What Think You?

Keynote Address: Unscripted — Introducing Intergender Dynamics and Reframing Gender-Type Prejudice by Richard Hogan, MD, PhD(2), DBA

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🇨🇦 Richard Hogan PhD (Mathematics) · MD (Neuroscience) · PhD (Ethics) · DBA (HRD) Architect of IGD & IBT | Rewriting the language of gender justice Essays, theory, and verse from the post-binary frontier

Keynote Address: Unscripted—Introducing Intergender Dynamics and and Reframing Gender-Type Prejudice

Good morning.

It is an honor to stand before you today—not to echo what has already been said, but to challenge what we’ve long accepted. To offer not just a critique, but a new vocabulary. A new lens. A new way forward. I hope you are ‘not toned deaf’.

For decades, we have used the term misogyny to name and confront systemic prejudice against women. It has served us well in many ways. But today, I ask you—academics, legal scholars, educators, and clinicians—to consider this: What if the language we use to fight injustice is now limiting our ability to understand it?

We are living in a post-binary world. Gender is no longer a fixed category—it is a spectrum, a performance, a negotiation. And yet, our frameworks remain tethered to binary logic. Misogyny is one such tether. It is gender-specific. Directionally fixed. It presumes a hierarchy that no longer reflects the lived realities of our students, our patients, our communities.

So today, I introduce a new term: Intergender Dynamics , or IGD .

IGD refers to the patterned, reciprocal, and often asymmetrical interactions between individuals and groups across the gender spectrum. It is not just about identity—it is about relationship . It is about how we perform, police, and punish gender roles in our daily lives. It is about the emotional labor we assign, the authority we grant, the empathy we withhold.

And this is not just a sociological insight—it is a medical one.

Recent research in gender-affirming care has shown that transgender and gender-diverse individuals face significant barriers in accessing health services, often due to systemic bias and relational discomfort within clinical settings. Studies have also revealed that patients with dynamic or evolving gender identities experience distress not only from institutional exclusion, but from interpersonal dynamics—how they are spoken to, validated, or dismissed by providers.

In pediatric and adolescent medicine, clinicians are now trained to recognize how gender-role expectations affect mental health, emotional development, and access to care. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health and The Endocrine Society have emphasized the importance of relational sensitivity—not just diagnostic accuracy—in improving outcomes.

What does this tell us?

It tells us that IGD is not just a theoretical tool—it is a clinical imperative . If we want to reduce disparities, improve mental health, and foster trust in care, we must understand how gender prejudice operates not only in policy, but in conversation. In tone. In silence.

To complement IGD, I also propose Intergender Bias Theory (IBT) —a framework for analyzing the structural architecture of gender-type prejudice. IBT examines how laws, curricula, and institutional norms enforce rigid roles and marginalize deviation. Together, IGD and IBT offer a dual lens: one that captures both the macro-level scaffolding of bias and the micro-level choreography of interaction.

Let me be clear: retiring the term misogyny is not an act of denial. It is an act of evolution. It is a recognition that our language must grow with our understanding. That our frameworks must reflect the complexity of the world we now inhabit.

So I call on you:

Academics , to revise your syllabi, your research, your theories.
Legal scholars , to expand your statutes, your protections, your definitions.
Educators , to teach emotional literacy, role deconstruction, and relational justice.
Clinicians , to recognize IGD in patient care and to train for relational sensitivity.

Let us move from naming contempt to understanding connection. Let us shift from binary blame to systemic insight. Let us unscript ourselves—and write a new language of liberation.

This is not the end of a conversation. It is the beginning of a movement.

Thank you.

(snip-To read in Latin, French, Spanish, or Arab, click through to the Substack)

A Story From Imani Gandy:

Trump’s Second Term Hits Different Now That I’m Out—Opinion

Sep 24, 2025, 9:00am Imani Gandy

The target on my back got bigger once I stepped into the light.

Brown hands making a heart shape with the colors of the Pride flag filling the heart. The hands are placed over top of a red background with a gavel, Project 2025 papers, the U.S. Capitol, and hearts sketched into it. Queer people don’t have the luxury of treating Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ actions as a simple policy debate. Cage Rivera/Rewire News Group

I often joke about being a Meredith Baxter gay. You may remember her as Meredith Baxter Birney, the woman who played Elyse Keaton on Family Ties. She came out as a lesbian in 2009, when she was 62. I don’t know why Baxter is stuck in my mind as the quintessential “coming out later in life” queen. Plenty of people have come out late in life, but I’m firmly Gen X, so somehow she became my northstar of late-stage queerness.

When I finally came out at 50 in 2024, it wasn’t particularly dramatic. It was quiet and overdue. Something inside me had been waiting for years, tapping its foot, wondering when I’d finally be ready to stop pretending. Maybe that’s why I’m writing this column—to elicit a reaction that’s more dramatic than “no shit, Imani.”

