Latest news with #WilliamsInstitute
Axios
4 days ago
- Politics
- Axios
Mayoral forum addresses violence against transgender Detroiters
Violence against transgender Detroiters must be more publicly acknowledged and discussed, a mayoral candidate said during a forum Friday organized by nonprofit LGBT Detroit. The big picture: The event — held as part of Black LGBTQ+ pride celebration Hotter Than July — featured conversations about environmental policy and voting rights, but it chiefly focused on the needs of LGBTQ+ residents. State of play: The three participating candidates, Saunteel Jenkins, Fred Durhal III and write-in Rogelio Landin, all said they'd support equity and inclusion for LGBTQ+ residents. All also committed to creating an office of LGBTQ+ affairs. Zoom in: Among other questions, moderator Roland Leggett of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters asked how candidates would address the safety of transgender residents. Context: Transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime, per the Williams Institute, with Black trans women even more impacted. And Detroit is no exception. A range of factors are at play, national advocates say, from anti-transgender legislation and rhetoric to other systemic problems like poverty, unemployment and homelessness stemming from discrimination. What they're saying: Durhal said a "significant amount" of Black and brown transgender Detroiters go missing and "no one talks about it." He added that as mayor he'd set a tone for bringing people together for uncomfortable conversations on the topic and would incorporate implicit-bias training for police and other departments to build trust. Jenkins said she'd assure the city's civil rights department has the resources to address the issue and, overall, solve more murder cases, including violent offenders acting based on biases. She added she'd "lean in in every way possible to protect and ensure the expanded rights" through the state's civil rights act. In his answer, Landin agreed with Durhal and Jenkins and emphasized his commitment to equity and justice; he said he'd "double down" on efforts to protect residents.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
This med student removed their fallopian tubes and found community, support online
The rainbow party hats called to Delia Sosa at the grocery store. A poignant, perfect way to mark the occasion. The morning of that big day in June, Sosa wrote a message across the front of the party hats in bold, black ink: "Farewell fallopians." Then, Sosa underwent a sterilization procedure known as a bilateral salpingectomy, or the removal of both fallopian tubes. The whole operating room, including Sosa's doctor and the pre-op nurses, placed the festive hats atop their heads before sending Sosa into a peaceful, long-awaited slumber. Why was it such a party? "It felt like a celebration on the day of, and still kind of feels like a celebration in a lot of ways," Sosa, 28, says over a Zoom call, blue and pink hydrangea paintings hanging in the background, "because for me, this is one step in the process of really taking control of my own reproductive health and the future of my family." Sosa is transgender and intersex and a survivor of sexual assault. It's not uncommon for the community: A 2021 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that trans people were over four times more likely to be victims of violent crime. Amid growing anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment across the U.S., Sosa feared a future assault could result in an unwanted pregnancy. They were assigned female at birth and never want to abort a pregnancy – making fallopian tube removal a viable option to protect themself and their husband given their dissatisfaction with other birth control methods. "I can't prevent the sexual assault from happening, and hope – knock on wood – I hope it doesn't happen, but if it were to, at least that's one less thing I have to worry about," adds Sosa, who is in their fourth year of medical school. How much does IVF cost? Explaining the procedure. Sosa posted about the surgery on Instagram, and more than 200 commenters weighed in: "This is simply wonderful." "Congratulations on making the decision that was right for you! So happy for you!" "I had mine removed last summer and it gave me such peace of mind." It's different than getting your "tubes tied," which doesn't involve removing the tubes completely. About 18 to 19% of the population uses sterilization as a form of contraception, says OB-GYN Dr. Nazaneen Homaifar, and sterilization rates among women increased following the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to a Columbia University study. Homaifar, anecdotally, has noticed an uptick in sterilization requests for fear that people won't have options if they were to get pregnant by accident. And "pregnancy as a result of rape is a common fear for survivors of sexualized violence," says trauma counselor Jordan Pickell. For Sosa, "It was something that I thought about for a really long time before before deciding to ask my doctor about it," they said. They've been concerned about increasing violence toward trans, queer and intersex people, particularly trans people of color and trans feminine people of color. "I have gotten some pretty scary threats online of things that people want to do to me and things that people think I should do to myself," Sosa says. "And I have had this fear for the last several years, with all the anti-trans legislation coming out, that I could end up in a position where I am sexually assaulted for my identity." In case you missed: Gender-affirming care is life-saving, research says. Why is it so controversial? Those looking for more information on this, Homaifar says, should "seek out providers who will listen to them and provide judgment-free counseling to go over their options for contraception and to know that there are providers out there that will listen to them and honor their desires for a sterilization." Removing the fallopian tubes, for example, also reduces the risk of ovarian cancer, according to Dr. Hugh Taylor, Anita O'Keeffe Young Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine. Still, "there are many other forms of contraception available, including long-term reversible contraceptives such as an IUD or implant. Tubal removal should only be done when someone is certain that they will never want to conceive." As for Sosa and their husband, they plan to have children using reciprocal IVF, a process which bypasses the fallopian tubes. Sosa would still carry their child. Sosa is applying for residency this fall and dreams of an OBGYN career of their own. "There's a lot of unknowns coming up, but a lot of good things on the horizon." At least one thing's for sure: No fallopian tubes. