Amid media reports of clerks of officials refusing to issue marriage licenses, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said the U.S. Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage "needs to be enforced across our country," The Washington Blade reported. At a town-hall meeting in Las Vegas, Clinton said, "First, as president, I will do everything I can to make sure that marriage equality is enforced. It's the law of the land and it needs to be enforced across our country." Clinton also spoke during the town hall at length about issues facing LGBT youth.
Two Texas men are facing federal hate crime charges after they reportedly brutally raped and tortured a Black gay man over the course of three hours in 2012 in the town of Corpus Christi, according to a Raw Story item that cited Towleroad. Among other things, 32-year-old Jimmy Garza Jr. and 22-year-old Ramiro Serrata Jr. are accused of beating the victim with a handgun, an iron skillet, a chair, a belt and a coffee cup; and sodomizing him with the handle of a mop or broom; and pouring bleach into his mouth and eyes. KRIS-TV said that the two men attacked the victim over an unpaid $5 debt. If convicted, the two men face life in prison.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said that he does not believe that being gay should be a reason to be fired, On Top Magazine noted. "It's a big discussion," Trump said on Meet the Press, "and I guess it's getting a lot of negative rulings right now, that whole thing, and I'm willing to go with what the courts are saying." Trump has previously backed such protections. In a 2000 interview with The Advocate, Trump said that he would support adding sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act.
Jasmine Collins has become the 18th transgender person murdered in the United States—and the second in Kansas City, Missouri—this year, The Guardian reported. The Kansas City police department was apparently looking for a male victim named Jermaine Collins in June—even after she was reportedly stabbed to death in a parking lot over a haircut and a pair of shoes. Tamara Dominguez is the other victim, having been run over three times by a sport-utility vehicle in a church parking lot. The recent homicides have prompted local LGBT groups to examine challenges faced by transgender people of color here, KCUR.org noted.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz found himself on the defensive in Iowa after his speech on the Des Moines Register Soap Box after taking questions from actress Ellen Page, a Human Rights Campaign ( HRC ) press release claimed. ( Page came out at HRC's Time to Thrive conference. ) Cruz reportedly claimed that the abuses against LGBT people around the world are going unnoticed while suggesting that activists like Page made too big a deal of challenges in the United States.
Transgender community leaders and LGBTQ activists held a rally protesting violence against transgender and gender-nonconforming people in Los Angeles, Advocate.com reported. Members of the National LGBTQ Task Force, the TransLatin@ Coalition, FAMILIA: Trans and Queer Liberation Movement and the Royal Court of Los Angeles, among other groups, took part. So far in 2015, 17 trans women have been reported murdered nationwide, many of them women of color.
The Department of Justice has said that same-sex married couples who were living in states that did not recognize their unions and who previously filed claims for Social Security benefits will be able to collect those payments, The New York Times reported. The department told lawyers for two plaintiffs seeking benefits that the Social Security Administration would apply the Supreme Court's June ruling declaring that marriage is a constitutional right, Obergefell v. Hodges, retroactively. It would apply to individuals with pending claims who were married before the decision and living in states that did not recognize same-sex marriages.
The Human Rights Campaign ( HRC ) released a statement after media reports that the Republican National Committee passed an anti-LGBT resolution in support of the First Amendment Defense Act ( FADA ). The statement says that FADA would prohibit any adverse action by the federal government against an individual or organization for discriminatory actions against legally married same-sex couples as long as they claim they are acting in accordance with their religious beliefs. "The right to believe is fundamental, but the right to use taxpayer dollars to promote discrimination is not," said JoDee Winterhof, HRC's senior vice president for policy and political affairs.
On the heels of a study released by YouGov finding half of the United Kingdoms young adults aren't "100-percent heterosexual," new research indicates one-third of young adults in the United States feel the same way, according to Advocate.com . As with the U.K. study, researchers for YouGov used a modified Kinsey scale to measure sexuality by asking participants to place themselves on a range between "exclusively heterosexual" and "exclusively homosexual." According to the researchers, "24% of people aged 30 to 44 say that they're somewhere on the scale of bisexuality, compared to 8% or less of over-45s." See today.yougov.com/news/2015/08/20/third-young-americans-exclusively-heterosexual/ .