Coming out later in life means you’ve probably already got bad knees and sciatica. I certainly do. I can’t drop it low anymore unless there’s a paramedic nearby to hoist me up. I missed the whole glamorous L Word era because, even though I knew I was at least a little gay around the edges, I had no idea what to do about it. I was even living in Los Angeles when The L Word was on the air. I knew all the places I could go if I wanted to spread my gay wings.

But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just kept plodding on and trying to date men. I even considered marrying two different men in my 20s and 30s. And I bless the rains down in Africa that I didn’t, because both marriages would have ended up in disaster.

Sometimes I grieve for the queer Imani who could have been tearing it up in Los Angeles in 2002. But I can’t go back; I can only move forward. And I’m moving forward with an additional identity that colors the way I move through the world.

And on top of that, I’m moving through that world under Trump 2.0.

As a Black woman, I never needed Donald Trump to show me who he was. I clocked him from the jump. Racist, misogynist, wannabe strongman—it was all right there. His first term was terrifying. Not in the politics is messy way, but in the this man will torch democracy if doing so makes him feel powerful way.

But this time hits different. Because now I’m out.

Project 2025’s ‘dark plan’ for LGBTQ+ rights

When Trump was in office the first time, I wasn’t living openly as a queer woman. I fought his administration on reproductive rights, voting rights, immigration, and racial justice in part by highlighting the misinformation and half-truths that are the core features of the conservative effort to impose Christian theocracy on queer people, immigrants, people of color—on basically anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into their straight, white, Christian box.

That’s because I’m a person who deeply believes in justice. Hell, I’ve dedicated my life to reproductive justice even though I’ve never been pregnant. Never had an abortion. (My girlfriend says it’s because I’m extremely empathetic and I hate injustice.)

But I didn’t feel the daily, stomach-clenching fear of watching a government try to erase LGBTQ+ rights while knowing my own life was on the line.

Now I do.

(Imani’s new podcast drops on Sept. 25, 2025. Subscribe to Boom! Lawyered to be the first to hear it.)

Trump’s first term was hardly neutral on queer people. He banned trans people from serving in the military. He rescinded guidance telling schools to protect trans students. His Department of Justice claimed in court that businesses should be able to fire workers just for being gay. He proposed gutting nondiscrimination protections in health care so doctors could refuse to treat trans patients. He appointed judges who seem to pride themselves on being hostile to LGBTQ+ rights.

Now, we’ve got Trump 2.0—and the plan is even darker. His allies wrote it all down in Project 2025, a 900-page blueprint for turning the country into a Christian nationalist theocracy. Project 2025 is about reframing queer identity and sexual expression as obscenity, criminalizing it, and pushing LGBTQ+ people out of public life.

The Supreme Court is already helping this project along, as I wrote back in July. This past term, the Court handed Christian conservatives two major wins: Mahmoud v. Taylor and Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton.

In Mahmoud, religious parents in Maryland didn’t want their kids reading age-appropriate LGBTQ+-inclusive books like Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, Prince & Knight, Pride Puppy! These children’s books don’t contain anything graphic or explicit; they just acknowledge that queer families exist.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court sided with the parents. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said parents should get a heads-up and the chance to opt out of any lessons with LGBTQ+ content “until all appellate review in this case is completed”—a process that could take years.

Alito gussied up his argument as “religious liberty,” arguing that requiring parents to submit their children to instruction that contradicts their religious beliefs constitutes a burden on religious exercise. But let’s be real: It’s a green light for parents to purge classrooms of queer content. Schools under pressure won’t build complex opt-out systems for kids whose parents object to these texts. They’ll just pull the books from classrooms.

Then there’s the Free Speech Coalition case. The Supreme Court upheld a law Texas passed in 2023 requiring age verification to access “sexually explicit” content online. Sounds like it’s about porn, right? But Project 2025 calls for a ban on pornography not just in the good, old-fashioned sense of the word. It expands the definition of porn in a way that can easily be interpreted to cover materials commonly found in a high school library, like books on sexual health, puberty, and information on sexual orientation and identity for LGBTQ+ youth.

To the architects of Project 2025, a book on puberty or a novel with queer characters is basically Hustler magazine.

Put Mahmoud and Free Speech Coalition together, and you see the playbook: Queer identity equals obscenity. Queer books? Obscene. Queer websites? Obscene. Porn? Criminal. Once you collapse all of that into the same bucket, it’s open season on LGBTQ+ people and culture.

This is the blueprint Trump and his allies are running with. Not just another round of chaos, but a coordinated effort to erase queer life—through schools, libraries, the internet, and the courts.

That’s why this second term feels different

It’s not that I didn’t know Trump was dangerous before—I did. But because I’m out now, I feel these attacks land in a new place.

