GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor, QAnon friendly & anti-LGBTQ+
Right-wing SF archbishop bars Pelosi from receiving Holy Communion
LGBTQ+ Asian American candidate in Texas attacked with racist ad
NPR poll: Supreme Court leak firing up Democratic voters
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Assemblymember Santiago: Up food access to undocumented Californians
Triple A: Gas prices continue to set new records
California readies 3,000 miles of network infrastructure
Newsom gets second booster dose, urges eligible Californians to get theirs
City of West Hollywood’s LGBTQ+ Arts Festival 2022 kicks-off
City of West Hollywood’s LGBTQ+ Arts Festival 2022 kicks-off
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City of West Hollywood fundraiser for refugees from Ukraine May 22
Brazen robbery in WeHo, thieves use Rolls-Royce as getaway vehicle
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LA-DWP & Mayor Garcetti announce new outdoor watering restrictions
Hollywood residents angered over Sunset Blvd. homeless encampment
Lawsuit against USC in sexual abuse case of 80 male students settled
LAPD asks for public’s help in Melrose District homicide
The days Los Angeles burned, the 1992 riots legacy 30 years later
Longtime LGBTQ+ journalist & editor Thomas Senzee dies at 54
Trans Palm Springs Mayor responds to anti-LGBTQ+ Texas Governor
Historic swearing in of Lisa Middleton as Palm Springs Mayor
Everything you need to know about Palm Springs Pride this weekend
The LGBTQ Center of the Desert reopens in Palm Springs
San Diego County man charged with a hate crime after homophobic attack
Trans woman ‘viciously attacked’ in men’s jail cell lawsuit says
US Navy Fleet Oiler & supply ship, USNS Harvey Milk launches
Dignitaries tour the 60% completed USNS Harvey Milk
Federal probe into former backer of Prop 8 in ‘pay or play’ scheme
Oklahoma Senate passes anti-Trans bathroom bill sends it to Governor
New Hampshire’s Republican Governor to veto “Don’t Say Gay” bill
White House condemns Oklahoma ban on abortions starting at fertilization
Cincinnati area high schoolers created ‘Jim Crow’ signs & are disciplined
Texas will resume anti-Trans youth abuse investigations
Brazil LGBTQ+ activists, HIV/AIDS service providers fear Bolsonaro reelection
The Royal Mint marks 50 years of ‘Pride UK’ with first LGBTQ+ coin
LGBT ‘Free Zones’ tossed, UK LGBTQ ranking, Pussy Riot singer escapes
Brittney Griner detention extended for another month
Greece bans conversion therapy for minors
U.S. Catholic bishops must recuse themselves from politics
Gay, Trans, Black, Woman: Voluntary segregation heats up across U.S.
Trump Judge: Christian public school teacher can out Trans kids
Jimmy Biblarz: Representation matters, why I’m running for LA City Council
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Queer news sources and blogs shout out the depressing details every day. My own friends and colleagues have been harassed and assaulted
By James Finn | DETROIT – I feel like I’m going hoarse shouting into the wind about a fire that’s burning my family’s house down — only to have neighbors tut tut and tell me I’m imaging the emergency or that it will sort itself out. “Nothing to see here, move along.”
The worse things get, the quieter our friends become.
Queer news sources and blogs shout out the depressing details every day. My own friends and colleagues have been harassed in the street and assaulted. Four Prism & Pen writers whose work I edit (one of them a close friend) have been queer bashed in the last few months, part of a surge of violence The Guardian’s Owen Jones calls “shocking.” The last time I witnessed anything like this was in 1990 when I joined Queer Nation to fight back against a surge of gay bashing in New York City.
Just this morning, I woke up to Phaylen Fairchild shouting out news about the state of Florida working hard to cut off access to transition care (even social transitioning!) for trans teens. Texas has already succeeded in bullying the state’s two largest providers to cut off medical services for trans youth even though a federal judge has temporarily halted child abuse investigations of the parents of trans children. At least one state employee with a trans daughter has been suspended from her job despite the pause, however, and several others have resigned.
