing “more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined” over her partnership with the beer giant. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, file)

The Associated Press

Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney says she felt abandoned by Bud Light after facing “more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined” over her partnership with the beer giant.

In a video posted Thursday to Instagram and TikTok, she said she “was waiting for the brand to reach out to me. But they never did.” She said she should have spoken out sooner but was afraid and hoped things would get better — but they didn’t.

“For months now, I’ve been scared to leave my house,” Mulvaney said. “I have been ridiculed in public. I’ve been followed, and I have felt a loneliness that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”

A deluge of criticism and hate erupted soon after Mulvaney cracked open a Bud Light in an Instagram video on April 1 as part of a promotional contest for the beer brand. She showed off a can emblazoned with her face that Bud Light sent to her — one of many corporate freebies she gets and shares with her millions of followers.

Conservative figures and others called for a boycott of Bud Light, while Mulvaney’s supporters criticized the beer brand for not doing enough to support her.

In the weeks and months that followed, two marketing executives at parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev took a leave of absence, Bud Light lost its decadeslong position as America’s best-selling beer and the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest advocacy group for LGBTQ+ rights, suspended its benchmark equality and inclusion rating for the brewing giant.

“For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans person at all — because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want,” Mulvaney said, without naming Bud Light.

Belgium-based ABInBev didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Friday.

In an April 14 statement, Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth said the company “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”

Other companies, including Target and Starbucks, have recently come under fire for their efforts to appeal to the LGBTQ+ community, especially during June’s Pride celebrations, only to face more outcry when they tried to backpedal.

The clashes come amid a furious and fast-spreading debate over the rights of transgender people. At least 17 states have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for minors, most since the start of this year.

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June 30, 2023
Activist detained in Hong Kong begins final appeal for recognition of his overseas same-sex marriage

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HONG KONG — An activist detained in Hong Kong began his final appeal Wednesday seeking recognition for his same-sex marriage registered overseas, in a landmark case for the city’s LGBTQ+ community.

Jimmy Sham, a prominent pro-democracy activist during the 2019 protests that roiled Hong Kong, first asked for a judicial review five years ago seeking a declaration that the city’s laws, which don’t recognize foreign same-sex marriages, violate his constitutional right to equality. But the lower courts dismissed his legal challenge and a subsequent appeal over the case.

Sham is now in custody after being charged with subversion over an unofficial primary election under a tough national security law enacted following the protests. Many other leading Hong Kong activists were also arrested or silenced by the law imposed by Beijing on the former U.K. colony.

The upcoming judgment by the city’s top court in his marriage case will have strong implications for the lives of the LGBTQ+ community and the financial hub’s reputation as an inclusive place to live and work.

Currently, the city only recognizes same-sex marriages for certain purposes such as taxation, civil service benefits and dependent visas. Many of the government’s concessions were won through legal challenges over the last few years.

The court will have to address whether the exclusion of same-sex couples from the institution of marriage and a failure to provide alternative means of legal recognition for same-sex partnerships violate the right to equality. The judges will also have to decide if the city’s laws violate that right enshrined in Hong Kong’s constitution, as they don’t recognize foreign same-sex marriages.

On Wednesday, Sham appeared spirited inside the courtroom. His supporters wished him a happy birthday as he was turning 36 years old this week.

His lawyer, Karon Monaghan, argued that the absence of same-sex marriages in Hong Kong sent a message that it is less worthy of recognition than heterosexual marriages.

But Steward Wong, who represents the secretary for justice, insisted another law under the constitution meant to provide access to the institution of marriage to heterosexual couples only. The court will continue to hear the case on Thursday.

Sham and his husband married in New York in 2013. They wished to marry in Hong Kong, but it wasn’t allowed under the law, according to previous judgments.

The ruling in 2020 said his marriage lacks essential validity, because the city’s law doesn’t permit marriage between same-sex people. It added that Sham’s attempt to achieve complete parity of recognition between foreign same-sex marriages and foreign heterosexual marriages is “too ambitious.”

Sham’s appeal over the case was also dismissed last August.

Sham is the former convenor of Civil Human Rights Front, which was best known for organizing the annual march on the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997, for years. The group also organized some of the bigger political protests that roiled the city in 2019.

