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New Regulation Would Strip Federal Protections for LGBTQ People from All HHS Programs in Favor of ‘Religious Freedom’

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The rule is specifically designed to focus on adoption and foster care, but will affect all federally-funded programs under Department of Health and Human Services control, including those dealing with HIV prevention and youth homelessness.

A proposed new regulation would strip all protections for LGBTQ people from all programs administered by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, and give special rights to entities or programs that are religious or “faith-based.” HHS, under the direction of Secretary Alex Azar, has a budget of $1.2 trillion affecting the health and well-being, directly or indirectly, of nearly every person in the country.

Lambda Legal says the proposed rule “would invite HHS grantees receiving taxpayer funds to discriminate based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or religion.”

While reportedly drafted to focus on adoption and foster care organizations, the Human Rights Campaign also says the proposed rule would extend far beyond those entities to all programs that receive funding from HHS.

“The Trump-Pence White House has proposed a horrific federal regulation that would permit discrimination across the entire spectrum of HHS programs receiving federal funding,” said HRC President Alphonso David. “This would permit discrimination against LGBTQ people, religious minorities, and women in programs related to foster care, adoption, HIV and STI prevention, youth homelessness, refugee resettlement, elder care programs and more. It is unconscionable that the Trump-Pence administration would prioritize advancing discrimination over the wellbeing of vulnerable people and expect taxpayers to foot the bill for their discriminatory policies. The Trump-Pence White House is relying on the same flawed legal reasoning they’ve used in the past to justify discrimination against LGBTQ people and other communities.”

The Washington Blade, noting the  proposed regulation “will have far-reaching implications,” reports the proposal would “undo an Obama-era policy prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation among federal grantees.”

According to  the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) the Blade says “the rule will allow anti-trans discrimination in HIV and STI prevention programs, opioid programs, youth homelessness services, health professional training, substance-use recovery programs and other life-saving services.”

“The proposal seeks to gut an Obama-era rule that barred entities receiving money under federal contracts, including adoption agencies, from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.”

HHS is reportedly granting only 30 days for public comment and review.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

Trump Judicial Nominee Cries Over ABA Report Calling Him Biased & Unqualified

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The American Bar Association’s report said that Lawrence J.C. VanDyke, a Trump nominee for federal court, is “arrogant, lazy,” and potentially unfair to LGBTQ people.

Lawrence J.C. VanDyke openly wept on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee as he was confronted with a blistering review from the American Bar Association, which found that he was not qualified to serve on the federal courts after having been nominated by President Donald Trump.

The ABA, which can’t officially block nominees but whose recommendations are seen as carrying substantial weight, wrote of VanDyke:

Mr. VanDyke’s accomplishments are offset by the assessments of interviewees that Mr. VanDyke is arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules. There was a theme that the nominee lacks humility, has an “entitlement” temperament, does not have an open mind, and does not always have a commitment to being candid and truthful.

It also said some people interviewed in the assessment of VanDyke worried that he would not be “fair to persons who are gay, lesbian, or otherwise part of the LGBTQ community.”

When confronted with these findings, which had been made public the previous night, VanDyke became emotional in the middle of the hearing and began crying. His face turned red.

“I do not believe that,” VanDyke said, referring to criticism of his views of LGBTQ people, according to CNN. “It is a fundamental belief of mine that all people are created in the image of God.” He added that he thinks “they should all be treated with dignity and respect.”

VanDyke isn’t the first of Trump’s nominees to get strong pushback from the ABA. Law.com reported that nine of Trump’s nominees have been rated as “not qualified” for the federal bench by the organization. At least four of these nominees have been successfully confirmed nevertheless, while others have been blocked. The ABA’s rating process has been criticized by conservatives, who say the organization is biased against nominees who aren’t liberals.

Writing for the conservative National Review, Thomas Jipping wrote that of the ABA: “[It’s] reasonable to ask whether this consistently liberal organization can really be objective and non-political in its ratings of judicial nominees.” He called the devastating letter about VanDyke “another self-inflicted wound” for the organization.

Orin Kerr, a University of California law professor, noted on Twitter: “I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this before, which I say realizing that some will say it shows how unqualified the [nominee] is, while others will say it shows how biased the ABA is. I don’t know which is true. But either way, it’s a remarkable letter.”

In the hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) noted Wednesday that there have been many criticisms of the ABA review process, some of which he agrees with. In particular, he acknowledged that the ABA’s conclusions are opaque, and it doesn’t provide the background documentation of its investigations.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chair of the committee, said he agreed with these criticisms.