It’s my life. My love. My newly-formed family. My right to be visible without being treated like contraband or pretending that my girlfriend, Portia, is my sister.

Coming out didn’t make Trump more dangerous. It made the danger he presents impossible to intellectualize away.

Straight people can treat this as just another policy debate. Queer people don’t have that luxury. We know our lives and relationships are bargaining chips in a theocracy that Christian nationalists are trying to build one opt-out, one website ban, one court case at a time.

So yeah, Trump’s second term hits different because the target on my back got bigger once I stepped into the light.

And that’s the gut punch: Trump doesn’t just threaten democracy in the abstract now—he threatens the most personal parts of my life.

Reblog From Janet

Reblog from Katelyn Burns

Still Trying To Learn This, Myself-

Teach me by Jenny Lawson (thebloggess)
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Hello, friend.

This last week started badly with Hailey having another case of meningitis, but ended incredibly, with Hailey bouncing back and me finding absolute treasures at Shelley Duvall’s house. (Long story. It’s on my blog.) And it was sprinkled with little bits of insanity as internet rapture jokes (did you know it’s supposed to rapture?) made me laugh while also lightly triggering my past religious trauma. Ah, the complicated pleasures of being alive!

I’m trying to focus less on the loud bullshit in the world that I can’t control, and focus more on the quiet good in the world that inspires me to keep going and to do small things to make the world better. It is really hard though because I tend to hyper-focus on “SOMEONE ON THE INTERNET IS WRONG AND/OR MEAN” rather than “Someone on the internet is kind and calming and has a good plan to help others that I can support.” How long will this well-intentioned plan last? Probably 4-6 hours, with my record. But it’s worth a shot.

And that’s what this week’s doodle is about.

“Teach me how to give no fucks about assholes. (Please.)”

I super crazy love you. Thank you for being a bright spot to focus on in a sometimes dark little world. You make a difference.

Love,

Jenny

(snip)

Intrigue & Drama At The Miss International Queen Pageant

I still think pageants suck as a way for women to get themselves through school/training.-A

Pageant For Trans Women Ends In Drama As Contestants Snub The Black Winner From USA

The crowning of the new Miss International Queen ignited social media outrage, with viewers calling out racism and micro-aggressions among fellow contestants.

By B.Kadijat Towolawi Published September 22, 2025

When Miss USA, Midori Monet, a statuesque Black trans beauty, was crowned Miss International Queen 2025, her victory was met with a frosty reception from her fellow contestants. What should have been a moment of celebration devolved into an awkward scene as the other contestants, all transgender women, largely ignored the newly crowned queen, instead flocking to Miss Cuba, the visibly displeased first runner-up.

And to make matters even messier, Miss Cuba, Olivia Lauren, later spoke out about Monet’s alleged behavior, and social media is sounding off about it. Grab a seat because it’s a lot to unpack.

The Miss International Queen, held annually in Pattaya, Thailand, is the world’s largest and most prestigious beauty pageant for transgender women. Since its launch in 2004, the competition has provided trans women with a platform to showcase their talent, raising global awareness and celebrating inclusion. But according to social media, Monét’s crowning moment was anything but celebratory.

In a now-viral TikTok clip, Monét and Cuba’s Oliva Lauren waited for the winner to be announced. When Monét was named Miss International Queen 2025, the stage erupted in excitement but not for Miss USA who was named the winner.

@real_missosology
𝐀𝐔𝐃𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖 | Announcement of Winner: Miss International Queen 2025
♬ original sound – Missosology – Missosology

But instead of embracing Monét, the other contestants swarmed to Miss Cuba, the first runner-up, creating a moment that was head-scratching.

@real_missosology
Drama in Miss International Queen 2025 – contestants cheered for the 1st runner-up, Cuba’s Olivia Lauren
♬ original sound – Missosology – Missosology

Social media immediately reacted. “The fact that most of the women ran to the runner-up and not the winner speaks volumes to their character,” one TikTok user wrote. This is an absolute representation of what Black women encounter daily.”

Another pointed out that Lauren had now lost to Monét twice — first at Miss International Queen USA, then again on the international stage.

Then things began to escalate. In a post-pagent interview, Miss Cuba openly called out what she described as “bullying” throughout the competition. “The two that you see standing next to me have made it impossible for me to enjoy 100% of it,” Lauren said, referring to Miss USA and Miss Vietnam. “They have tortured me throughout the whole thing, as well as my other sisters, each and every single day.” She described her experience as “very sour” and claimed she would continue to stand her ground to speak her truth.

But Monét, The Black winner kept it classy, offering a different perspective. In her own interview, she urged people to focus on love rather feeding into negativity. “There is so much hate going around. There is so much envy, bitterness, jealousy, all the things that plague this world. I want you to know that it’s okay to believe in yourself.”