The front was disbanded in 2021 as it reportedly faces a police investigation for possible violation of the security law.

In February, the top court ruled that full sex reassignment surgery should not be a prerequisite for transgender people to have their gender changed on their official identity cards. Supporters said it was an important milestone for the transgender community in Hong Kong.

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June 28, 2023
Party and protest mix as LGBTQ+ pride parades kick off from New York to San Francisco

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NEW YORK — Some of the world’s biggest celebrations of LGBTQ+ pride are set to kick off Sunday, with thousands expected to march in New York, San Francisco and other North American cities in parades that will be part party, part protest.

Entertainers and activists, drag performers and transgender advocates are among the grand marshals in parades embracing a unity message this year, as new laws targeting the LGBTQ+ community take effect in several U.S. states.

The parades and marches are among a range of events the roughly 400 Pride organizations across the U.S. are holding this year, with many offering programs focused specifically on the rights of transgender people.

“The platform will be elevated, and we’ll see communities across the country show their unity and solidarity through these events,” said Ron deHarte, co-president for the U.S. Association of Prides.

Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver and Seattle are scheduled to hold their annual pride parades on Sunday. At the parade in Toronto, Canada, more than 100 groups are expected to march. In New York City, seven-time Grammy winner Christina Aguilera will headline a post-march concert in Brooklyn.

New York’s march is held the last Sunday in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City, where a police raid on a gay bar triggered days of protests.

Over the years, the annual observations have spread to other cities and grown to include bisexual, transgender and queer people, as well as other groups.

About a decade ago, when her 13-year-old child first wanted to be called a boy, Roz Gould Keith sought help but could find little to assist her family navigate their child’s transition. They attended a Pride parade in the Detroit area but saw little transgender representation.

This year, she is heartened by the increased visibility of transgender people at marches and celebrations that have been held across the country this month.

“Ten years ago, when my son asked to go to Motor City Pride, there was nothing for the trans community,” said Keith, the founder and executive director of Stand with Trans, a group formed to support and empower young transgender people and their families.

This year, she said, the event was “jam-packed” with representation of transgender people.

One of the grand marshals of New York City’s parade this year is nonbinary activist AC Dumlao, chief of staff for Athlete Ally, a group that advocates on behalf of LGBTQ+ athletes.

“Uplifting the trans community has always been at the core of our events and programming,” said Dan Dimant, a spokesperson for NYC Pride.

Many of this year’s parades served as calls to action for LGBTQ+ communities to unite against dozens, if not hundreds, of legislative bills now under consideration in statehouses across the country.

Lawmakers in 20 states have moved to ban gender-affirming care for children and at least seven more are considering doing the same, adding increased urgency to coalesce around the transgender community, its advocates say.

“We are under threat. Prides are under threat,” Pride event organizers in New York, San Francisco and San Diego said in a statement joined by about 50 other pride organizations nationwide. “The diverse dangers we are facing as an LGBTQ community and Pride organizers, while differing in nature and intensity, share a common trait: they seek to undermine our love, our identity, our freedom, our safety, and our lives.”

Some parades, including the event in Chicago, are planning to beef up security amid the upheaval.

The Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD, a national LGBTQ+ organization, found 101 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents just in the first three weeks of this month, about twice as many as in the full month of June last year.

Sarah Moore, who analyzes extremism for the two civil rights groups, said many of the June incidents coincide with Pride events.

___

AP writers Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.

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June 24, 2023
Kansas’ attorney general is moving to block trans people from changing their birth certificates

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TOPEKA, Kan. — Transgender people born in Kansas could be prevented from changing their birth certificates to reflect their gender identities if the state’s conservative Republican attorney is successful with a legal move he launched late Friday.

Attorney General Kris Kobach filed a request in federal court asking a judge to end a requirement for Kansas to allow transgender people to change their birth certificates. He is not seeking to undo past changes, only prevent them going forward.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree imposed the requirement in 2019 to settle a lawsuit filed by four transgender Kansas residents against three state health department officials. The suit challenged a policy that critics said prevented transgender people from making changes even after transitioning, legally changing their names and obtaining new driver’s licenses and Social Security cards.