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Removing fallopian tubes: When scared of pregnancy, sexual assault
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
From legitimacy to uncertainty, Advocate readers reflect on 10 years of marriage equality and what comes next
A decade ago, on June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court announced a ruling in the case Obergefell v. Hodges that changed LGBTQ+ history in America: The majority of justices ruled in favor of marriage equality. Today, queer families, LGBTQ+ people, and allies are celebrating 10 years of the freedom to marry regardless of gender. Keep up with the latest in + news and politics. In the Obergefell decision, the high court found that prohibiting same-sex marriage was a violation of the equal protection clause under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Since then, marriage equality support has grown. Almost 70 percent of Americans support marriage for same-sex couples, according to Gallup. More than 80 percent of Democrats support marriage equality, and 74 percent of independents. Even Republicans have supported marriage equality with record highs in 2021 and 2022 for members of the GOP — it currently holds at 46 percent. There are now 823,000 married same-sex couples in the country, an increase of about 600,000 after Obergefell, the Williams Institute of UCLA reports. Of those couples, around 300,000 are raising children. The institute also recently reported that between 2015 and 2025, the total nationwide spending on weddings between same-sex couples reached $5.9 billion. Ahead of today's anniversary, The Advocate asked readers to take us back to that day and how they feel about marriage equality under the Trump administration in 2025. Most people were just going about their day, with a few who anxiously awaited the opinions to come down starting at 10 a.m., which is when the court releases them. Catherine Hunt, 63, was in Seattle in her apartment when the news broke. "I felt I sense of relief," she said. For 46-year-old James Yeager, he spent the morning anticipating the ruling. "I was in training at my job. I knew the ruling was likely to come out that day, so I had been paying more attention to the news feed on my phone than the actual training. When the ruling dropped, I dropped everything and bolted out of the training (with my coworkers' enthusiastic blessing) and ran to my husband's cubicle (we worked in different departments of the same company at the time). He hadn't heard yet because he was talking to a coworker, so I got to tell him by dropping to one knee and proposing. (Spoiler alert: He said YES! and we got married three months later,)" Yeager wrote to The Advocate. Related: New congressional resolution would make June 26 'Equality Day' celebrating LGBTQ+ victories Many of those who responded spoke about how important it was to receive the same rights as people in opposite-sex marriages, from tax advantages to health care. And many decided to marry because that right became a reality. Louis Tharp, 74, said he was refreshing the SCOTUSblog every minute, waiting for the decision. Tharp, who had married thrice to the same man at different times, leading up to nationwide marriage equality — once in California, once in Washington, D.C., and once in Connecticut. In 2015, he worked for the Obama administration and was in D.C. while his husband was in New York. "Being an Obama appointee and now directly benefiting from a Supreme Court decision made me feel for the first time in my life, that I was a valued U.S. citizen. Before then, I was an outsider. This wasn't my country," Tharp said in his response. "When I was growing up, you were either closeted, arrested, or sent to a mental institution because being gay was a crime and a mental illness. Slowly, life got better over five decades, and June 26, 2015, was the declaration of presence for the LGBT community with the Supreme Court's endorsement." For some, the ruling meant it validated the love they had for their partner. Those who messaged The Advocate said the ruling lent legitimacy, regardless of whether it was wanted or not. Many had been together for years — even decades — leading up to the Supreme Court ruling. Michael Mondello, 76, wrote that he and his husband married in Provincetown in 2008. "We have been together almost 51 years so the immediate impact was a verification of what we did in 2008," he wrote. "We had been together for 18 years prior to the marriage equality ruling in 2015. We discussed whether or not to go ahead and get married. We talked about the pros and cons, but ultimately realized that people had given their lives for this right, and it would be disrespectful to all those people who had joined the fight if we did not go ahead and get married," said Jane Fahey, 72. "I had just retired as an elementary school administrator, where I had remained semi-closeted for almost 40 years. All of a sudden it just seemed good and right to live my authentic life and to be married to the woman I loved." And of course, others