“We actually have something we can do about that,” Whitehouse said. “I’ve been on this committee awhile. ABA letters are always this way. They don’t give you the underlying backup. But what we do have here is some pretty darned serious concerns. And to just laugh them off, I don’t think is appropriate. I think we have a responsibility here. … We can resolve this by bringing in the ABA folks and letting them explain what the basis was for these charges.”

Written by Cody Fenwick of Alternet, via The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

HUD Employees ‘Shell-Shocked’ After Ben Carson Makes Transphobic Remarks

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Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development has been making anti-LGBTQ remarks to HUD staff on a regular basis, according to a Washington Post report.

Secretary Ben Carson has been making vile, unprompted, transphobic remarks to Housing and Urban Development employees, some of whom were “shell-shocked” by the brain surgeon’s bigotry, according to a report published last Thursday in the Washington Post. Agency officials also say Carson repeatedly mocks transgender people.

Carson, who frequently presents himself as a deeply Christian man of faith, called transgender women “big, hairy men,” and claimed they are trying to access women’s homeless shelters to cause occupants harm.

“While visiting HUD’s San Francisco office this week, Carson also lamented that society no longer seemed to know the difference between men and women, two of the agency staffers said,” according to an extensive report in Thursday night’s Washington Post. “Carson’s remarks visibly shocked and upset many of the roughly 50 HUD staffers who attended Tuesday’s meeting, and prompted at least one woman to walk out in protest, the staffers said.”

Carson, during the San Francisco meeting, addressed HUD employees in “a rambling hour-long speech about HUD initiatives that they described as ‘stream of consciousness.’”

During that speech Carson said  “transgender people should get the same rights as everyone else, but they don’t get to change things for everybody else.” Those remarks echo ones he has made before.

He also told San Francisco HUD employees women’s shelters should turn away transgender women. One staffer told the Post, “this sounded like a slur to me.”

Carson’s talk became even more disturbing, two of the staffers said, when he started waxing nostalgic about the past when, in the words of one staffer, there were “just women and just men.” The HUD staffers said he sounded incredulous when he mentioned that people no longer know the difference between genders.

“His tone was kind of like ‘how crazy is that?’” another staffer said.

“For him to come to San Francisco and say this, it was unbelievable. People were just shell-shocked,” one staffer added.

One HUD official described Secretary Carson’s comments about transgender people as “dismissive and joking,” and called it “disrespectful of the people we are trying to serve.”

The Post’s lengthy report includes actions Carson has taken against transgender people during his tenure at HUD, and transphobic comments he has made in the past as well.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM

Log Cabin Republicans Lose Top Officials Over Trump Endorsement

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Log Cabin Republicans endorsed Trump for re-election last week. Since the endorsement was announced, their executive director and multiple board members have resigned.

After less than a year at the helm, the Executive Director of the Log Cabin Republicans has resigned over the organization’s widely-condemned re-election endorsement of President Donald Trump. Two of the gay GOP group’s board members penned a highly-controversial and frequently false Washington Post op-ed, claiming the president has “met his commitments to LGBTQ Americans.”

LCR executive director Jerri Ann Henry resigned Friday, The Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson reported in an exclusive on Tuesday.

Henry’s “voice had been effectively sidelined for about two months,” the Blade reports in another revelation. “Sources say disagreements about the direction of Log Cabin — with some wanting to pursue pro-LGBT policy goals, while others wanted to support Trump — led to a decision to prohibit Henry from speaking publicly for the group.”

The Blade also reports that LCR board member Rachel Hoff also had resigned after the Washington Post op-ed/endorsement was published, news not previously reported.

Board member Jennifer Horn also submitted her resignation after the op-ed.

Log Cabin spokesperson Charles Moran says the organization chose to endorse Trump’s re-election after surveying chapters and finding “almost unanimous” support for the organization to back the president’s re-election.

Log Cabin’s Washington Post op-ed supporting the president came in the same week the Trump administration led a blistering attack on the civil rights of LGBTQ people.

Just days earlier Trump’s Dept. of Justice was caught attempting to strong-arm the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) into reversing years of findings and rulings, and declare before the U.S. Supreme Court that discrimination against LGBTQ workers is legal.

That same week Trump’s Dept. of Labor announced a new rule to make it easier for what it now calls “religion-exercising organizations” that are also federal contractors to discriminate against LGBTQ workers. Not only would the Dept. of Labor make it easier, it would offer them a roadmap on how to avoid being charged with discrimination.