The U.S. Air Force has put a formal program in place to help servicemembers with trans kids transfer out of states like Florida and Texas. That blows my mind, not just because of the unexpected kindness of the program, but because nothing spells crisis like the military getting its people the hell out of Dodge.
Queer advocate and novelist Jude Ellison S. Doyle was at the top of my Medium feed this morning with a column about how Being a Queer Parent is Terrifying Right Now — literally terrifying, as attacks and verbal assaults multiply.
It feels like the worse things get for us, the more our friends and allies want to look the other way.
Hear about those gay dads on Amtrak in liberal California who got called rapists, pedophiles, kidnappers and homosexual abominations … in front of their crying children? Did you know the man who harassed them wasn’t even arrested? He terrorized a family and went on his merry way.
That wasn’t random, as Brandon J. Wolf of Equality Florida reminded the LA Blade in a text message: “Remember, it was Governor Ron DeSantis’ team that injected this “groomer” messaging into the public in a massive way to justify his Don’t Say Gay classroom censorship and book banning legislation. He has stoked hatred, division, and violence.”
When I was a queer parent 20 years ago, things were MUCH BETTER than they are today. I never worried about going out in public with my partner and our son. I never worried about anyone harassing him because of us. How frightening is it that I wouldn’t be able to say that today?
One county library commission meeting rang with cries of “amen” and “praise Jesus.”
Doyle says the current anti-LGBTQ backlash is meant to “make families like ours so fraught that no-one will want to be a queer parent, or even a remotely supportive parent, in the public eye.” I believe that’s spot on. And that’s just one part of the current anti-LGBTQ backlash blaze.
A censorship movement that started in schools has rapidly expanded, according to the Washington Post, 37 percent of book challenges last year happening in public libraries targeting books for adults. In many cases, the challenges are succeeding despite the best efforts of librarians.
Only a few weeks ago, according the Post story Censorship battles’ new frontier: Your public library, one county library commission meeting rang with cries of “amen” and “praise Jesus” from a group of Evangelical preachers and churchgoers who’d just been appointed to replace the previous commissioners. They quickly voted to ban mainstream books about racism, LGBTQ people, and sex education. Then they fired the head librarian for “insubordination” for refusing to remove literary classics from shelves. Just in case children might STILL stumble across something the commissioners object to, they deactivated the library e-book system, cutting off access for disabled people, elderly people or anyone unable to physically access county libraries.
The Post cites this as only one example of a growing trend. The problem is getting worse, not better.
The annual number of proposed anti-LGBTQ bills on the state level surged from 41 in 2018 to 238 in just the first three months of 2022. 2021 is officially the worst year in living memory for the number of state laws passed to limit the civil rights of LGBTQ people, but 2022 is set to make 2021 look like good news.
Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law inspired a lot of state legislatures. Four out of five U.S. states are considering copycat laws, some of them more draconian, like one that already passed in Alabama.
I read The Guardian’s U.S. edition just about cover to cover every morning. If you don’t know, it’s an excellent U.K. based newspaper with a large U.S. bureau and a mostly progressive editorial page — the paper of choice for lots of liberals like me.
Know what’s NOT in the Guardian today? A single word about LGBTQ people or issues. Our house is burning down, but to look at the Guardian, there’s nothing to see. Yes, of course some news sources are covering the sustained assault. The Guardian’s reporting on LGBTQ issues can be pretty good when their increasing anti-trans editorial position isn’t too obvious. But I rarely see reporting outside queer communities that looks or feels nearly as urgent as reports from the inside.
I write three or four stories about LGBTQ issues every week for Prism & Pen. The LA Blade publishes two or three of my columns every week and the Washington Blade does sometimes. Like all queer publications, The Blade is sounding the loudest alarm possible about the crisis in queer equality/freedom/ability-to-just-live-and-love — a crisis burning our house down right now.
