Alisha Haridasani Gupta, "Transgender People Face New Legal Fight After Supreme Court Victory"
”Though the Supreme Court embraced a broad definition of sex in June, the Department of Health and Human Services pressed ahead with changes that narrowed the definition of sex in the Affordable Care Act.”
Hailey Branson-Potts, "Pride producer names Black transgender woman as president"
"For the first time in its 50-year history, Christopher Street West, the nonprofit organization that produces LA Pride, has named a Black transgender woman as president of its board.”
Trudy Ring, “Log Cabin Again Licks Trump's Boots But Ignores His True LGBTQ+ Record"
”In a USA Today op-ed, endorsing Trump for president, the Log Cabin Republicans have glossed over the Trump administration's plethora of anti-LGBTQ+ actions.”
Chris Johnson, “Facing Trump’s LGBTQ outreach, advocates hold firm on plan to show his record"
”Faced with the Trump campaign’s attempt at LGBTQ outreach — an unprecedented effort from a Republican presidential nominee, especially from an incumbent who has built an anti-LGBTQ record — LGBTQ advocacy groups say they’re staying the course in their efforts to expose the real President Trump.”
"Croatia gets first gay foster parents"
”A Croatian gay couple fostered two children after a legal battle, becoming the first same-sex couple to be granted the right in the largely Catholic country.”
Maggie Haberman, “After Three Years of Attacking L.G.B.T.Q. Rights, Trump Suddenly Tries Outreach""
”L.G.B.T.Q. advocates say the president has tried to divide their coalition by targeting transgender people in policy rollbacks. Going forward, Trump officials are turning to Richard Grenell, the openly gay former U.S. ambassador to Germany who served for three months as the acting director of national intelligence, to sell the president, and to attack Mr. Biden.”
Michael Stratford, “Court rules 'resoundingly yes' for transgender rights in Gavin Grimm bathroom access battle.”
”I late August, Aa federal appeals court dealt a major victory for proponents of transgender rights, ruling that it is unconstitutional and a violation of Title IX for schools to bar students from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity.”
"Georgia church splits from Methodists over LGBT dispute"
”On 3 September, a Georgia congregation finalized its split from the United Methodist Church after the denomination’s divisive vote last year to strengthen bans on same-sex marriage and ordination of LGBTQ pastors.”
Oscar Lopez, “LGBT+ Americans bear brunt of pandemic's economic crash”
”Economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic is having a harsher impact on LGBT+ Americans than on the general population, according to a survey released on 4 September showing that gay and trans people are 30% more likely to have lost their jobs since May”
Article Spotlight
Nic John Ramos; “Poor Influences and Criminal Locations:Los Angeles’s Skid Row, Multicultural Identities, and Normal Homosexuality.” American Quarterly 71, no. 2 (2019): 541-567. doi:10.1353/aq.2019.0042.
In 1984 the City of Los Angeles implemented a new policing ordinance called the “containment and mitigation policy,” which did not target subjects for prison arrest but sought to achieve their open-air capture in a redesigned “homeless district” called skid row. The policy was devised by Mayor Tom Bradley and his black and gay allies as a solution that balanced the pressures of deinstitutionalization and deindustrialization with the objectives of the community mental health movement and black, gay, and downtown community redevelopment programs. Looking to archival material related to architectural landscapes oriented to normalizing race and homosexuality built by Bradley, community mental health professionals, and neighborhood activists in inner-city districts, this essay demonstrates that new discourses of racial and sexual liberalism, coded as “multiculturalism” and expressed as black and gay community pride campaigns, substantiated new forms of surveillance and policing that renewed violence on queer, homeless, trans, and disabled people of color that resulted in their spatial segregation in skid row. Rather than forward social justice, I argue that the city’s cultivation of multiculturalism obscured the processes of racial capitalism that underwrite the enlargement of carceral spaces and normalize surveillance and policing as a common good.
Episode Spotlight
The story of African American midwifery is part of a larger history of Black women’s struggles to protect their own lives, as well as the lives of other Black women and their children. This episode explores the long history of African American midwives, doulas, and birth attendants who have labored to ensure the safety and dignity of Black mothers and their children in and beyond the maternity ward. These Black women have worked to provide emotional support and medical advocacy for other pregnant and laboring women. Their reproductive advocacy makes clear that the delivery room has become an important site to ensure that Black Lives Matter.
Books