It wasn’t clear whether Kobach’s effort would succeed, given a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2020 declaring a federal law barring sex discrimination in employment also prevents discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Also in 2020, federal judges in Idaho and Ohio struck down rules against transgender people changing their birth certificates. But this month, federal judges in Tennessee and Oklahoma dismissed challenges to two of the nation’s few remaining state policies against such changes.

Kobach’s move appears to be in keeping with a new, sweeping Kansas law taking effect July 1 that rolls back transgender rights and was enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto. A memo filed electronically with the request by Kobach shortly before midnight cited the law as a reason to revisit the 2019 settlement.

The memo argued Crabtree’s order makes it “impossible” to follow the new state law and that since the Legislature “has spoken,” the state health department, which handles birth certificates, is now “bound to execute the law as written.”

Kobach already had scheduled a Monday afternoon news conference at the Statehouse to discuss enforcement of the new law.

Crabtree’s 2019 order blocked a policy imposed by former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration that was among the toughest against birth certificate changes in the U.S. Kelly is a strong supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and her administration agreed to settle the lawsuit less than six months after she took office.

That decision came almost a year after Crabtree declared the Kansas policy violated transgender people’s constitutional rights to due legal process and equal treatment under the law. His order notes that federal courts in Idaho and Puerto Rico had struck down no-change policies. Kobach’s memo called those rulings outdated.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and the LGBTQ+-rights legal group Lambda Legal, representing the four Kansas residents, condemned Kobach’s move. Lamda Legal’s Omar Gonzalez-Pagan called it “unnecessary and cruel.”

Kansas ACLU Executive Director Micah Kubic added in a statement: “Mr. Kobach should rethink the wisdom — and the sheer indecency — of this attempt to weaponize his office’s authority to attack transgender Kansans just trying to live their lives.”

The new Kansas law is designed to prevent transgender people from using restrooms, locker rooms and other single-gender facilities associated with their identities. At least nine other states have such laws, mostly focused on public schools.

Kobach has said he believes the new Kansas law also prevents transgender people from changing their driver’s licenses, though the law contains no specific enforcement mechanisms. Lawmakers wrote the bill so it could prevent transgender people from changing their birth certificates, except for the 2019 federal court order, without specifically mentioning either birth certificates or driver’s licenses.

For weeks, a project of Kansas Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm, encouraged transgender Kansans to change their driver’s licenses before the new law took effect. Kelly’s administration, which oversees the licensing of drivers, hasn’t said whether it believes such changes would still be allowed under the new law.

Ellen Bertels, the attorney spearheading the effort, said that while a transgender person could sue after the law takes effect to protect people’s right to change their driver’s licenses, a lawsuit from a state official against Kelly’s administration could seek to prevent such changes.

“That’s it’s kind of the obvious place that they would end up,” Bertels said.

As for birth certificates, the small number of states not allowing transgender people to change them shrunk through previous federal court challenges like the one in Kansas.

The ACLU of Montana plans to challenge a rule imposed there last year barring people from changing the sex listed on their birth certificates, according Alex Rate, one of its attorneys. The state has tightened its rules since GOP Gov. Greg Gianforte took office in 2021, and the dispute there has played out before a state-court judge.

Previously, starting in 2017 when Democrat Steve Bullock was governor, Montana allowed transgender people to change their birth certificates by filling out an affidavit.

LGBTQ+ rights advocates say changing birth certificates, driver’s licenses and other records to reflect a transgender person’s gender identity is key to affirming their identities and often greatly improves their mental health.

Policies against changing birth certificates and other documents have practical implications for transgender residents, too. For example, Kansas requires voters to show a photo ID at the polls or when obtaining an absentee ballot.

Critics of the new Kansas law contend it is designed to legally erase transgender people.

It declares that state law recognizes only two genders, male and female, and defines them based on a person’s “biological reproductive system” at birth. A woman is someone whose system “is designed to produce ova,” while a male only is someone with a system “designed to fertilize the ova of a female.”

The law then declares “important governmental objectives” of protecting people’s health safety and privacy justify having sex-segregated spaces in line with those definitions.

___

Associated Press Writer Amy Hanson in Helena, Montana, contributed to this story.