I get lots of queer readership at The Blade, and plenty of LGBTQ people engage with my Prism & Pen stories too. But with a few notable (and appreciated!) exceptions, getting cis/straight people to pay attention is very hard and getting harder. It feels like the worse things get for us, the more our friends and allies want to look the other way.
I’m not alone. Several of my queer advocate friends tell me they’re increasingly having trouble getting their voices heard. They say LGBTQ people are listening closely, but they can’t get traction outside the community.
I don’t know if you’re fully aware of what’s going on right now, but I beg you to pay attention. Our house really is on fire in a backlash nobody saw coming. LGBTQ kids (and all kids) are learning toxic messages about themselves and their peers, families are under assault, laws are being passed in unprecedented numbers, violence like we haven’t seen in decades is surging, and many LGBTQ people report they’re living in fear.
Do you see it? Can you please work hard to see it? Can you please not turn your eyes away?
I know it’s tough to read negative news, but if you don’t understand what’s happening, you can’t help us, and as a small minority, we can’t make things better on our own. We need your help.
Positive change starts with awareness. It may not seem like much, but you can help us JUST by reading Prism & Pen, The LA Blade, The Washington Blade, LGBTQ Nation, and for a UK perspective, Pink News.
James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected]
The preceding article was previously published by Prism & Pen– Amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling and is republished by permission.
Buckle up folks! ‘Staley vs Gilead’ lawsuit could cost Big Pharma billions
Meet the 12-Year-Old Trans dynamo banned from Field Hockey
U.S. Catholic bishops must recuse themselves from politics
GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor, QAnon friendly & anti-LGBTQ+
Daily Wire’s Walsh using a trans man’s shirtless photo without permission
An archbishop complains Speaker Pelosi is a source of “scandal” harming the Church. So, let’s talk about scandal & who’s really causing it
By James Finn | DETROIT – A powerful U.S. Catholic bishop is at it again, forcing himself into politics trying to make an elected leader knuckle under to Church “discipline.” Enough! It’s bad enough this guy is a notorious anti-LGBTQ bigot reviled by many San Francisco Catholics.
It’s bad enough he’s defying Pope Francis’s directive not to use Church sacraments as weapons. But when he tries to force House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to change how she represents her constituents, he’s gone more than just a bridge too far.
The archbishop complains Pelosi is a source of “scandal” harming the Church. So, let’s talk about scandal and who’s really causing it. But first, a rundown on the facts:
Salvatore Joseph Cordileone, the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco, tweeted yesterday that U.S. House Speaker Pelosi “is not to be admitted to Holy Communion” because of her opposition to criminalizing abortion in the United States. In details reported by the New York Times, the archbishop ordered Pelosi in a letter not to present herself for communion and ordered archdiocese priests to deny her the sacrament should she request it.
After numerous attempts to speak with Speaker Pelosi to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, an the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion. https://t.co/l7M85CyG86
Speaker Pelosi calls herself a “devout Catholic” and “regular communicant,” telling C-Span that if she were ever denied communion, “that would be a severe blow to me.” She acknowledges conservative forces in the Church would like throw her out over her insistence that the U.S. government must not mandate reproductive decisions for women, but she insists she’s not going anywhere.
“Scandal” has a special meaning in Catholicism. It’s a “sin,” a statement or act that “leads people to move away from Jesus Christ and the salvation he offers us.” Scandal in its most straightforward Catholic sense might consist of a Catholic leader claiming Church teachings are wrong. In a more nuanced sense, scandal could be a truthful statement that lead people away from the Church.
If anyone is guilty of the sin of scandal here, the archbishop is. Nancy Pelosi IS a faithful Catholic. She hasn’t had an abortion. She doesn’t encourage women to have abortions. But as the elected representative of U.S. citizens from all over the San Francisco area, she says criminalizing abortion must be off the table. She has to represent all her constituents, not just the Catholic ones. She refuses to impose her religion on people who practice other religions or no religion.