Not missing a beat, the winner ended on a positive note: “Karma is real. Love is real. It’s not about what you do, but about your actions are about how you make people feel.”

The drama became a viral online conversation. While there were a few who questioned if Miss USA really did bully Miss Cuba, but most were like TikTok creator Timothais, who highlighted potential racial undertones in the way the drama unfolded, noting, “Now is it sour grapes? Who knows. But I can guarantee you if Miss Cuba had won, we wouldn’t have known anything about what happened to her backstage.” (snip-embedded on the page linked in the title above)

Some tiktokers accused Miss Cuba of being the real bully. “I really think Cuba was the bully, probably with micro aggressions,” one TikTok user wrote. “And Miss USA and the 2nd runner up was not having it. So, why not be the victim.” Others argued that the cold response toward Monét reflected deeper issues in pageant culture.

Still, another TikTok user chimed in: “Cuba was very messy and distasteful! Especially in the interview! That’s why she didn’t win.”

Others celebrated Miss USA for carrying herself with grace beyond the controversy. As one fan summed it up: “Style and grace transcends it all. She won for that reason. Congratulations to that beautiful Black queen.”

In the end, Miss Cuba apologized calling it all a … misunderstanding.

I Learn More From “Them” Every Time I Take a Little Time To Browse There-

Leslie Feinberg Changed Transmasc History. Here Are 7 of Hir Quotes to Live By

From Stone Butch Blues to Drag King Dreams, Feinberg left a lasting imprint on the trans liberation movement.

By Quispe López August 29, 2025

“Remember me as a revolutionary communist” were beloved author, labor organizer, and trans liberation fighter Leslie Feinberg’s final words on November 15, 2014.

Best known for hir seminal 1993 novel Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg forever changed the way we thought about transgender life in the United States. In the semi-autobiographical work, readers follow Jess Goldberg, a working class Jewish butch lesbian, as they navigate the hardships of being gender-nonconforming in a transphobic world, transition, passing, and trying to find queer community through it all. It is a novel so attuned to transmasculine experience that Stone Butch Blues to this day remains a shorthand and point of connection for many trans men, nonbinary people, and trans lesbians broadly.

That’s because Feinberg saw writing as a tool to break down the rigidity of previous understandings of transition. Instead, zie pushed for an expansive view of the term “transgender” — one that left space for the “gender outlaws” of the world who have existed beyond binary Western conceptions of gender since the beginning of time.

To say Feinberg permanently altered the fabric of the trans liberation movement would be an understatement. But to understand hir legacy and work, you need to know who zie was in life. Born September 1, 1949 and raised in Buffalo, New York, Feinberg grew up in a working-class Jewish family and was employed in factories at a young age. It’s through hir labor organizing alongside other butch lesbians and transmasculine people of the time that Feinberg became connected to broader liberation movements like Palestinian solidarity, the anti-racist movement, and transgender rights.

Feinberg’s work underscored the complexity of gender for many trans people, and zie didn’t shy away from trying to get cis people to understand. Following the breakout success of Stone Butch Blues, Feinberg went on to be one of the most visible trans organizers of the 1990s, appearing on popular television programs like The Joan Rivers Show to speak about realities of trans life. Zie went on to write several books on trans life and liberation, such as Drag King Dreams, Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, and Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue. As a proud member of the Workers of the World Party, Feinberg emphasized how our struggles for freedom — whether it be gender, race, or class — are all intrinsically linked. Hir legacy insists that in order to free ourselves, we must understand that we are all fighting forms of injustice attached to the same chimera of oppression.

As we celebrate Feinberg’s birthday and Labor Day on September 1, it is a natural time to reflect on hir legacy, work, and contributions to trans people’s collective liberation. Below, we’ve compiled a non-comprehensive list of salient quotes from speeches, books, and articles Feinberg crafted during hir life.

“If you don’t name an oppression, you can’t fight it, you can’t organize around it. We want our own voices to be heard.” — The Joan Rivers Show

A 1993 episode of The Joan Rivers Show about trans people featured Leslie Feinberg alongside famed playwright Kate Bornstein and actor David Harrison. Rivers interviewed each of her guests on their experiences with gender, often asking invasive questions about “the surgery” and what people put down on forms and identity documents. But Feinberg took it as the ultimate opportunity to humanize trans people on national television, cutting through the sensationalizing to share the realities of life outside the Western gender binary. Feinberg even went so far as to point out the existence of gender variant people in cultures all over the world prior to colonization, such as Two-Spirit people — a radical thought for the daytime television audience of the 1990s.

“Understanding the amount of persecution and harassment we have in this society is gonna strengthen the fights from affirmative action to pay equity for all of us,” zie said.

