LGBT+ News and Discussions

[Time_Traveller]

Australian court rules in landmark case that asked 'what is a woman?'

23 August 2024, 01:06 BST

A transgender woman from Australia has won a discrimination case against a women-only social media app, after she was denied access on the basis of being male.

The Federal Court found that although Roxanne Tickle had not been directly discriminated against, she was a victim of indirect discrimination - which refers to when a decision disadvantages a person with a particular attribute - and ordered the app to pay her A$10,000 ($6,700; £5,100) plus costs.

It’s a landmark ruling when it comes to gender identity, and at the very heart of the case was the ever more contentious question: what is a woman?

In 2021, Tickle downloaded “Giggle for Girls”, an app marketed as an online refuge where women could share their experiences in a safe space, and where men were not allowed.

In order to gain access, she had to upload a selfie to prove she was a woman, which was assessed by gender recognition software designed to screen out men.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07ev1v7r4po

[firestar464]

Canadian government halts deportation of bisexual man to Kenya

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/video/ca ... i-AA1pngsZ

[firestar464]

Irish teacher jailed for third time after defying order to stay away from the school that fired him

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ir ... r-AA1pVoAl

[weatheriscool]

Florida school district must restore books with LGBTQ+ content under settlement

Source: Yahoo! News/AP

Thu, September 12, 2024 at 5:55 PM EDT

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A school district in northeast Florida must put back in libraries three dozen books as part of a settlement reached Thursday with students and parents who sued over what they said was an unlawful decision to limit access to dozens of titles containing LGBTQ+ content.

Under the agreement the School Board of Nassau County must restore access to three dozen titles including “And Tango Makes Three,” a children's picture book based on a true story about two male penguins that raised a chick together at New York's Central Park Zoo. Authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson were plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the district, which is about 35 miles (about 60 kilometers) northeast of Jacksonville along the Georgia border.

The suit was one of several challenges to book bans since state lawmakers last year passed, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law, legislation making it easier to challenge educational materials that opponents consider pornographic and obscene. Last month six major publishers and several well-known authors filed a federal lawsuit in Orlando arguing that some provisions of the law violate the First Amendment rights of publishers, authors and students.

“Fighting unconstitutional legislation in Florida and across the country is an urgent priority,” Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks said in a statement. Among the books removed in Nassau County were titles by Toni Morrison, Khaled Hosseini, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jodi Picoult and Alice Sebold.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-scho ... 10354.html

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

It's done now

https://www.wlky.com/article/gov-beshea ... y/62250277

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

Trans woman killed in Georgia day after anti-LGBT law passed

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0lnpn019xo

[firestar464]

Despite legal precedent, Muskego schools remove gender identity from discrimination policy

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/inv ... 266967007/

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

Right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ education activist exposed as former gay adult film actor: report

https://www.advocate.com/people/corey-d ... dult-films

[caltrek]

For Trans People, a Doctor’s Visit Can be a Dilemma
by Natalie Yeh
October 14, 2024

Introduction:

(Zócalo) Nine years ago, when I spotted blood in my ejaculate, I made an appointment to see my urologist. I quickly found myself to be the only woman in the waiting room. A handful of men surrounded me, and I could see the gears turning in their heads, wondering why a person who presented as and looked like a woman was waiting alongside them.

“Is your husband in there?” said the man two chairs to my right. As a transgender woman, passing as the gender I align with is one of the most joyous and validating feelings. For those of us who have gone through male puberty with masculinizing factors, aligning our external social presentation with our innermost core identity of gender requires both effort and luck.

If we were not in a doctor’s office, I would have remained sociable and continued the conversation. But here, I tried to avoid it, hoping to prolong the secret that the urology appointment was for me. “No,” I said with a polite smile.

The waiting room brought up all too familiar feelings: anxiety, uncertainty, and the fear of what the remaining men would say or think if I was outed. It also highlighted one of the core tensions in seeking quality health care as a trans person: We need providers to honor our gender identity beyond the simplistic frame of biology while being attentive to biological needs often linked to sex.

As I approached the front desk, a receptionist inquired if I was checking in on behalf of my husband. A second receptionist—the one I had spoken to on the phone to make the appointment—pulled the first to the side and whispered that the appointment was for me, and that I was a transgender woman.

Read more here: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/202 ... s/essay/

[weatheriscool]

Italy passes anti-surrogacy law that effectively bars gay couples from becoming parents

Source: Washington Post

ROME — Italy on Wednesday passed the West’s most restrictive law against international surrogacy, threatening would-be parents who use birth mothers abroad with jail time and severe fines in a move that critics say will chiefly target same-sex couples.

Domestic surrogacy was already banned in Italy, as it is in some other countries, but the amended Italian law goes further, classifying surrogacy as a rare universal crime that transcends borders, like terrorism or genocide.

The measure marks the strongest salvo yet in far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s bid to put a conservative stamp on Italian society, and it elevates surrogacy as a hot-button issue in the West’s raging culture wars.

The law, passed last year by the lower house and effectively ensured by the Senate vote Wednesday, also criminalizes work by Italian citizens employed as doctors, nurses and technicians in foreign fertility clinics that facilitate surrogacies.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... y-parents/

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

How Donald Trump Is Trying To Win the LGBTQ Vote

https://www.unclosetedmedia.com/p/how-d ... ing-to-win

In short he's trying to do it by separating trans people from the rest

[firestar464]

LGBTQ+ Support Group in Russia’s Yekaterinburg Closes Amid ‘Anti-Queer Pressure’

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/lg ... r-AA1sEecP

[firestar464]

How the End of Federal Abortion Rights Hurt LGBTQ Parents

https://www.unclosetedmedia.com/p/how-t ... ion-rights

[firestar464]

What Can We Uncover From Mark Robinson’s Trans Porn Fascination And Startling Hate-Fueled Rhetoric?

https://www.unclosetedmedia.com/p/what- ... -robinsons

[firestar464]

How Timothy Mellon’s Wealth is Supercharging the Trump Campaign’s Anti-LGBTQ Attacks

https://www.unclosetedmedia.com/p/how-t ... ercharging

[caltrek]

LGBTQ+ Voters in 4 Swing States Could Determine the 2024 Presidential Election
by Dorian Rhea Debussy
October 28, 2024

Introduction:

(The Conversation) Victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election may come down to LGBTQ+ voters.

Polling data shows that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are running in a near-dead heat in four states – Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. And as a scholar of LGBTQ+ politics, I suspect that LGBTQ+ voters could play an outsize role in these states and the race.

So, how might LGBTQ+ voters swing these states?

LGBTQ+ voting behavior, explained

In the most comprehensive political survey of LGBTQ+ Americans ever conducted, the Pew Research Center found in 2013 that the vast majority of respondents – 85% – “always” or “nearly always” voted, compared with roughly a third of the general population. Turnout in the most recent presidential election validated that finding. A 2020 post-election survey by the advocacy group GLAAD found that 81% of LGBTQ+ voters cast a ballot.

Additional extract:

For instance, Biden won Georgia and its 15 electoral votes by 11,779 votes in 2020, and there are over 400,000 LGBTQ+ adults in the state. Trump’s apparent current lead in Georgia is within the margin of error, and even a slight increase in Democratic-leaning LGBTQ+ voters, compared with 2020, could hand Harris the state.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/lgbtq-vote ... n-239656

Edit: deleted "caltrek's comment:"