Cordileone teaches that all of those are grave moral evils, and he’s tried to enforce them for San Francisco Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
In 2015, he forced staff at Bay Areas Catholic schools and charitable agencies to sign employment contracts agreeing to refrain from all the above (plus much more) and publicly affirm they are “grave moral evils,” or face dismissal.
Even if they aren’t Catholic.
Hundreds of prominent Bay Area Catholic leaders responded, sending a letter (read the full text here) begging Pope Francis to replace Cordileone with someone who would not cause scandal to the Church. Francis did not respond. Cordileone then mounted a massive witch hunt against LGBTQ Catholic employes — from teachers, to counselors, to social workers, to clerical staff. He disingenuously claimed custodial workers are “religious ministers” exempt from protection from California’s employment equality laws.
Many Catholic lay people resigned from Catholic agencies. Some said they would leave the Church for greener religious pastures where they were free to exercise their personal moral consciences. Many have questioned why Cordileone focuses so hard on rooting out gay/trans staff or staff who support gay/trans equality. He hasn’t mounted a witch hunt, after all, against Catholic staff who limit family size. He’s not grilled couples about their private bedroom practices. Divorced staff haven’t been fired. It’s curious, say San Francisco Catholics, that only LGBTQ people seem to be in Cordileone’s crosshairs.
Speaking of scandal, the archbishop continues scandalizing Bay Area Catholics by refusing to release a list of hundreds of archdiocese priests credibly accused of child sexual abuse, something the vast majority of U.S. bishops have already done. He’s even defying California law to keep the list from Catholic parents who insist they have a right to know.
Scandal? Well, pews are emptying out fast and the drop is sharper every year. Donations are down precipitously. I’d call that the result of scandal, wouldn’t you?
Whether Nancy Pelosi remains a member in good standing of the Catholic Church is an important question for many Catholics, but a larger issue presents itself. Can U.S. Catholics meaningfully serve as government leaders if Church patriarchs try to dictate positions on issues that impact the nation as a whole?
This tweeted comment to Cordileone sums things up very well: “Speaker Pelosi follows her religion. You are punishing her because she does not believe in forcing her religion on others. As a public servant she took an oath to the Constitution, not the Church. You are not our government, but you are the reason people will leave your Church.”
If the archbishop wishes to teach women that abortion is a grave moral evil, then he should do that. He should write books, he should speak in public, he should persuade and convince. He should encourage or even require other priests in his archdiocese to do the same. He should focus on being a faith leader.
But when he steps into politics, when he tries to twist a politician’s arm with religious discipline, he crosses a red line. The United States does not and must not tolerate religious leaders forcing their beliefs on people who don’t share them. The Roman Catholic Church has a terrible track record of doing exactly that, and the American people must not stand for it.
A year ago, the National Catholic Reporter revealed that “The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has hit a stomach-churning new low,” in lobbying to stop Congress’s bipartisan national suicide hotline. The bishops (a majority of all U.S. Catholic bishops) worked behind the scenes to torpedo the law because they opposed the hotline providing services specifically to LGBTQ people.
The bishops were apparently blinded by dogma, rejecting love and compassion in favor of a convoluted theology of refusing to label LGBTQ people as LGBTQ people.
I have no idea why the bishops believed the national suicide hotline was any of their business. It doesn’t impact the Church, and they have no possible interest in how it operates. But they made it their business like Cordileone is making civil abortion law his business.
Can you raise your voice demanding that he stay in his lane? That he stop trying to force Catholic beliefs and practices on people who don’t share them? That he stop trying to dictate to democratically elected leaders?
Better yet, can you join me asking Pope Francis, once again, to replace Archbishop Salvatore Joseph Cordileone? Faithful Catholics have been asking for years, and the time has come.
