Toronto officials raise Progress Pride flag at city hall to kick off month of festivities
Mayor Olivia Chow said it's more important than ever to support Toronto's 2SLGBTQ+ community. Chow was joined by Coun. Chris Moise, chair of the Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Advisory Committee, and city staff.
"It's not a choice. It is who we are. It's in the city's DNA that we will always support the LGBTQ community," Chow said in an interview after the flag-raising.
"We know that when we come together, we're stronger. We will not be divided and we'll stand shoulder to shoulder with the community and supporting it every way. I invite all Torontonians to enjoy Pride Month."
Those involved, including drag performer Sanjina DaBish Queen, said Pride started as a protest and it's important to support the transgender community.
"The light just needs to be on trans people right now. It does. We're very important to the community. We're important to this world. And we just want to live. We just want to breathe."
Pride Toronto recently reported two of its largest sponsors, Home Depot and Google, have said they no longer want to sponsor the festival, but executive director Kojo Modeste said the withdrawal of support won't affect this year's festivities.
"We already have contracts that we are obligated to. Where we might feel it, it's next year. But I do believe that all three levels of government will come on board. We're going to have more sponsors."
City representatives said they'll continue to support Pride in Toronto in whatever ways they can.
"At the end of the day, it's their loss," Chow said. "And if American companies want to pull out from supporting Pride, we will step in, Canadian companies will step in, the government will step in."
Throughout the month of June, Pride events will be held across Toronto.
Pride culminates with the festival weekend that runs June 27 to 29. That includes Toronto's Pride Parade, which is the second largest in the world.
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Fifth Circuit halts West Texas A&M drag show ban as free speech lawsuit continues
A federal appeals court Monday blocked West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler from enforcing a campus drag show ban, ruling that the performances are likely protected under the First Amendment. The 2-1 ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a lower court's decision upholding Wendler's 2023 cancellation of a drag show, which he argued was demeaning to women and compared to blackface. The decision means Spectrum WT, the student group that brought the lawsuit, can produce drag shows on campus while its lawsuit continues in a lower court. Judge Leslie H. Southwick, who wrote for the majority, said the context of the students' event made its message of supporting the queer community clear. 'The viewers of the drag show would have been ticketed audience members attending a performance sponsored by LGBT+ student organizations and designed to raise funds for LGBT+ suicide-prevention charity, ' wrote Southwick, who was appointed by George W. Bush. 'Against this backdrop, the message sent by parading on a theater stage in attire of the opposite sex would have been unmistakable.' [How plans for a West Texas drag show turned into a war over the First Amendment] The court concluded that Legacy Hall, where the drag show was scheduled to take place, was a designated public forum open to a variety of groups, including churches and political candidates. That meant banning drag shows targeted the content of the event, something the Constitution allows only in the rarest cases. Finally, the court found that students faced ongoing irreparable harm to their speech rights, noting Wendler had canceled another drag show planned for 2024 and declared that no drag shows would ever be allowed on campus. That conclusion gave the judges another reason to block the ban for now, since courts only grant such relief when plaintiffs have a strong case and risk being harmed without it. In March 2023, Wendler canceled Spectrum WT's drag show intended to raise money for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that works to reduce suicides in the LGBTQ+ community. He explained in a letter to the campus community that he thought drag shows — where participants often use exaggerated clothing and makeup to explore, celebrate or parody gender roles — were misogynistic. 'As a university president, I would not support 'blackface' performances on our campus, even if told the performance is a form of free speech or intended as humor. It is wrong. I do not support any show, performance or artistic expression which denigrates – in this case, women – for any reason,' he wrote. In September 2023, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a President Donald Trump appointee and former attorney for a conservative legal group that opposed LGBTQ rights, sided with Wendler. The case arose as Texas lawmakers were also targeting drag more broadly. The same year, they passed a law restricting some drag performances in public spaces, but a federal judge later struck it down as unconstitutional under the First Amendment. West Texas A&M isn't the only campus to ban drag shows. This year, the Texas A&M System adopted a systemwide prohibition, and the University of Texas and University of North Texas systems enacted similar restrictions following pressure from conservative officials, including Tarrant County Judge Tim O'Hare. In March, however, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Texas A&M System's ban, allowing the 'Draggieland' event at the flagship campus to proceed, also finding that students were likely to succeed on their First Amendment claims. That lawsuit is also still working its way through the courts. Judge James C. Ho dissented in the West Texas A&M case. 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The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Disclosure: West Texas A&M University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. More all-star speakers confirmed for The Texas Tribune Festival, Nov. 13–15! This year's lineup just got even more exciting with the addition of State Rep. Caroline Fairly, R-Amarillo; former United States Attorney General Eric Holder; Abby Phillip, anchor of 'CNN NewsNight'; Aaron Reitz, 2026 Republican candidate for Texas Attorney General; and State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin. Get your tickets today! TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase. Solve the daily Crossword