Even when Rivers facetiously dug in with questions about why Feinberg didn’t conform to one gender or another, zie flipped the question and asked why the system existed at all. Rather than spouting off theory, Feinberg made the contradiction tangible by speaking on hir own lived experiences as a nonbinary butch. The whole episode is worth viewing in full.

“But very quickly I discovered that passing didn’t just mean slipping below the surface, it meant being buried alive.” — Stone Butch Blues

Feinberg’s seminal novel wasn’t just a reflection on being a trans in a transphobic society; the semi-biographical work offered a nuanced portrayal of the intersection of butch identity and nonbinary transness. Jess Goldberg, Stone Butch Blues’ protagonist, is forced to pass as a man for safety due to the dangers of being an openly gender non-conforming person in the 1950s and ’60s. But Jess is left feeling entirely isolated . A departure from the “born in the wrong body” narrative of transness, Feinberg instead paints a picture of being forced into a box for safety — and the subsequent loss of community that going stealth can present.

“I was still me on the inside, trapped in there with all my wounds and fears. But I was no longer me on the outside,” Jess reflects in the novel.

“I’m not saying we’ll live to see some sort of paradise. But just fighting for change makes you stronger. Not hoping for anything will kill you for sure.” — Stone Butch Blues

While Stone Butch Blues grapples with heavy themes like the loss of community, transphobia, and social isolation, it ends on a note of hope for our protagonist. In addition to highlighting the harsh realities of being trans, Feinberg always stood steadfast in our need to find strength in each other in the face of it. At the nadir of their isolation after moving to New York City, Jess meets Ruth, a trans woman who reminds them that the only way to survive in the face of transphobia is to rely on each other.

“As I look at them, each one, they are so beautiful and so strong they seem larger than life to me. But they’re not. They are real people. Flawed, like me. No heroic proportions. Just human.” — Drag King Dreams

Another work of fiction, Feinberg’s 2006 political novel Drag King Dreams follows Max Rabinowitz, a trans man who is suddenly catapulted back into social justice spaces by a tragedy after losing his joy for organizing.

The novel often invokes real-life trans figures such as Marsha P. Johnson to shore up its core thesis that all of our struggles for liberation are delicately interconnected. We might all be flawed, and it can be hard to work together at times, but when it counts, we need to put aside our differences and fight. At the culmination of the novel, Max realizes that you don’t need to be perfect to be a good comrade and make a difference.

“Maybe this is what legends are made of — real lives lifted up in retrospect to mythic proportions,” Feinberg writes.

“One banner particularly haunted me: it read ‘Stop the War Against Black America,’ which made me realize it wasn’t just distant wars that needed opposing.” — Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman

Feinberg always emphasized the interconnected nature of all forms of oppression in hir work. Zie underwood that, rather than fighting in individual silos, it’s imperative to understand the ways that suppressive societal forces work in tandem. In hir 1996 historical reflection on transness, Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, Feinberg speaks about an experience they had at a protest for Palestinian liberation that opened their eyes to the symbiotic relationship between white supremacy, colonialism both abroad and domestically, and trans liberation.

“When our lives are suppressed, everyone is denied an understanding of the rich diversity of sex and gender expression and experience that exist in human society.” — Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman

By outlining the history of gender variance all over the world, Feinberg reminds readers that trans people are nothing new; we have always been here. Often, we were even revered.

“We have not always been forced to pass, to go underground, in order to work and live. We have a right to live openly and proudly,” Feinberg writes.

“No one’s sex reassignment or fluidity of gender threatens your right to self-identify and self-expression. On the contrary, our struggle bolsters your right to your identity. My right to be me is tied with a thousand threads to your right to be you.” — Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue

In this collection of speeches published in 1998, Feinberg reminds us that trans liberation has always been connected to the fight for cisgender gay, lesbian, and bisexual rights. Historically, and even to date, trans people have faced pushback from some cisgender people in the community who believe that the fight for trans rights will invalidate their own struggles. A constant advocate for solidarity between movements, Feinberg always asserted that without trans rights, there would be no gay rights.

Good Info Here-Care To Prepare

Every Recent Move That’s Been Made in the New Fight to Overturn Gay Marriage

The Supreme Court is expected to decide this fall whether they will formally take up a case that is asking them to reverse their decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.

By Nico DiAlesandro and Hope Pisoni, Uncloseted Media September 19, 2025

In the U.S. today, there are over 800,000 married gay couples. And 67% of Americans say they support marriage equality, including 50% of Republicans.

Despite this, many of the groups that fought to prevent the Obergefell ruling are now ramping up their ongoing fight to overturn it.

If Obergefell were overturned, it could become illegal for gay couples to marry in the 32 states that still have bans on the books. As the Supreme Court mulls over whether or not to take a case asking them to overturn the historic ruling, we’ve documented every step that has been taken in the past five years to threaten gay marriage in the U.S.