Practicing gay "conversion" therapy on minors in Illinois will soon be illegal, according to Newsweek. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a bill into law banning the practice in the state, making it the fifth jurisdiction—after California, New Jersey, Washington, D.C. and Oregon—to have done so. The American Psychological Association has concluded that attempts to change a person's sexual orientation through behavioral therapy does not work, and many people who have been through such programs have testified to the psychological damage it can cause. The Illinois law goes into effect Jan. 1, 2016.
Chelsea Manning was found guilty on four charges of breaking prison rules and will receive 21 days of restrictions on recreation as punishment, but she has been spared the harshest penalty: indefinte isolation, Advocate.com reported. She tweeted, "I was found guilty of all 4 charges @ today's board; I am receiving 21 days of restrictions on recreation—no gym, library or outdoors." Manning was accused of brushing food onto the floor during meal time, disrespect of an officer, "medicine misuse" for possessing a tube of expired toothpaste and possessing prohibited reading material, including the Vanity Fair issue featuring Caitlyn Jenner as well as copies of The Advocate and Out magazines.
The mother of two New Jersey teens who are bisexual hit back at vandals who spray-painted their garage door with "I'm gay," by turning the door into rainbow palette of colors celebrating their sexual orientation, Raw Story noted. Erin Kennedy DeLong and her husband, Joe, were awakened from their sleep when their 17-year-old daughter came home to find "I'm Gay" written in gray spray paint on the garage door of the family's home in Villas, New Jersey. ( The teen and her 14-year-old sister are both bisexual. ) The mother then used the block design of the door to create a rainbow color palette.
In Philadelphia, three suspects accused in last year's gay-bashing attack of Zachary Hess and Andrew Haught asked for a continuance in court, as their attorneys work out the terms of a plea agreement with the prosecution, Advocate.com reported. Kevin Harrigan, Kathryn Knott and Philip Williams will return to court Sept. 17 to face charges of aggravated assault, simple assault and conspiracy. Haught was left with multiple broken bones and had to have his jaw wired shut for months.
A year after a federal judge ruled Florida's marriage-ban ban unconstitutional, the state is taking steps to make the necessary updates to marriage and death certificates, an Equality Florida press release stated. New marriage forms, expected to be available by mid-September, will provide a place for the name of each "Spouse," instead of for "Husband" and "Wife." In addition, a separate challenge by Equality Florida and three lesbian couples over the state's refusal to allow same-sex spouses to be listed on birth certificates in the same way that different-sex spouses are is pending.
After publishing an error-ridden advertisement attacking PrEP in various gay newspapers across the country in June, AIDS Healthcare Foundation ( AHF ) released a new ad Aug. 19 in which the organization presented a series of guidelines for the use of PrEP ( pre-exposure prophylaxis ), AIDSMeds.com reported. Titled "Reaching Common Ground on PrEP," the ad includes points that repeat established U.S. guidelines for the use of PrEP. However, AHF insists on sticking to its position—frequently voiced by the organization's confrontational president, Michael Weinstein—that PrEP should not be used as a broad-scale public-health approach to fighting HIV.
The Baltimore woman who received over $43,000 in donations after alleging that a neighbor asked her to "tone down" the "relentlessly gay" decorations in her front yard will return her earnings, according to a NewNowNext.com item. Julie Baker cited "taxes and an overabundance of resources" as her reason to return the funds, acknowledging that some skeptics had called the note's authenticity into question. Baker's GoFundMe campaign initially asked for $5,000 in order to add more "relentlessly gay" decorations to her front yard and possibly paint her roof rainbow.