Here’s how to communicate your message to the pope:
Email the Office of the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre at [email protected] or phone his office at 202–333–7121.
James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected]
The preceding article was previously published by Prism & Pen– Amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling and is republished by permission.
Christian nationalism has already made racism and xenophobia respectable again. White Christian nationalism promises more division
By James Finn | DETROIT – Know what delights me about trans and gay young people these days? They no longer presume they must uproot themselves from family and community to thrive and find love. They can be happy where they are…..
I wrote the above paragraph six years ago. I broke into online writing with a viral essay on another platform titled, “Have You Seen My Yellow Brick Road?” I described my journey from closeted teenager to happy middle-aged gay man, remembering fleeing my suburban Iowa home in search of “Oz,” a metaphor for love and acceptance, only to find that while I wasn’t looking, Oz had come to me.
“Please,” I wrote in conclusion, “if anyone finds a pair of ruby slippers, burn them!
Somebody asked me a question on an LGBTQ Facebook group yesterday: “Where do you see the struggle for queer equality going in the next decade?” I hated what my answer had to be, because it means the borders of Oz are retreating.
“We’re going to have to focus” I wrote, “on building strong communities in cities and states where Democrats are in charge, and we’re going to have to reach out to our queer siblings in red states. We’re going to have to make space for them to join us, and we’re going to have to work to get life-saving/sustaining services to queer people, especially kids, stuck where they are.”
What I meant is, we’re going to end up segregated again.
Maybe that won’t mean a return to the densely populated gayborhoods we used to rely on — that had been emptying out as we perceived less need for them — but we’re already witnessing the beginnings of what could turn into a great migration. In my own circles of queer friends, people are already leaving southern/heartland/red states… or they’re talking about it seriously. Prism & Pen writer Logan Silkwood is selling his house and moving 1,719 miles in search of his and his wife’s personal Oz.
Not a day goes by that I don’t see social media posts from queer people in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, or Idaho searching for jobs or housing in blue states, or announcing they’re moving. And why not? According to Brody Levesque in the LA Blade yesterday, “child abuse” investigations of parents of trans kids in Texas are back on again after a court had struck them down. What parent is going to live with that fear? The U.S. Air Force is even cooperating by allowing families with trans children to transfer early out of Texas with no strikes against their service records.
Where I live in rural Michigan, trucks roar up and down highways every day with Confederate battle flags snapping in the wind.
LGBTQ people are leaving Florida even though Miami has a reputation as LGBTQ friendly. South Beach is actually on of our gayborhoods. Gay couples are speaking up about leaving or trying to leave because of a hostile state government with its Don’t Say Gay law, and with the probability things are going to get worse.
Yesterday, for example, The Washington Post featured a story about Nicolette Solomon, a young lesbian who just quit her job with the Miami-Dade County Public Schools. She says her marriage to her wife led to so much workplace suspicion and hostility that “it no longer felt possible to be lesbian and a teacher in Florida.”
And that’s in liberal Miami!
Will she move to a different state to seek the happiness and fulfillment she used to find in teaching? She doesn’t know yet.
Solomon is one of several queer teachers who have already resigned in Florida, citing the recently passed Don’t Say Gay law. Several of them are actively seeking jobs in blue states.
Yesterday, The Advocate featured a story about an elite private school in “purple” Maryland that denied admission to 11-year-old Brayden Stratton. Megan Stratton and Jennifer Dane applied to the non-denominational Christian school because their son has friends there and because the school has an excellent academic reputation. They wanted him to have a head start in life, but the school turned him down because his moms are engaged to be married.
Would you stay in a community that rejected you? I think that’s an important question, because this family is the tip of a growing iceberg. Ever since same-sex marriage became legal, certain institutions, usually conservative Christian ones, have used it to reject LGBTQ people, and the problem is getting worse. I don’t know what Megan and Jennifer are planning, but I imagine they’ve at least thought about what it would be like to live where they aren’t strangers in a strange land — where their high-achieving kid would be welcome or even recruited to an elite school his friends attend.