Oct. 5, 2020

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rejects a petition to hear former Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis’ appeal in Ermold v. Davis, a case brought by a same-sex couple after Davis denied them a marriage license in 2015. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, writes that the Obergefell ruling has “ruinous consequences for religious liberty” and that it “enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots.” They express their desire to see Obergefell overturned, writing that SCOTUS “has created a problem that only it can fix.”

The following day, Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal group and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)-designated hate group, announces their intent to file a petition with the Supreme Court to “address Obergefell” after Davis’ case moves to a trial court.

Nov. 5, 2020

Nevada overturns an 18-year-old ban on same-sex marriage, making it the first state to enshrine gay couples’ right to marry in their constitution. Nevadans vote 62% in favor of the reversal.

“It feels good that we let the voters decide,” Equality Nevada President Chris Davin told NBC News. “The people said this, not judges or lawmakers. This was direct democracy—it’s how everything should be,” he said, adding that the LGBTQ community wants something concrete to protect same-sex marriage in case “the federal level ever revokes it—which is what a lot of folks are worried about with the new Supreme Court.”

June 17, 2021

SCOTUS rules in favor of Catholic Social Services (CSS), which sued the city of Philadelphia for ending its foster-care placement contract with CSS because of their refusal to certify same-sex couples as foster parents. The ruling, which states that Philadelphia’s termination of CSS’s contract violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, provides a carve-out to Obergefell.

June 24, 2022

Roe v. Wade is overturned. In a concurring opinion with the majority, Thomas sets his eyes on Obergefell and Lawrence v. Texas—a ruling that in essence legalized gay sex. He writes that the Court should reconsider those cases since they used similar arguments to Roe v. Wade.

“[W]e should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous.’”

Despite Thomas’ opinion, the majority explicitly states that “[n]othing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

Dec. 13, 2022

President Joe Biden signs the Respect For Marriage Act into law. This solidifies federal and interstate recognition of same-sex marriages even if Obergefell is overturned. The law is a backstop to the attacks on same-sex marriage.

Dec. 19, 2022

In a response to the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) says that “the chances of the Supreme Court overturning Obergefell are (unfortunately) slim to none.”

June 30, 2023

SCOTUS rules 6-3 that Colorado cannot force a website designer, who is represented by ADF, to create wedding websites for same-sex couples. The Court says doing so would violate the designer’s First Amendment right to free speech because her work is considered creative expression. This decision narrows how public-accommodation laws apply and creates another carve-out for Obergefell to be overturned.

Sept. 13, 2023

After a court ruling holds Kim Davis liable for damages to gay couples who she refused to sign marriage licenses for, Liberty Counsel discusses the potential to appeal the case up to the Supreme Court and use it to argue for Obergefell to be overturned.

July 8, 2024

The GOP’s national party platform, Make America Great Again!, drops explicit anti-Obergefell language from its plank. Despite this, the fight to overturn same-sex marriage continues to heat up.

Jan. 22, 2025

Tennessee lawmakers introduce a bill that would allow for “covenant marriages,” an explicitly religious form of marriage license that can only be given to a man and a woman and does not allow for divorce in most circumstances. Covenant marriages already exist in Arizona, Arkansas and Louisiana. Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri have recently introduced similar bills.

Jan. 27, 2025

Idaho’s House of Representatives passes a resolution calling on the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell. The resolution was drafted by MassResistance, a far right group that wrote a book called “The Health Hazards of Homosexuality” and that has 24 chapters around the world. One of their newest chapters is in Kenya, where the group says it holds trainings for youth to “resist the LGBT agenda” in schools.

The Idaho resolution would go on to create a domino effect. Lawmakers in Michigan, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota introduce similar measures in their states asking SCOTUS to overturn Obergefell.

Republican Rep. Josh Schriver, who introduced the resolution in Michigan, had previously posted to X: “Make gay marriage illegal again. This is not remotely controversial, nor extreme.”

June 10, 2025

At the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a national meeting of more than 10,000 church representatives from America’s largest Protestant denomination, the convention’s resolutions committee introduces a resolution calling on lawmakers and SCOTUS to overturn laws and court rulings, “including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family.”

SBC delegates overwhelmingly vote in favor of a gay marriage ban as well as the reversal of Obergefell.

June 12, 2025

Liberty Counsel releases a statement titled “Obergefell ‘Marriage’ Opinion Must Be Overturned.” The group’s founder and chairman, Mathew Staver, says:

“The U.S. Constitution provides no foundation for ‘same-sex marriage.’ Obergefell was wrongly decided whereby the Court created a right that is nowhere to be found in the text. We will petition the U.S. Supreme Court because Kim Davis’ case underscores why the High Court should overturn Obergefell v. Hodges. Obergefell threatens the religious liberty of Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.”