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Federal appeals court blocks West Texas A&M drag ban
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a day ago
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Park ranger fired after helping drape a transgender pride flag on Yosemite's El Capitan
Yosemite National Park fired a park ranger last week for hanging a transgender pride flag on the park's iconic El Capitan rock formation in May. Shannon 'SJ' Joslin, who has been a ranger and a wildlife biologist in the park since 2021, said they were fired Aug. 12 from what they described as their dream job. They said park leadership told them they 'failed to demonstrate acceptable conduct' in their role by participating in the trans flag display. 'I'm devastated,' said Joslin, who is trans and uses they/them pronouns. 'We don't take our positions in the park service to make money or to have any kind of huge career gains. We take it because we love the places that we work. I have a Ph.D. in bioinformatics, and I could be making a lot more money in Silicon Valley, which is only a few hours away, but I made career choices to position myself in Yosemite National Park, because this is the place that I love the most.' When asked for comment on Joslin's termination, a spokesperson for Yosemite National Park said the National Park Service, which oversees Yosemite, 'is pursuing administrative action against multiple National Park Service employees for failing to follow National Park Service regulations.' The spokesperson did not immediately respond to an additional question about which regulations the employees allegedly violated. The NPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Joslin, who is 35 and had been going to the park for years prior to working there, has written Yosemite climbing guidebooks and volunteered to work overtime to help issue hiking permits and manage traffic in the park. As a wildlife biologist, they managed the park's 'big wall bats' program, to study how bats use cliffs and protect them from a deadly disease called white-nose syndrome. Joslin said they came up with the idea to hang the trans pride flag on El Capitan in the spring after President Donald Trump issued a variety of executive orders targeting trans people, including orders to change the federal definition of sex to exclude trans identities, restrict access to trans health care and prohibit trans women from competing in female sports. Joslin said the flag display, which they organized with other LGBTQ climbers and advocates and participated in outside of work hours, was intended to celebrate trans people and show that everyone is welcome in the nation's parks. The flag was up on El Capitan for about two hours when park officials told the climbers to remove it, though the climbers said at the time that they were not told that they had broken any park rules. About a week after the display, Joslin said, park leadership told them they were the subject of a criminal investigation into the hanging of the flag. After that investigation, Acting Deputy Superintendent Danika Globokar fired Joslin due to their participation in what leadership described as the 'flag demonstration,' Joslin said. Joslin said they asked for evidence proving that the flag display was a demonstration but said leadership did not provide any. They also cited the long history of a variety of flags being flown on the rock's face, including by park employees. For example, park employees flew an upside-down U.S. flag during Yosemite's firefall event in February to protest the Trump administration's cuts of National Park Service employees. A group of activists also raised a 'Stop the genocide' flag on El Capitan in support of Palestinians in Gaza in June 2024. There was no policy prohibiting the display of flags on El Capitan until the day after Joslin and their team hung the trans flag, when the National Park Service issued a new rule banning the hanging of large flags in wilderness areas. Yosemite leadership updated the 2024 Superintendent's Compendium to include the update. 'Hanging flags has been a tradition that climbers have done on El Cap for decades, and that's both individuals who are visiting the park, but also employees that are on their off time,' Joslin said. 'There's never been any kind of ramifications to any of those flag hanging activities. I'm the only one who's been fired for it.' Joslin said two other NPS employees, including one who works in Yosemite and another who works in a different park, are under investigation for helping to display the trans flag. Joslin said being fired from a federal position will hurt their ability to work for the government, or any other park, in the future. They plan to seek legal counsel to try to contest the decision, citing an executive order Trump issued on the first day of his presidency to protect free speech and end federal censorship. 'I'm going to fight this tooth and nail,' Joslin said. 'I think that everyone as Americans should be upset about this, and it doesn't matter who I am or what my identity is, this is a matter of free speech.'
