While the world waits on pins and needles to find out who will win the grand prize in the U.S. elections, there are notable queer campaigns that link to the same themes and could be significant in the big picture, such as the marriage equality Proposition 3 in California, and the Sen. Tammy Baldwin reelection campaign in the all-important state of Wisconsin. The specter of the conservative manifesto Project 2025 creates even more pressure. Psychologists S. Lee Tepper and Dr. Jonathan Mattias Lassiter help people handle the election anxiety.
And in NewsWrap: Tel Aviv is taken off the list of potential hosts for a future ILGA World Conference, a second Japanese High Court has ruled that the federal government’s resistance to marriage equality is unconstitutional, more than one in 10 Australian teenagers identify as queer in a University of Sydney survey, Dr. Hector Granados is the second gender-affirming healthcare physician taken to court by rabidly anti-queer Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, ACLU’s AIDS/HIV project co-director Chase Strangio will be the first out transgender attorney to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and more international LGBTQ news reported by Michael LeBeau and John Dyer V (produced by Brian DeShazor).
All this on the November 4, 2024 edition of This Way Out!
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Complete Program Summary
for the week of November 4, 2024
Dealing with Queer U.S. Election Jitters
NewsWrap (full transcript below): As the alarmingly expanding war continues to devastate Gaza and other parts of the Middle East, the Board of Directors of the 46-year-old global queer advocacy group ILGA — The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association — rejects Tel Aviv’s bid to host a future World Conference, and suspends the membership of The Aguda, Israel’s venerable LGBTQ rights group, for potential violations of ILGA’s “aims and objectives” .. Tokyo’s becomes the second of eight regional High Courts in Japan to unequivocally rule that the nation’s ban on marriage equality is unconstitutional … a substantive study at the University of Sydney finds well more than 1 in 10 Australian teenagers identifying as sexually and/or gender diverse … foaming-at-the-mouth phobic Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sues a second doctor for violating state law that threatens medical practitioners with the loss of their licenses for providing gender-affirming healthcare — including reversible hormones or puberty blockers — to minors … the ACLU’s Chase Strangio is set to make history on December 4th when he becomes the first transgender lawyer to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court — he’ll be challenging the state of Tennessee’s ban on pediatric gender-affirming healthcare (written by GREG GORDON and LUCIA CHAPPELLE, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, reported this week by MICHAEL LEBEAU and JOHN DYER V).
Feature: While the world waits on pins and needles to find out who will win the grand prize in the U.S. elections, there are notable queer campaigns that link to the same themes and could be significant in the big picture, such as the marriage equality Proposition 3 in California, and the Sen. Tammy Baldwin reelection campaign in the all-important state of Wisconsin. The specter of the conservative manifesto Project 2025 creates even more pressure. Psychologists S. Lee Tepper and Dr. Jonathan Mattias Lassiter help people handle the election anxiety (with music by ARNAE BATSON AND THE VOICES RAISED LA VOCAL COLLECTIVE, WOODY GUTHRIE and EMMA’S REVOLUTION).
NewsWrap
A summary of some of the news in or affecting
global LGBTQ communities
for the week ending November 2, 2024
Written by Greg Gordon and Lucia Chappelle,
reported this week by Michael LeBeau and John Dyer V,
produced by Brian DeShazor
Tel Aviv is off the list of potential hosts for a future world conference of ILGA, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. ILGA’s Board of Directors hastily called an emergency meeting ahead of its mid-November World Conference in Cape Town, South Africa in response to social media objections to Tel Aviv’s application. The applicant was Israel’s umbrella LGBTQ advocacy group The Aguda. ILGA’s Board also voted to suspend The Aguda’s membership as it considers the group’s possible violations of “ILGA World’s aims and objectives.”
The complaints concerned the alarmingly expanding war that continues to devastate Gaza and other parts of the Middle East. ILGA’s official statement called the actions a reaction to “significant and legitimate disconcert regarding a member organization bidding to host the World Conference in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2026 or 2027.”
The Board said it wanted to “ensure [that] we fully uphold universal respect for human rights, equal representation, and the elimination of barriers to participation for all members – including in our conferences.”
The Aguda responded that it was “deeply disappointed by the fact that ILGA chose to boycott those who work for LGBTQ rights and for a more just society.” Its statement cited the organization’s 50-year track record of working for the rights of all LGBTQ people, including Arabs and Palestinian asylum seekers. In Aguda words, queer Israeli groups “should not bear responsibility for government policy, and we expect the international community to support liberal voices rather than boycott them.”