And just hours after the op-ed was published the Trump administration’s DOJ formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare discrimination against transgender workers totally legal. One week later the Trump administration petitioned the nation’s top court to declare discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers also totally legal, claiming none are protected under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo: Jerri Ann Henry, via NCRM

Trump DOJ Tells Supreme Court It Is Legal To Fire Transgender Workers

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The legal brief filed by Trump’s Department of Justice is the most overt step his administration has taken thus far to legalize anti-trans discrimination in the workplace.

Last Friday, the Trump administration informed the U.S. Supreme Court it is the opinion of the Dept. of Justice that it is legal under federal law for employers to fire transgender workers merely for being transgender.

The DOJ’s brief states Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, does not apply to transgender workers.

In reporting the development Buzzfeed calls it one of the Trump administration’s “most agressive steps yet to legalize anti-transgender discrimination.”

Friday’s move comes just days after the DOJ attempted to strong-arm the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission into telling the Supreme Court discrimination on the basis of gender identity is not sex discrimination. To do so would have contradicted up to eight years of EEOC findings and rulings.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

Ignoring Many Instances of Discrimination, Log Cabin Republicans Endorse Trump

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The group of gay Republicans didn’t even endorse Trump four years ago, but his administration’s lengthy record of anti-LGBTQ actions didn’t stop them from endorsing him this time.

Last Thursday, the Log Cabin Republicans shocked the entire United States with a Washington Post op-ed endorsing Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. And now Trump himself is using the endorsement as a shield from criticism.

In their rather mindblowing op-ed, Log Cabin Republicans chair Robert Kabel and vice chair Jill Holman wrote, “To be treated equally, fairly and justly under the law is our goal, and we know that ‘Inclusion Wins’ is a mantra we share with the president.”

The Log Cabin Republicans endorsement is particularly surprising in light of the fact that the group did not endorse Trump in 2016. The group made that decision based on the fact that Trump had never met with them, then a necessary step to receive their support. Trump has still not met with the Log Cabin Republicans; however, they’ve now chosen to endorse him anyway.

Their reasoning is laid out by Kabel and Holman in the op-ed as follows: “This is the party that Trump has helped make possible by moving past the culture wars that dominated the 1990s and early 2000s, in particular by removing gay rights as a wedge issue from the old Republican playbook.”

The group points to the Trump administration initiative to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide, the appointment of openly gay diplomat Richard Grenell as ambassador to Germany, and the administration’s stated intent to end the HIV epidemic by 2030 as reasons to believe that Trump and his administration have moved beyond using “gay rights as a wedge issue.”

However, the Trump administration has taken a variety of other anti-LGBTQ actions since Trump’s election three years ago, from the erosion of Civil Rights Act protections previously afforded to LGBTQ people under the Obama administration to the many gestures they’ve made toward privileging “religious freedom” over LGBTQ people’s rights to things like housing, employment, and even medical care.

There’s also the trans military ban, of course, and Kabel and Holman do mention the Log Cabin Republicans’ continued objection to that obviously anti-LGBTQ measure. “We are committed to letting all qualified Americans serve in the military, and Log Cabin Republicans was a leader in the legal fight to end the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy,” Kabel and Holman write. “We oppose the transgender service restriction and will continue to press the administration to reconsider.”

However, the endorsement stands, despite all of the obvious anti-LGBTQ actions Trump has taken. Log Cabin Republicans spokesperson Charles Moran told the Washington Blade that this was because they’re just so excited to be able to support an incumbent Republican who hasn’t voted against marriage equality. “We’ve not had a second term Republican president that Log Cabin has had the opportunity to endorse in quite some time,” Moran said. “2004 was the last time and we declined to endorse President Bush for re-election due to the constitutional ban on gay marriage he made a centerpiece of the campaign. So we really don’t have any [precedent] for a re-election to follow.”

Now, of course, Trump himself has picked up on this endorsement. He used it in a press conference yesterday to dodge a pointed question about anti-LGBTQ discrimination in the workplace, and actions his administration has taken to enable such discrimination. “Well I just got an award and an endorsement from a group… the exact group,” Trump said in response, as seen in a video posted to Twitter by Vox reporter Aaron Rupar.

“The Log Cabin group,” Trump continued. “And I was very honored to receive it. I’ve done very well with that community. Some of my biggest supporters are of that community, and I talk to them a lot about it… Peter Thiel and so many others, they’re with me all the way, and they like the job I’m doing.”

So now, not only have the Log Cabin Republicans chosen to ignore a vast amount of discrimination that affects them and the community they represent, they’ve given Trump himself an easy go-to defense for his discriminatory actions. And now we can no doubt expect to hear about this endorsement over and over throughout the 2020 campaign.

Please, can we get this guy out of here already?

Image via Screencap from Aaron Rupar/Twitter