Supreme Court watcher and legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern wrote an important article in Slate yesterday, detailing how the the fight for women’s reproductive freedom is moving to the state level. He says legislatures in blue states, after years of relative inaction, have snapped into focus passing laws to make abortion easier to access and pay for:
This is the irony of our current moment: The most immediate impact of the Supreme Court’s imminent assault on abortion rights has been … an expansion of abortion rights.
But he warns that comes at the cost of a greater national divide. Authorities in red states are already (as in Oklahoma) gearing up to outlaw abortion from as early as “the moment of conception” and seeking to impose punitive legal consequences on women who leave the state for an abortion.
Faced with that, will some women in Oklahoma and similar states decide to move? Certainly not every woman will have that economic freedom, just like not all LGBTQ people can afford to leave red states, but some undoubtedly will. I think the only real question is: How significant will the exodus be?
The same White Christian nationalism driving anti-LGBTQ persecution and the war on women’s reproductive freedom drives racism. “Replacement Theory” nonsense, regularly featured on Fox News and extremist corners of the Internet like 4chan, used to be fringe. But as Fabiola Cineas explored in Vox on Wednesday, “replacement theory” has gone mainstream in the Republican Party. White Christian nationalists are panicking over a dearth of “white babies,” and unapologetic racism is back in fashion.
Where I live in rural Michigan, trucks roar up and down highways every day with Confederate battle flags snapping in the wind. We share a border with Canada. I can only get grits from Amazon. Nobody thinks those flags stand for Southern heritage.
We all know they mean racism. We know they mean Christian nationalist militias, Proud Boys and insurrection, increasing national division. Most of my neighbors excuse or defend that.
I haven’t seen a person of color in weeks. Black people don’t live up here in western Michigan villages. I’d have to drive more than an hour to Grand Rapids to find Black families and Black-owned businesses, and even then, only in certain neighborhoods.
In New York last week, “Replacement Theory” led to mass murder — a young white man motivated by racist hatred entered a supermarket full of Black people and shot as many to death as he could.
That’s the kind of division I’m talking about.
The United States may have ended legally enforced segregation, but voluntary segregation never went away. That New York shooter? He left his predominantly white community to kill Black people in a majority Black neighborhood.
When Black people, queer people, immigrants, and women end up divided from important parts of the nation, living apart from conservatives, Christian nationalists, or racists, it’s not because we want to or choose collectively to do so.
Individual human beings like Nicolette Solomon, Megan Stratton, and Logan Silkwood make rational, practical decisions. They don’t have the luxury to base life choices on strategy or activism. They have to do the best they can for themselves and their families.
If Congress had ever managed to pass the LGBTQ Equality Act, the Don’t Say Gay laws burning through red states would be unenforceable. Texas wouldn’t be permitted to hound parents of trans kids as “child abusers.” If the Supreme Court weren’t about to strike down Roe and thereby deny basic human rights to women, women wouldn’t be making hard choices about where to live. If the Supreme Court hadn’t eviscerated voter protection for Black people, political power would be more evenly distributed.
The Right in the United States is now largely the Christian Nationalist Right, up to the very highest levels of Republican leadership, even though they don’t and can’t have a majority of the American people on their side.
What that means in the short term is conflict, physical separation, and increasing political division.
It means all of us are going to need to figure out where our personal Oz is, and which road leads to it.
The United States of America are less united than they’ve been in a long time, and a lack of commitment to liberty and human rights explains a lot. Where do we go from here?
Can the Democratic Party take decisive control of Congress in November? Can the radically conservative Supreme Court be reformed and brought back into step with the majority of Americans? Can liberty and human rights enter the public stage as important values?
Yes, if we all work hard to make it happen! Yes, if we surge to the polls in November!
James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected]
The preceding article was previously published by Prism & Pen– Amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling and is republished by permission.