cited the security that the right to marry brought. A legal marriage allows access to more than 1,000 rights, including Social Security benefits if a spouse dies, medical leave protections, estate tax exemptions, and more. It also allowed those living in states that already had granted marriage equality to have their marriage legally recognized across state lines. That's something that Eugene Galt noted in his response. "It did not affect how real our relationship was to us. Rather, it meant that I could move anywhere in the country, and my marriage would have the same legal protections those in opposite-sex marriages had long taken for granted," he said. Scott Turner, 62, also emphasized the importance of cross-state recognition. "[My husband and I] were already married in California but lived in South Carolina, where our marriage was not recognized. This ruling was the final step in the recognition of our relationship, which is now 35 years. In our eyes, we were married even before California. But having it legal in all states, including the one we lived in, was such a joyous moment. Not to mention, our financial situation was improved as many bills we owed from income taxes, property taxes, insurance, even gym memberships were immediately cut due to our marriage," he said. Related: While today is celebrated, almost every respondent mentioned a concern about the future of marriage equality under the current Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority, and under President Donald Trump and his administration. "Given the state of our nation right now, and given the political nature of the Supreme Court, I don't have high hopes that marriage equality is going to last in this country. I don't know how they can erase our marriage because of financial and legal implications, but I worry about the erosion of all LGBTQ+ rights," Fahey wrote. Still, regardless of what happens in the coming years, many still recall June 26, 2015, as a joyous day. William Vayens, 74, said the ruling allowed him and his husband to escape lavender marriages. He wrote to The Advocate, "It allowed us to divorce our lesbian wives (for medical insurance reasons) and marry each other and receive the benefits we should have received 40 years ago." This article originally appeared on Advocate: From legitimacy to uncertainty, Advocate readers reflect on 10 years of marriage equality and what comes next
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
After 10 years of marriage equality, the fight continues for LGBTQ+ rights
A lot of queer people can tell you exactly where they were at 10 a.m. on Friday, June 26, 2015. That was the moment the Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision that grants same-sex couples marriage equality. For many – me included – it was a dream come true. Growing up gay in rural North Carolina in the sixties and seventies, when a large majority of states still made same-sex relationships a felony, the idea of same-sex couples marrying seemed so far-fetched as to be ridiculous. Today, thanks in part to the organization I now run, Lambda Legal (which was co-counsel in Obergefell), it is the law of the land. More than 600,000 married same-sex couples in the U.S. have tied the knot since then according to the Williams Institute, 'double the 390,000 who were married in June 2015 when Obergefell was decided.' Ten years later, the picture is much darker. Today, we are seeing a massive attack on the rights of LGBTQ+ people. Since 2022, an astounding 1,903 bills aimed at restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ people have been introduced – at least one in each of our 50 state legislatures. 220 have become law in 27 states. Obergefell and its protections are in danger of being rolled back. In 2023, Tennessee enacted a law that allows government officials to refuse to marry same-sex couples. In 2025, five state legislatures (Idaho, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota) considered bills calling upon the Supreme Court to reverse Obergefell. (Idaho's resolution passed.) The Southern Baptist Convention (America's second-largest Christian denomination) recently voted to pursue a legal strategy to reverse Obergefell modeled on the successful effort to overturn Roe v. Wade. Related: If a challenge to Obergefell makes it to the Supreme Court, it will find at least two friendly faces there. Justice Samuel Alito has repeatedly called for its reversal. And in his concurring opinion in the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe in 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas went even further: 'In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [which gave us the right to birth control in 1965], Lawrence [which decriminalized same-sex relationships in 2003] and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is 'demonstrably erroneous, the Court has a duty to 'correct the error' established in those precedents.' On the bench of the highest court in our land sits a man who wants to make us criminals again. How did we get here? It wasn't by accident: it's part of a well-funded effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights nationwide. Led by right-wing extremist groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom ('ADF,' which the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed a 'hate group'), a concerted effort to roll back the rights of LGBTQ+ people has been underway for many years. This network of right-wing extremist legal groups – including the ADF, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the American Center for Law and Justice, the First Liberty Institute, and the Becket Fund – had a combined budget of $231 million in 2023. By contrast, pro-LGBTQ+ legal groups – such as Lambda Legal, GLADLaw, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the ACLU LGBTQ+ Rights Project, the Transgender Law Center, and the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund – had a combined budget of $75 million in the same year. Anti-LGBTQ+ forces are outspending pro-LGBTQ+ forces by a factor of 3:1, so it's no surprise we are on the defensive. The LGBTQ+ movement finds itself at a conflicted moment on this tenth anniversary of marriage equality – feeling both celebratory and concerned about Obergefell, particularly in the wake of the recent ruling in in our Skrmetti case with the ACLU and ACLU of Tennessee. The decision upheld Tennessee's ban on the right of trans young people to access the health care they need. The world I was born into in 1963 – one where in all 50 states but one (Illinois), same-sex relations were a crime – was changed through litigation, including Lambda Legal's Lawrence v. Texas victory at the Supreme Court in 2003, which decriminalized same-sex relationships nationwide. Will the courts champion the cause of equality as they have done in some landmark cases like Lawrence and Obergefell or continue to bring setbacks to equality as they did in Skrmetti? We may be about to find is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit to learn more about submission guidelines. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride. - YouTube This article originally appeared on Advocate: After 10 years of marriage equality, the fight continues for LGBTQ+ rights
The Hill
26-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
10 years after Obergefell, gay marriage faces growing threats
Same-sex marriage equality has been the law of the land for 10 years as of Thursday. But after a string of crushing losses for LGBTQ rights at the Supreme Court this term and calls for the court to revisit its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges — including from its own justices — those involved in the fight wonder how long their victory may last. 'I certainly never thought that at the 10th anniversary of marriage equality, I'd be worried about making it beyond 10 years,' said lead plaintiff Jim Obergefell. 'Yet, here we are.' Obergefell sued the state of Ohio in 2013 over its refusal to recognize same-sex marriage on death certificates. His late husband, John Arthur James, whom he married in Maryland, died of complications from ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, shortly before litigation began. 'John and I started something that was scary, something that was overwhelming,' he said in a recent interview. 'But it was all for the right reason; we loved each other, and we wanted to exist.' 'We wanted to be seen by our state, and we wanted John to die a married man,' he said. 'And I wanted to be his widower, in every sense of that term.' Two years later, on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 'It truly changed, within the LGBTQ community, the feeling of equality,' said Jason Mitchell Kahn, a New York wedding planner and author of 'We Do: An Inclusive Guide When a Traditional Wedding Won't Cut It.' Since that ruling, same-sex weddings have exploded 'beyond our wildest imagination,' said Kahn, who is gay. 'I grew up never thinking that people like me would get married, and so to now be working in it all the time, it's so special.' Nearly 600,000 same-sex couples in the U.S. have married since, boosting state and local economies by roughly $6 billion and generating an estimated $432 million in sales tax revenue, according to a report released this week by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. 'It has been good for people's families, good for the economy, good for society,' said Mary Bonauto, senior director of civil rights and legal strategies at GLAD Law in Boston. Bonauto, who argued the Obergefell case before the Supreme Court in 2015, said the ruling has been 'transformative for couples and for their families.' 'The legal rights are enormously consequential, whether it's inheritance, family, health insurance, the ability to file your taxes together, Social Security benefits when a spouse passes,' she said. 'Now, people can count on their marriages day to day as they're living their lives, raising their families, planning for their futures, buying homes together, building businesses. This is really so core to people's ability to be part of and function in society.' Public opinion polling shows national support for same-sex marriage at record highs, hovering between 68 and 71 percent. In a May Gallup poll, however, Republican support for marriage equality fell to 41 percent, the lowest in a decade. A survey released this week by a trio of polling firms painted a starkly different picture, with 56 percent of Republican respondents saying they support same-sex marriage. Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster whose firm Echelon Insights helped conduct the survey, wrote in a New York Times op-ed this week that 'there is little political passion or momentum on the side of opposition to legal same-sex marriage.' But Anderson cautioned that the 'live and let live' ethos does not extend to the entire LGBTQ community, and 'Republican voters seem to have made a distinction between the 'L.G.B.' and the 'T,'' which stands for transgender. In recent years, the GOP has appeared more amenable to same-sex marriage — the party's 2024 platform scrapped longstanding language that explicitly opposed it — though recent efforts to undermine marriage equality or overturn the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell have been spearheaded by Republicans. In January, Idaho's GOP-dominated House passed a resolution calling for the high court to reconsider its decision, which the justices cannot do unless they are presented with a case. The resolution, which is nonbinding, expresses the legislature's collective opinion that the court's Obergefell ruling 'is an illegitimate overreach' and has caused 'collateral damage to other aspects of our constitutional order that protect liberty, including religious liberty.' Republican lawmakers in at least five other states, including Democratic-controlled Michigan, have issued similar calls to the Supreme Court. None of the resolutions' primary sponsors returned requests for comment or to be interviewed. At an annual meeting in Dallas this month, Southern Baptists similarly voted overwhelmingly to endorse 'laws that affirm marriage between one man and one woman.' The sweeping resolution approved at the gathering of more than 10,000 church representatives says lawmakers have a responsibility to pass legislation reflecting 'the truth of creation and natural law — about marriage, sex, human life, and family' and to oppose proposals that contradict 'what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.' The document calls for overturning laws and court rulings that 'defy God's design for marriage and family,' which includes the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision. Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said the church's resolution is a 'call for moral clarity.' 'At the individual level, we are trying to speak to individual consciences and tell them there's a better way to both think about marriage and participate in marriage than what they're seeing all around them in culture,' Leatherwood said. Some of the Supreme Court's own justices have also voiced concerns about whether the Obergefell decision infringes on religious freedom or misinterprets the Constitution. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, conservatives who dissented from the court's majority opinion in 2015, wrote again in 2020 that the court, in siding with the Obergefell plaintiffs, 'read a right to same-sex marriage into the Fourteenth Amendment, even though that right is found nowhere in the text.' Last winter, in a five-page statement explaining the court's decision not to involve itself in a dispute between the Missouri Department of Corrections and jurors dismissed for disapproving of same-sex marriage on religious grounds, Alito wrote that the conflict 'exemplifies the danger' he anticipated in 2015. 'Namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be 'labeled as bigots and treated as such' by the government,' he wrote. In a concurring opinion to the Supreme Court's 2022 majority ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, in which the court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, Thomas said the justices 'should reconsider' past decisions codifying rights to same-sex marriage, gay sex and access to contraception — rulings he said were 'demonstrably erroneous.' 'I think there are a number of reasons why people are concerned now, and I don't think that's unreasonable,' said Bonauto, the attorney who argued in favor of marriage equality in 2015. 'I will say, however, that overturning Obergefell would be undeniably awful, and GLAD Law and others of us are going to fight tooth and nail with everything we have to preserve it and, really, we have some confidence that we will win.' In late 2022, in large part because of Thomas's dissent in the court's Dobbs decision, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, codifying protections for same-sex and interracial married couples. The measure also formally repealed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law that recognized marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman. The Supreme Court had already ruled a portion of that law unconstitutional in a decision handed down exactly two years before it ruled in Obergefell. 'We know in our nation that everything gets challenged eventually,' said Bonauto. 'But it's an extremely important recognition from the Congress that marriage is just too important to people to have it blink on and off when you cross state lines.' 'The importance of the Respect for Marriage Act should not be understated, right now in particular,' said Naomi Goldberg, executive director of the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank. 'That bill being passed by Congress really has changed the game.' In more than half of states, statutes or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage remain on the books, though 'zombie laws' against marriage equality are not enforceable because of the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell. The Respect for Marriage Act prevents those measures from being enforced on already-married couples or couples married in states without a ban on same-sex marriage should the court's decision be overturned, a significant shift from the pre-Obergefell landscape, where recognition of marriage depended entirely on zip code. 'When you look at the map of where we were in 2015, and anti-equality laws, it was quite a different country,' said Goldberg. 'Families were making decisions about where to travel; do we need to take a birth certificate or a will with us?' 'The fact that those couples can marry in every place across the country and they can travel safely and not worry about being barred from a hospital room or not be able to make a decision for their child is remarkable,' she added. 'Those really tangible things can get lost when we talk about these big concepts like the Constitution and protections for communities.' Asked about the handful of resolutions asking for the Supreme Court to revisit its Obergefell decision, Goldberg said more meaningful, and legally binding, action has taken place in states looking to bolster protections for same-sex couples. Voters in three progressive states — California, Colorado and Hawaii — passed ballot measures in November that struck language from their constitutions defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. Additional states are hoping to get similar proposals before voters in 2026. 'I firmly believe that it would take a lot for couples in this country to lose the right to marry,' said Goldberg, 'but it doesn't mean that having that language on the books is not symbolic and meaningful to those of us who live in states like that.'