___

Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna

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June 24, 2023
Long heritage of Native Hawaiian gender-fluidity showcased in Las Vegas drag show

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LAS VEGAS — Drag queens donning the white, red and blue of the Hawaiian flag shimmied across the stage to a throbbing techno remix of “Aloha Oe,” a song composed by Hawaii‘s last reigning monarch. Spectators roared as a performer shook her hips in a Tahitian-style dance.

All were “mahu” — a Hawaiian term for people with dual male and female spirit and a mixture of gender traits.

They starred in a drag show this week called “Mahu Magic” on the sidelines of a Native Hawaiian convention in Las Vegas to remind the world of the respected place gender-fluidity has held in Hawaiian culture for hundreds of years, while also making a foray into the national conversation about transgender rights.

“It’s a little different from other drag shows because this one has a very specific purpose,” Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, who is mahu, a community leader and a master teacher of hula and chanting, told the audience midway through the event.

“It is meant to reinstate the rightful place that mahu have between kane and wahine,” Wong-Kalu said, using the Hawaiian words for man and woman. The crowd erupted in raucous cheers and applause.

Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp, an ethnohistorian who identifies as mahu and queer, said mahu also can include people who would be nonbinary, would define themselves as third gender and those attracted to someone of the same gender.

“That’s what mahu does — mahu offers a space between the concepts of male and female,” Manalo-Camp said.

The Hawaiian language makes it easier to inhabit that spot because it doesn’t have gendered pronouns. In the Western context, Wong-Kalu uses “she” and “her” but prefers the word “o ia,” which is a Hawaiian language pronoun used for all people.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re coming from male to female or female to the male, and it doesn’t matter what your physical articulation is,” Wong-Kalu said. “We have elements of both. Sometimes we completely walk away from one and walk to the other. Sometimes we stay in the middle.”

The “Mahu Magic” show on Tuesday was sponsored by the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, a nonprofit organization better known for administering rent relief and job training programs. The council normally holds its conventions in Hawaii but met in Nevada for the first time — coincidentally during Pride month — in an acknowledgement that more than half of all Native Hawaiians now live outside the islands.

Council CEO Kuhio Lewis said he wanted to shine a spotlight on gender-fluidity for those who have lost touch with Hawaiian culture because they’ve had to leave the islands due to rising housing costs and gentrification.

Some Native Hawaiian families now have two or three generations born outside Hawaii and need help connecting to their homeland, Lewis said.

But he also aimed to reach Native Hawaiians who have drifted from their culture in a Hawaii that’s increasingly shaped by continental U.S. influences. About one-third of the 1,200 attendees flew to Las Vegas from Hawaii, while the remainder already lived outside the state.

“Unless we do something to honor, to recognize who we are, we’re going to lose our identity,” Lewis said.

A panel discussion addressed how traditional roles of mahu have evolved over time. More broadly, the convention featured workshops on topics like hula, Hawaiian language and affordable housing.

One dancer in “Mahu Magic” wore a white pantsuit, cape and towering feather headdress while lip-synching to “Sky” by Sonique. A trio danced hula to the modern favorite “Hawaii Calls” in halter-top gowns featuring red and white hibiscus flowers.

All 10 performers live as women. Many other drag shows feature men who live as men but dress as women for the show.

Mahu often have had important roles in Native Hawaiian culture as teachers, healers and keepers of knowledge and traditions.

One story reflecting this history is that of four mahu healers who visited Waikiki from Tahiti more than 500 years ago. Hawaiians placed four boulders on the beach to honor them, which are still visible today.

Despite these deep roots, mahu awareness in Hawaii has faded during centuries of foreign influence. Christian missionaries who first arrived in 1820 taught Hawaiians to shun anything deviating from clearly defined male and female roles. In 1893, businessmen backed by the U.S. government overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and a few years later prohibited the teaching of Hawaiian language in schools. The U.S. annexed Hawaii in 1898, making it a territory.

Leikia Williams, the drag show’s producer and a performer, said mahu was a derogatory word when she was growing up in Honolulu in the 1980s. She remembers people saying, “Stop acting mahu.”

The support of her “drag house,” consisting of elder mahu and fellow mahu sisters, helped her cope. Williams said her house mother taught her and her sisters to “be who we want to be; be who we are, especially in public. To keep our heads held high.”