School officials in Laramie, Wyoming, are considering adopting a policy to address the needs of transgender and non-gender conforming students, The Casper Star Tribune reported. The proposed policy is designed to ensure student safety, said Mike Hamel, assistant superintendent of human resources and quality learning for Albany County School District No. 1. The policy passed its first reading at the school district's Aug. 12 Board of Education meeting, launching a 45-day public comment period.
The New York Post generated some backlash when it made a joke about prison rape in yesterday's front-page story about Jared Fogle, the former Subway spokesman facing a a slew of sex-abuse charges, NewNowNext.com noted. "Enjoy a Footlong in Jail," the giant headline read, referencing the sandwiches Fogle used to pitch while suggesting the heterosexual spokesman will be forced to commit gay sex acts in prison. The Post also reported that a game on Subway's kids' website that "lets kids play with Jared Fogle's pants" has been removed.
A Missouri appeals court has ruled that a Kansas City woman has the right to seek custody and visitation with the children she and her lesbian partner parented together before they broke up, KansasCity.com reported. Although Melissa McGaw is not the biological mother of the twins, born in 2004, the Western District Court of Appeals in Kansas City found that state law affords her the right to seek custody and visitation rights. The ruling came after McGaw appealed a lower-court ruling that found that McGaw lacked standing to seek custody because she was not biologically related to the children.
Both sides say they'll need to spend $2 million on the November ballot fight over the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, likely making it one of the most expensive battles over local LGBT protections in U.S. history, Project Q Houston reported. Meanwhile, internal polls show Houston voters are evenly split on whether to repeal HERO, with almost one-third undecided. In addition to sexual orientation and gender identity, the ordinance prohibits discrimination based on 13 other characteristics, including race.
Decatur Mayor Pro Tem Kecia Cunningham—one of Georgia's longest-serving openly LGBT elected officials—resigned just a week before she moved to Pennsylvania for a "new professional and personal adventure, Project Q Atlanta reported. The end of Cunningham's 16-year tenure on the City Commission was already in the works. Cunningham served on the commission longer than only one person: Mayor Jim Baskett.
City officials in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel are waiting to take action on a proposal to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the Associated Press reported. The proposal is sponsored by six of seven council members. The Indianapolis Star reports several council members said they wanted time to work out a possible compromise between competing interests.
A gay Catholic priest who was dismissed from his position as campus chaplain at New Jersey's Seton Hall University because of his work against anti-gay bullying has been named to a job serving two parishes after weeks of uncertainty over his fate, The National Catholic Reporter noted. The Rev. Warren Hall, whose firing by the archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, added to growing concerns about the church's treatment of gay people, tweeted that he was "thrilled" with the posting at Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Hoboken and its sister parish, St. Lawrence. Hall will serve as parochial vicar, assisting the pastor of the two parishes, the Rev. Bob Meyer.
Troy Masters, involved in New York City's LGBT media world for more than quarter of a century, is leaving Gay City News—a publication he founded and where he serves as associate publisher—to launch a biweekly gay publication in Los Angeles, Gay City News revealed. Masters will join Mirror Media Group, the publisher of the Santa Monica Mirror and five other community publications focused on West LA neighborhoods. There, he will steer the launch of The Pride L.A., a biweekly newspaper that will serve LGBT-identified communities including West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Silver Lake, Echo Park, downtown LA and the campuses of major area universities.
The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association ( NLGJA )—celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2015 and the 10th year of its LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame—has named this year's inductees: Randy Alfred, Alison Bechdel, Alan Bell, Lou Chibbaro Jr., Charles Kaiser and Armistead Maupin, according to a press release. The 2015 Hall of Fame inductees will be honored at the Awards Ceremony on Sept. 5 at the Coming Home National Convention & LGBT Media Summit and 25th-anniversary celebration in San Francisco.
The U.S. Navy is preparing to allow women into the ranks of its SEAL teams, CNN reported. If women can pass the unit's demanding training requirements, Adm. Jon Greenert told Defense News, they will be allowed into the elite force. The Navy announcement came as two women became the first female soldiers to graduate from the Army's Ranger School.