June 23, 2025

ADF publishes an article titled “Despite 10 Years of Obergefell, Kids Still Need a Mother and Father.” The article outwardly condemns gay marriage as bad for children, marking the group’s most explicit statement of opposition to the ruling in years. Weeks later, the group’s vice president of appellate advocacy publishes an essay arguing a similar premise.

July 24, 2025

Kim Davis files a petition asking SCOTUS to revisit and overturn Obergefell, saying the case was wrongfully decided. The petition will need just four votes from the justices to be heard by the Court.

Aug. 15, 2025

On a podcast, Hillary Clinton expresses her concern that Obergefell will be overturned:

“American voters, and to some extent the American media, don’t understand how many years the Republicans have been working in order to get us to this point. … It took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade. … The Supreme Court will hear a case about gay marriage; my prediction is they will do to gay marriage what they did to abortion—they will send it back to the states. … Anybody in a committed relationship out there in the LGBTQ community, you ought to consider getting married because I don’t think they’ll undo existing marriages, but I fear they will undo the national right.”

Sept. 7, 2025

In an interview with CBS News, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett argues SCOTUS rulings should not be based on “opinion polls” and that the Court should not be imposing its own values on the American people.

Fall 2025

In fall 2025, SCOTUS is expected to decide whether or not it will revisit Obergefell. If it grants a review, oral arguments will likely be heard in spring 2026 with a decision by late June 2026, during Pride Month.

What Always Happens, Explained

Politics / September 19, 2025

Threatening Vulnerable People Is No Way to Mourn Someone Who Was Murdered

Those who had nothing to do with the violence against Charlie Kirk are being menaced—just like always.

Elie Mystal

Charlie Kirk’s suspected murderer was a 22-year-old white guy from Utah, but in the week since he was shot, at least six Historically Black Colleges and Universities have been forced to cancel classes due to bomb threats made against their students and faculty. Columnist Karen Attiah got fired from The Washington Post. Representative Ilhan Omar was nearly censured. Countless Black people have been harassed and, worse, countless immigrants have been threatened with the possibility of deportation, all for insufficiently respecting the life and death of a white supremacist.

Charlie Kirk’s suspected murderer was, again, a 22-year-old white guy from Utah who, I’ll bet, does not own either of my books and has most likely never read a single word I have written over my nearly two decades of public life, but this is what my mentions on Elon Musk’s apartheid-curious platform have looked like for a week:

Not that we needed more evidence, but the past week has been Exhibit One that this country hates Black people, and will do everything it can to silence, harass, and even murder us. A white man killed another white man for reasons we still don’t know, with a gun I don’t think he should have had, but Black people are catching death threats. That doesn’t make sense, unless you understand how deeply racist this country is. Black people are being fired from jobs and harassed online for insufficiently venerating a white supremacist, and having the temerity to describe his beliefs in public. It’s as if we’re all being asked to say our name is “Toby” instead of Kunta Kinte while being informed that the beatings will continue until morale improves. The white-led government, and many white employers, white-owned sports leagues, white public intellectuals, and a non-zero number of Black assimilationists and assorted would-be overseers are largely playing along with this racist gaslighting, proving once again that Black people have few, if any, real allies.

Somebody who considers themselves a good-white-ally(™) is just about to type “not all white people” or “also Matt Dowd” or “look at what happened to Jimmy Kimmel” in response to this article, as if I give a shit. What’s happening to white folks is that they’re being made to feel like Black people are made to feel every freaking day. Whenever white people catch a cold, Black people catch the flu, but God forbid I do a bit of triage before handing out chicken soup and Sprite to white folks feeling a bit under the weather these days.

The same thing is happening to the trans community, and the LGBTQ community more broadly, because when Kirk wasn’t railing against Black people, he was trying to stamp the LGBTQ community out of existence.

At this point, I’m supposed to turn and analyze what makes white males violently erupt against vulnerable people who have nothing to do with their problems. I’m supposed to talk about white gun culture and how it inevitably leads to racial and cultural violence. I’m supposed to talk about how Trump and his white supremacist government have given the very worst people in this country permission to carry out violence against any person they don’t like, with the promise of pardons should they undertake violence that pleases him. I know I’m supposed to address these topics, because these are the questions that have been floating around my professional networks for a week.

But even addressing those questions recenters the conversation around white folks and whiteness. It’s asking, “Now why did the monkey throw its poop at that fellow?” before you secure soap and a shower for the person covered in feces. At the moment, I’m just a little too beset by threats against myself and even my mother to think deeply about why white people do this. Analyzing why young white men are so dangerous to me is an intellectual luxury I do not have right now. I’m just trying to survive America for another week.