There’s more understanding today. Even so, a 2018 state report found transgender youth in Hawaii are three times more likely to consider suicide and make a suicide plan than their peers whose gender matches the one usually associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Increasingly, anti-LGBTQ+ language has flowed into Hawaii from states that have enacted laws to keep transgender children off girls sports teams and block them from receiving gender-affirming medical care.

Republican lawmakers introduced a bill at the Hawaii Legislature this year that would have required “separate sex-specific athletic teams or sports” in schools. The measure didn’t get a hearing in either the House or Senate, which are both dominated by Democrats.

Lawmakers overwhelmingly passed legislation enabling the state to replace marriage certificates for people who change their gender or sex. Gov. Josh Green, a Democrat, on Friday indicated he would either sign the bill or let it become law without his signature.

Wong-Kalu said influence from the continental U.S. exacerbates anti-mahu views in Hawaii and highlighting mahu during the Las Vegas event was important in countering the prejudice.

“This, for me, is about decolonizing our people to the degree that we understand our rightful place in our own home, of which we still do not have,” Wong-Kalu said.

Eight performers at “Mahu Magic” were Native Hawaiian and two were of Samoan ancestry, which Lewis said was fitting because the conversation about mahu is also one for broader Oceania. Other parts of Polynesia, such as Samoa and Tonga, have concepts similar to mahu. The Tahitian language even uses the same word.

Mahu also is similar to the term “two-spirit” used by Native Americans, Alaska Natives and First Nations communities in Canada for people who combine traits of men and women.

Williams related how performances can change minds. She shared how she can sense at drag shows when straight men in the audience are uncomfortable with mahu. But that changes when she takes the microphone. Afterward, those same men thank her, offer food and help carry her bags.

“That’s educating people and letting them know that we’re real,” Williams said. “We’re human. We’re here.”

___

McAvoy reported from Honolulu.

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June 24, 2023
Librarian gathering in Chicago includes training to battle book bans in communities and schools

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CHICAGO — Book bans and how to fight them will be a major focus of the American Library Association’s annual meeting this weekend in Chicago.

Librarians may attend sessions aimed at helping them confidently counter book challenges, fight legislative censorship and ensure “access to information and the freedom to read.” All day Saturday, attendees are invited to climb atop a giant chair to read their favorite banned book.

“With an unparalleled rise in challenges and bans and legislation suppressing access to books and learning materials in libraries, schools, and universities, it is more important than ever to join forces in the fight against banning books!” the event description reads.

The conference brings together authors, educators and librarians as several states push to restrict access to books in schools and libraries, overwhelmingly those about race, ethnicity and LGBTQ+ topics. The association in March released data showing a record 1,269 demands to censor library books in the U.S. in 2022, a 20-year high.

“Addressing book censorship and protecting library users’ intellectual freedom, protecting librarians’ ability to provide for information in their communities, is at the forefront of this year’s meeting,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation.

“We have almost two dozen programs addressing intellectual freedom, advocacy … attacks on public education and public libraries, all intended to equip our members with the knowledge they need to go out and advocate and defend the right to read in their libraries,” she said.

Parents always have the right to choose what their children read, but they don’t have the right to restrict access for the whole community, said Christine Emeran, director of the Youth Free Expression Program of the National Coalition Against Censorship, a First Amendment advocacy organization.

“You can’t just concede to demands of a particular group of parents and to censor libraries,” she said.

Emeran, who is scheduled to be featured in a panel discussion called “Help! They’re coming for our books!” at the conference Sunday, began to notice an increase in book bans starting in 2021, at the beginning of President Joe Biden’s term. She attributed the shift to “a cultural backlash” against changing views on LGBTQ+ issues, women’s rights and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Local libraries are calling in the National Coalition Against Censorship for help now more than ever. In the past, the organization assisted on a few book ban cases per year. “Now we’re getting two or three a week,” Emeran said.

“Librarians are under pressure and they’re feeling frustrated, discouraged,” said Emeran, who encouraged readers to support local libraries, attend school board meetings and get involved in their communities to protect the right to read.

Groups such as Moms for Liberty, No Left Turn in Education and Citizens Defending Freedom have had an outsized effect on what is allowed to be read, she said.

“The majority may oppose censorship as a whole. But the problem is that the majority are silent,” Emeran said.

___

Savage 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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June 23, 2023