LGBTQ+

Vivian Jenna Wilson, the transgender daughter of Elon Musk, said Thursday in her first interview that he was an absent father who was cruel to her as a child for being queer and feminine.

Wilson, 20, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, responded to comments Musk made Monday about her and her transgender identity. On social media and in an interview posted online, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and he alleged that he had been “tricked” into authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her when she was 16.

Wilson said that Musk hadn’t been tricked and that, after initially having hesitated, he knew what he was doing when he agreed to her treatment, which required consent from her parents.

Musk’s recent statements crossed a line, she said.

“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.”

Transgender people in Russia have had their human rights systematically eroded by the government’s broader political strategy of attacking vulnerable minorities, according to UN independent expert, Graeme Reid.

One year after Russia passed a law banning gender reassignment surgery, he says that transgender Russians had been deprived of their “most basic rights to a legal identity and access to healthcare”.

The new legislation also stopped people from changing their personal details on documents - Ada was one of the last people to get her name officially changed before the law came into effect in July 2023.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has lashed out at the West and LGBT rights, saying he is fighting for traditional Russian values. At a cultural forum in St Petersburg last year, he dismissed transgender people as “transformers or trans-something”.

And at the end of 2023, Russia’s justice ministry announced another new ruling, declaring the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organisation.

It didn’t matter that no such organisation existed. Anyone guilty of supporting what is now deemed “extremist activity” faces up to 12 years in jail. Even displaying a rainbow flag risks a fine, and a possible four-year prison sentence for repeat offences.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/14954788

West Virginia is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review rulings that found the state’s refusal to cover certain health care for transgender people with government-sponsored insurance is discriminatory, Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said Thursday.

[alt text: a screenshot of a web search result, showing an article from healthline.com and the web search provider's attempt to summarize the article. The article is titled, "Genderqueer: What Does It Mean?", and the summary seems to turn into a recipe halfway through. The recipe text says things like, "Ingredients: 1 pound Small Red Potatoes, 2 pounds Extra-Large Shrimp, 6 ears Corns...." and "Nutritional: 710 Calories, 106 g Carbohydrates, 14 g Total Fat...."]

He surmised that the isolation of such places may foster a “make do” attitude. “There is a fair amount of sexual contact among older males in Western rural areas, the type of homosexuality which was probably among pioneers and outdoor men.

Today it is found among ranchmen, cattle men, prospectors, lumbermen, and farming groups in general that are virile and physically active. These are men who have faced the rigors of nature in the wild. They live on realities and on a minimum of theory. Such a background breeds the attitude that sex is sex.”

What was perhaps most shocking about homosexuality in the Old West was not that it was so common but that it wasn’t a big deal. In fact, miners and cowboys settled into convenient partnerships called “bachelor marriages.” When the miners in Angel Camp in northern California had dances, half the men wore bandanas around their arms to signal their feminine role. It was also very common and accepted for same sex bed mates to sleep together in small beds.

https://www.notesfromthefrontier.com/amp/homo-sexuality-on-the-range

In a landmark ruling for gay rights in South Korea on Thursday, the country's Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples qualify for the national health insurance's dependent coverage, a decision that rights activists hoped could pave the way for legalizing same-sex marriage in the country.

The decision would allow same-sex couples in the country to register their partners as dependents in national health insurance coverage like married couples or couples in a common-law marriage can. It was one of the numerous benefits denied to same-sex and other couples living outside of the traditional norms of family in South Korea.

In its ruling on Thursday, the country's highest court ruled that denying a same-sex couple national health insurance dependent coverage "just because they are of the same sex" constitutes a serious discrimination that infringed upon citizens' "dignity and values, their rights to pursue happiness, their freedom of privacy and their rights to be equally treated by the law."

In its final say on the case on Thursday, the Supreme Court endorsed the appeals court ruling. It said that same-sex couples formed an "economic cohabitation tantamount to" married and common-law couples.

Archived version

In an interview with the French publication “Le Parisien”, Brenda Biya, the daughter of Cameroonian President Paul Biya, explains why she came out, what her family’s response has been, and how she hopes to make a difference for Cameroon’s LGBTQ community. This is an English translation of that interview.

Archived version

In an appeal to Sberbank head German Gref, the lower-house State Duma’s Family, Women and Children Committee said that it had received messages from parents who were “outraged” by the cards.

“We ask you, dear German Oskarovich, to take into account the opinion of parents and deputies of our committee on preventing violations of Russian legislation and to halt the issuance of the Children’s SberCard with the ‘rainbow unicorn’ — a symbol of the LGBT movement,” the state-run TASS news agency cited the committee’s letter as saying.

Sberbank issues cards for children aged 6 to 13 with seven different designs, including the rainbow unicorn.

Russia’s Supreme Court designated the “international LGBT movement,” which does not formally exist, as a banned “extremist” organization in November 2023.

LGBT and Marginalized Voices Are Not Welcome on Threads

https://www.macstories.net/stories/lgbt-and-marginalized-voices-are-not-welcome-on-threads/

@lgbtq_plus

The University of Texas at Arlington has closed its LGBTQ+ Program due to a new state law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The program provided mental health resources, support groups, and community events for LGBTQ+ students. Sen. Brandon Creighton (R), who wrote the law, said in a statement, "The legislation makes it clear that student-led organizations are not impacted in any way. But it is also clear that taxpayer funds should not be spent on conferring special benefits based on race, color, ethnicity or sexual orientation."

Hey lovelies, open question: Are any of you into self defense and do you want to share something with the rest of us?

❤️⚔️❤️

Insurers are looking to expand coverage of sexual health services and gender affirming care in the wake of lawsuits over allegedly discriminatory policies.

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A federal district court judge on Wednesday temporarily halted parts of a nondiscrimination rule that would have kept insurers and medical professionals from denying hormone therapy, gender transition surgeries and similar medical care for transgender people.

U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. sided with 15 states that had argued the language the rule was based on — the 1972 Title IX nondiscrimination law — encompasses biological sex, but not gender identity. Guirola’s injunction applies nationwide to the Affordable Care Act rule, which would have gone into effect Friday.

Enforcement of a federal rule expanding anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students has been blocked in four states and a patchwork of places elsewhere by a federal judge in Kansas.

U.S. District Judge John Broomes suggested in his ruling Tuesday that the Biden administration must now consider whether forcing compliance remains “worth the effort.”

Broomes' decision was the third against the rule from a federal judge in less than three weeks but more sweeping than the others. It applies in Alaska, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming, which sued over the new rule. It also applies to a Stillwater, Oklahoma, middle school that has a student suing over the rule and to members of three groups backing Republican efforts nationwide to roll back LGBTQ+ rights. All of them are involved in one lawsuit.

Broomes, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, directed the three groups — Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United — to file a list of schools in which their members' children are students so that their schools also do not comply with the rule. Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican who argued the states' case before Broomes last month, said that could be thousands of schools.

Transgender women receiving hormone therapy may skew artificially low on prostate cancer screening tests, thereby providing false reassurance and potentially delaying diagnosis and treatment, according to a recent study published by Nik-Ahd et al in JAMA. The findings indicated that transgender women and physicians should interpret standard screening guidelines with caution.

Celebrations were ‘forced into hiding’ as outcome of legislation, which would put LGBT+ people at risk of imprisonment, remains unclear