Luckily, after a fashion, I have some experience with this. This is not the first round of death threats I’ve gotten, and, unless they successfully kill me this time, it won’t be the last. I’ve been a Black man in the public eye for a while now, and you don’t get to be an old public Black person without developing a few coping mechanisms to keep you going. For a lot of people currently under threat, this is their first rodeo. There are, for instance, a number of staffers at The Nation who are for the first time having to live with what I live with every day, since the vice president went after our publication. There are folks who were never on the kind of violent watch lists Kirk created who now find themselves on the wrong end of the online rope.

It is terrifying to be in the eye of violent white folks. You have to take them seriously when they say they want you to come to harm. I cannot promise that you, or I, will survive what they’ll do next, but here are some tips to make it through this current phase of white America.

Stick Together

They cannot kill, fire, or silence all of us. The violent people are predators and if you look at every natural predator on this earth, their first move is always to separate their target from the herd.

People must resist the urge to say some people deserve to be harassed and menaced by the government and the online right, as if to distinguish the people who deserve death threats from those who are “doing it the right way.”

Silence in the face of white supremacy is complicity with white supremacy. If we all resolve to not stay silent, we become a truth-telling hydra. Every time the white wing gets one of us, there should be others ready to take our places. (snip-MORE-excellent information)

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/black-people-threatened-after-assasination

Good News! Get On The Phone-

Bipartisan bill seeks to reinstate national suicide hotline for LGBTQ+ youth

Sep 17, 2025

Orion Rummler

This story was originally reported by Orion Rummler of The 19th. Meet Orion and read more of his reporting on gender, politics and policy.

If you or a loved one are in crisis, please call or text 988 or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a live volunteer crisis counselor.

Sens. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, and Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, introduced a bipartisan bill on Wednesday to re-establish national emergency suicide prevention services for LGBTQ+ youth — which have been stripped by the Trump administration at a time when the vulnerable group needs it most.

In July, the Trump administration terminated the 988 hotline’s LGBTQ+ services, which connected young people in crisis with counselors trained in supporting LGBTQ+ youth. This new bill, backed by the LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization Trevor Project as well as the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, would modify the Public Health Service Act to reinstate those services and require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to maintain them. The bill now moves to committee.

The Trevor Project estimates that more than 1.8 million LGBTQ+ young people seriously consider suicide each year in the United States, as they face high rates of bullying, assault and discrimination. And when the 2024 presidential race was called for Donald Trump, calls and texts to the Trevor Project’s own crisis hotlines spiked by 700 percent, as LGBTQ+ youth felt afraid about the outcome of the election.

“Given that LGBTQ+ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers, the need for these services remains pressing,” said Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, in a statement. “This is not about politics, or identity; this is about doing what is best to support our country’s highest risk populations — and save young people’s lives nationwide.”

During his first term in 2020, President Trump signed a bipartisan law to create 988 as a more accessible resource for mental health emergencies. The free hotline launched in July 2022. Since then, millions of people in crisis have turned to 988. And nearly 1.5 million of those calls, texts and chats were sent by young Americans seeking specialized LGBTQ+ services.

“We are in the middle of a mental health crisis, and the 988 lifeline saves lives, plain and simple,” said Baldwin, who wrote the original legislation to create the 988 hotline. Cutting funds for specialized services within 988 puts the lifeline in jeopardy, she said in a statement.

“There is absolutely no good reason that Donald Trump took away this specialized help for our LGBTQ youth. Mental health does not see partisan lines or geography,” the Wisconsin Democrat added.

The Paper Mask

I will never see a Robin Williams movie, an interview, or a stand-up without a tear in my eye. He made me laugh, he made me cry, he made me feel anger and he made me feel hope, all behind a mask paper-thin. He reveled in the joy of others, while in his heart he felt so alone. How few knew his hidden hurts? I feel the absence of this great man and am saddened that his joie de vivre was only a mask he used to protect us all.

My morning trek to the daily grind found me hearing about Charlie Kirk. I thought about the demands he made upon his audience; that they think his way, act his way, love his way, pray his way. Somehow those who think differently are more than a target for his former speeches, we have become enemies of our own government.

Again, I don’t want to see anyone hurt. But, what about those he made to feel alone?

What about those he made to feel hated? What about those he told ‘You don’t matter’? What about those he accused of horrible motives, intentions to commit crimes, just because they were different?

Why is crass, abusive, hateful, prejudiced, and violent words and actions acceptable to anyone? Why is it cheered in certain circles?

I have every right to be angry at those who sling abuse for political expediency. I have every right to be angry at those who whip the easily led mob into denying others their rights to be genuine, their hopes to feel love, their need for happiness. I’m so tired, so very tired of the justification, the hypocrisy, the gleeful ruination.

I so miss the promise of the 70’s. Change was supposed to come. I bought into the hype, only to see that the very fight continue. Maybe it’s not the era, maybe it’s just something in us that makes people keep doing this to each-other. I want to believe differently.