What do you do when you’re a trans teen & your teacher is the bully? Judge gives a religious-liberty nod to out students to parents
By James Finn | DETROIT – In an apparent fit of pique, Pamela Ricard, a math teacher at Fort Riley Middle School in Kansas, told her supervisors that if they made her use transgender students’ chosen names in class, she would use those names with parents too, even if the students fear for their safety and have requested privacy. She’s getting her way, arguing “religious liberty.”
Yes, you read that right.
A teacher takes it upon herself to out trans kids against their will, claiming a religious duty. She says that since she has to use their preferred names in class, using their legal names in correspondence with parents would be a lie, which would violate her “sincerely held religious beliefs.” So, she sues in federal court.
According to an article in yesterday’s Topeka Capital-Journal, “District Judge Holly Teeter issued a preliminary injunction on Monday blocking the school from disciplining [Ricard] if she reveals preferred names and pronouns of her transgender students when communicating with their parents.”
“Plaintiff believes that addressing students one way at school and a different way when speaking to their parents is dishonest,” wrote the the judge in her injunction opinion. “Being dishonest violates her sincere religious beliefs.”
Judge Teeter, a Trump appointee, declined to rule on Ricard’s main request — that the school be barred from disciplining her for refusing to use preferred names and pronouns, saying the school district had already reached an accommodation with her.
This story first broke in March, when CNN reported that Ricard was suing the Geary County Schools Unified School District in Kansas after being briefly suspended for refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred name and pronoun. She claimed that using a name for a student that differed from the student’s enrolled or legal name would force her to violate her “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
She claimed the same with respect to pronouns but later reached an accommodation: she would use a preferred name for any student expressing a name preference, and she would not use pronouns for any student, regardless of sex or gender.
Teeter ruled that the accommodation properly respects Ricard’s “sincerely held religious beliefs” and makes an injunction unnecessary.
But then the judge ruled in favor of Ricard’s second request — that if she used a preferred name in class for any student, she could not be disciplined for using that name (or the student’s preferred pronoun) to the student’s parents against the student’s wishes, even though district policy forbids outing students without their consent.
Ricard’s claim that she’s being forced to lie is disingenuous, logically tortuous. Taken together, her two separate arguments constitute a lie of her own. On one hand, she claims using a chosen name violates her sincere religious beliefs. She claims calling a transgender boy (assigned female at birth) by a name customarily reserved for boys would violate her religious freedom because God created male and female as distinct and different, and her speech must reflect that.
Remember, pronouns are not at issue; she’s okay not using them.
One wonders what she thinks about gender-neutral names like Stacey, Bellamy, Dakota, Denver, Emerson, Finley, Justice, or River. When names don’t carry gender, does she have a religious-liberty problem? Does she really believe God has dictated gendered names that people in 21st century United States must choose from?
So, after Ricard makes a literal federal case over refusing to use names in class that don’t communicate gender in a way she agrees with religiously, she turns around and claims she MUST use the same names to parents, for a different religious reason.
Huh, a judge bought this? Is your head spinning as fast as mine?
Ricard has to be lying about something in her lawsuit, and I suggest it’s her motivation for filing. I suggest she does not actually believe speaking a student’s chosen name harms her religiously. I suggest she’s religiously opposed to the existence of transgender people. I suggest that despite having accepted a reasonable accommodation over names and pronouns, she’s intent on crusading to force her religious beliefs on people who don’t share them. She’s determined to out transgender teenagers to their parents against their will, damn the consequences, however statistically likely they are to be severely harmful.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) have a long track record as a certified anti-LGBTQ hate group. Here’s what the the Southern Poverty Law Center have to say about them, backed up by reams of documented examples:
Founded by some 30 leaders of the Christian Right, the Alliance Defending Freedom is a legal advocacy and training group that has supported the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia; and claims that a “homosexual agenda” will destroy Christianity and society. ADF also works to develop “religious liberty” legislation and case law that will allow the denial of goods and services to LGBTQ people on the basis of religion.