Rabbi Jill Jacobs of the global human rights group T’ruah agrees. Jacobs is an American Jewish critic of the Israeli government herself, but thinks ILGA’s action “does nothing to stop the war or protect the rights of LGBTQ people, including Palestinians … It only punishes people fighting for safety & equality. The rabbi points out, “ILGA has affiliates in other countries carrying out massive human rights violations. Israel should be no different.”
ILGA World Executive Director Julia Ehrt denied any suggestion of anti-Semitism in a statement to the Washington Blade. She insisted, “We have repeatedly called for peace in the region, and continue to work every day to counter racism, xenophobia, islamophobia, and anti-Semitism — alongside LGBTI-phobia.”
ILGA has member organizations in more than 150 countries around the world and has been around for 46 years.
A second Japanese High Court has ruled that the federal government’s resistance to marriage equality is unconstitutional. The Tokyo High Court judges were unequivocal, calling the government’s position “groundless legal discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
Japan’s Constitution specifies, “Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes, and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis.”
However, marriage equality proponents point to the constitutional provisions guaranteeing fundamental human rights for all people and protection from discrimination based on “race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.”
More than 200 municipalities in Japan offer at least symbolic recognition to lesbian and gay couples, and Sapporo’s High Court ruled for marriage equality ahead of Tokyo’s in March. However, even if all eight of the country’s regional high courts decided in favor, any changes to the national marriage laws can only be made in Japan’s legislature, the National Diet.
Support for marriage equality polls at up to 70 percent with the Japanese public, but the socially conservative government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has consistently blocked any effort to even discuss the issue in the National Diet.
Advocates are hoping that Kishida will be forced to compromise on more progressive policies like marriage equality now that his ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost its parliamentary majority in October 27th national elections.
When leaders from the world’s most advanced economies meet, Japan remains the only country in the G7 that has not opened civil marriage to same-gender couples.
More than one in 10 Australian teenagers identify as gay, lesbian bisexual, pansexual, or asexual – this according to a University of Sydney survey of more than six thousand year 8 students followed between 2019 and 2021. Twelve percent of them are sexually diverse. Gender diversity accounts for an additional 3.3 percent of respondents.
For many, “minority stress” has already taken its toll, with 17.7 per cent of respondents saying they’d been diagnosed with a mental health issue. The most common was generalized anxiety disorder, at 7.8 per cent. Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and social anxiety disorder were next at about six percent each.
Senior Research Fellow Jennifer Marino warned that the findings reveal an “urgent need” for programs for young Australian queers to decrease stigma, discrimination and violence. In her opinion, such programs should “promote inclusion and support of diverse gender identities and sexualities from a young age to mitigate the deleterious impact of minority stress and internalized transphobia and homophobia.” She called for further research.
The study was published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Dr. Hector Granados of El Paso is the second gender-affirming healthcare physician targeted by rabidly anti-queer Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Granados is a pediatric endocrinologist being sued for treating transgender young people. Paxton charges him with prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to more than 20 minors with gender dysphoria – the sense that the patient’s gender identity is out of sync with their physical presentation.
Texas law prohibits medical providers from prescribing minors certain gender-affirming treatments, including reversible puberty blockers and hormones. It was passed by the Republican-dominated Texas legislature and signed by equally anti-queer Governor Gregg Abbott in 2023.
Paxton filed a similar lawsuit in October against Dr. May Lau, an adolescent medicine physician and associate professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
Paxton calls each doctor a “radical gender activist” who has clearly violated the law.
Both lawsuits seek financial penalties as well as the revocation of the doctors’ medical licenses for providing what experts consider to be often life-saving care.
Finally, when Tennessee’s ban on pediatric gender-affirming healthcare goes before the United States Supreme Court, a historic champion will be appearing. The ACLU’s AIDS/HIV project co-director Chase Strangio will be the first out transgender attorney to argue a case before the nation’s highest court.
Strangio will represent families of transgender young people and a supportive doctor in the case known as U.S. vs. Skrmetti. They are asking that state Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti be prevented from enforcing the ban. The suit argues that the prohibition on pediatric medical care violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process. It also tramples provisions of the Affordable Care Act against discrimination based on sex.
Strangio has worked on many high-profile LGBTQ rights cases, including the workers’ rights Bostock vs. Clayton County decision. He was also instrumental in fighting the Trump administration’s efforts to ban transgender military service members.
Strangio’s co-director at the ACLU AIDS/HIV project is James Esseks. He said, “There is no attorney in the country better suited for this landmark moment in LGBTQ history than Chase Strangio.”
Oral arguments in U.S. vs. Skrmetti will be heard on December 4th.
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