The freedom that ADF lawyers defend has always meant freedom for extremist Christians to discriminate against and criminalize LGBTQ people. They’ve focused on those objectives for decades, increasingly successfully of late.
In their legal brief in the Ricard case, they claim they’re only “thinking of the well being of children,” arguing that gender dysphoria is a serious mental illness parents must be made aware of.
They aren’t being honest.
Yes, according to the APA, some (but not all) trans people suffer from gender dysphoria, “psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity.” But, the school district in this case is following best-practice mental-health guidelines, supporting students by allowing them to use names and pronouns they choose, and affording students the sole right to decide when or if they tell anyone, including parents, whether they identify as LGBTQ.
When the ADF say in their brief that Ricard is looking out for the best interests of her students, they are lying. They know what the data show — that trans teens outed to non-supportive parents are statistically at high risk of abuse, abandonment, homelessness, severe depression, and suicidal ideation. ADF lawyers know this because the school district included reams of objective data in their own legal briefs in defense of their student-privacy policies.
ADF lawyers know Ricard is not looking out for the best interests of her students. Maybe they should think about the religious implications of their dishonesty. Maybe Ricard should too.
First, I’m unaware of any Christian church or denomination that claims respecting privacy should be considered an act of lying. Exactly what constitutes a lie is hotly debated in religious and philosophical circles, but even relatively traditionalist denominations like the Presbyterians teach that failing to volunteer information usually does not count as a lie. Philosophers get into the weeds FAST when questions of lying come up, because the subject is very complex. (Anne Frank, German soldiers, knocks on doors… Ring any bells, philosophy and theology majors?)
If anyone has ever before made a legal claim that respecting privacy violates religious freedom guarantees because protecting privacy is lying, I can’t find evidence of it.
To claim that Ricard has a religious liberty interest at stake here is philosophically and theologically absurd. Using her students’ enrolled names when communicating with their parents is certainly not an act of lying. Christians protect privacy all the time in accordance with policy and law. Ricard certainly suffers no loss of liberty merely by minding her own business.
What else should Christians be exempt from?
Should Christian health care workers be allowed to violate HIPPA privacy law on the theory that not revealing certain private facts about patients constitutes lying?
Should Christian business leaders be exempt from insider trading laws because not revealing certain private business matters constitutes lying?
Should Christian human resources managers be exempt from privacy policies so they don’t have to “lie” by withholding information?
Esther Spurrill-Jones wrote about this case in Prism & Pen this morning from a Christian perspective. A devout Jesus follower, she writes movingly about millstones, love, legalism, and lies. She writes that no Christian should interpret the Bible in a way that they know will hurt people. I wish Ricard and her ADF lawyers could read Esther’s words with open minds.
Is Outing Transgender Students to Unsupportive Parents Christian?What would Jesus do?medium.com
Pamela Ricard won’t be teaching at Fort Riley after this school year. Her contract is ending, and she’s not reapplying. Even though she’s got her preliminary injunction, legal analysts say her case will probably end up dismissed because she suffered no harm and will no longer have standing.
The temporary injunction has no legal bearing on anyone but her, so no dangerous precedent has been formally set, but LGBTQ legal advocates are worried anyway. Most court watchers presumed Ricard’s religious freedom claim over lying would be ruled frivolous, that no judge would give it the time of day.
But we live in a brave new backlash, with federal courts stuffed with extremist judges appointed by Donald Trump. Absurd outcomes, like teachers being allowed to out trans kids to unsupportive parents, are becoming the rule rather than the exception.
All I know is this, if you value privacy for LGBTQ teens and real freedom for real people in the United States, you’d better get to the polls in November and vote Democratic like your life depends on it.
James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected]
The preceding article was previously published by Prism & Pen– Amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling and is republished by permission.
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