I am so depressed over the drive of the Fundamentalist Christian rights success at trying to erase the LGBTQ+ people. Now they are trying to again return to the discredited idea that sexual ordination can be changed if you torture a kid badly enough. I read so many horror stories of kids as young as 13 and 14 having their genitals hooked up to electrical shock devices, being beaten, being sexual abused so that they would be turned off by same sex hook ups, being curatively raped for both lesbian and gay boys, and so many more. And it doesn’t work. People can be forced to control behavior and lie about their feelings. But sexual attraction can not be changed.
I keep saying the same question to those straight cis people who think orientation or gender is simply a choice rebellious teenagers make. Can you willingly change your attraction from straight to gay and live that life for a year having sex with your same gender? Can you do happily what same sex couples do to please each other sexually? Can you stop being the gender you were assigned at birth and change every aspect of your gendered life and live that way for a few years to show me it is a choice? They tell me that is stupid and why should they … they are the normal ones!
I feel sorry for the kids because of the stories of abuse I have read about at these conversion camps, at these “therapist offices”. The male survivor site has an entire forum dedicated to this subject. Why is it so important to these people to wipe us out socially / publically. Why can’t they let the kids be, why must they sexually force them to be mini me straight cis clones of the parents.
As I said I don’t understand and I do know it is not all Christians. But seriously we need progressive Christian churches to stand up to these groups. After 9/11 we kept hearing people demand Muslims in the US denounce publically the terrorist act of other Muslims. Recently a Muslim won the democratic nominee for NY City and democratic politicians were demanding he denounce every bad thing ever done by a Muslim. Why is that a one way street? Shouldn’t white people be required to denounce bad white people? Shouldn’t Christians be required to speak out against hateful Christians.
I am seeing a return to the 1970s Anita Bryant rhetoric and no one seems to see the connection. She used her faith to claim that no one wanted to see gay teachers in public schools indoctrinating and recruiting (sexualizing) kids. Well these are the same words used against the gay teachers and trans people today by the republicans and hate Christians. It was the anti-Christian oppression Samuel Alito wrote in his ruling that just having books with people happy to celebrate a same sex wedding was discrimination against Christians who did not want people to be happy at same sex weddings. Read his ruling it really says that kids being read a picture book of people being happy at a same sex wedding is oppression and discrimination against Christians.
I am tired. I am 62 years old. I fought this fight as a child, suffered from it, faced the discrimination, lost jobs, got assaulted at work and school, lost promotions, and had hate poured out on me at every turn for at least 25 years. Hell as I was being raped as a child I had anti-gay bigotry screamed at me. Think on that for a mindfuck. Those raping me screamed I deserved it as a 7 year old because I clearly was a faggot. I lost my right to keep going with my Army career due to a new unit commander who bragged about his deep Christian faith. He called me into his office, told me he knew I was out to my unit and even though I was respected, well liked, and had the skills to save the unit even on the day I was leaving, he was not going to tolerate an “evil deviant homosexual” to be in the army or his unit. I feel so sorry for the kids kicked out of their homes to have to sell their bodies on the street to strangers for food and lodging due to this hate. I am so tired as history is repeating and I need to find the strength to fight for the LGBTQ+ kids once again. I don’t think I can. Hugs
The therapy practice tries to influence gender or sexuality identity and has been denounced by experts for negative effects to patients’ mental or physical health.
From left to right: Family Foundation president Victoria Cobb, Founding Freedoms Law Center lawyer Josh Hetzler, and counselors/plaintiffs John and Janet Raymond celebrate a court ruling to overturn a ban on talk-based conversion therapy. (Photo by Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)
A Henrico County Circuit Court judge ordered that licensed counselors be allowed to engage underage clients in a controversial form of talk therapy about gender identity and sexual orientation that medical and mental health experts say can be harmful.
The case underpinning the new consent decree with the Virginia Department of Health Professions stemmed from a 2020 state law banning “any practice or treatment that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” Last year, Front Royal-based counselors John and Janet Raymond challenged the ban.
“The Raymonds desired to engage in talk therapy with minors through voluntary conversations, prayer, and providing written materials such as Scripture, but Virginia’s law and regulations prohibited them from doing so,” read a Tuesday statement from the Founding Freedoms Law Center, the Family Foundation’s legal arm that represented the Raymonds in the case. The Center hailed the court’s ruling as a “landmark free speech victory.”
Conversion therapy entails attempts to change or influence a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The American Psychological Association has denounced conversion therapy, stating that it is not an accepted form of therapy based on medical or scientific evidence, as has the American Medical Association. The groups and advocates have also said conversion therapy is used as a tool to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and lifestyles.
Conversion therapy treatments have garnered national controversy over the years and range from inducing nausea, providing electric shocks to having people snap an elastic band around their wrist when they become aroused by same-sex erotic images or thoughts.
The Raymonds told the court they previously practiced talk therapy for conversion therapy clients, as they do with their other clients. The ban meant they couldn’t have conversations to try to guide clients away from embracing their sexual or gender identities. The new consent decree means they can practice conversion therapy again.
Opponents of the practice have argued that conversion therapy can put LGBTQ+ people at higher risk ofmental health issues like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse or suicide.
The Raymonds emphasized that the talk therapy they engage in with their clients is voluntary and stressed that nothing about their case should be construed as allowing any counselor to perform acts associated with conversion therapy, such as electro-shock therapy.
“With this court order, every counselor in Virginia will now be able to speak freely, truthfully and candidly with clients who are seeking to have those critical conversations about their identity and to hear faith-based insights from trusted professionals,” said Josh Hetzler, the couple’s legal counsel with the Founding Freedoms Law Center.
The Family Foundation is a Christian and conservative advocacy group and legal firm that opposes same-sex marriage, supports more parental input in public education, and supports increased restrictions on abortions. While the consent decree was ordered on June 4, Family Foundation and the plaintiffs announced it on July 1.
“We thank God that He gives us the freedom to speak, to believe, to seek His wisdom,” John Raymond said Tuesday in the Family Foundation’s office in Richmond — formerly a house that Confederate General Robert E. Lee rented following his surrender at Appomattox that ended the Civil War.
Raymond said he felt like Virginia’s 2020 law gave him no choice but to challenge it and called it a “hostile ideological invasion within our country.”
Likewise, Hetzler noted a “growing number of parents” seeking counseling services with a religious lens for their children “in an era when gender dysphoria has become a contagion among young people.”
Virginia lawmakers weigh in
Sen. Danica Roem, D-Prince William, noted on a press call Tuesday that there have been bipartisan efforts to support LGBTQ constituents in Virginia’s legislature in recent years. When the conversion therapy ban was clearing the House of Delegates five years ago, 11 Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in voting for it. Seven Republican lawmakers — to include then-delegate and now Attorney General Jason Miyares — abstained from voting. Over in the Senate, a former GOP lawmaker joined Democrats in supporting that version as well.
While Miyares did not express support or dissent in 2020, his office has signed the consent decree effectively lifting the ban on conversion therapy.
As attorney general, Miyares has pressed for banning transgender youth from participating in sports teams of their identity as a suite of anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in the state during Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration.
Localities have pushed back on former Gov. Ralph Northam’s order that transgender students be able to use the bathrooms of their identities. And an in-progress constitutional amendment to remove a defunct same-sex marriage ban from the state’s constitution has advanced with slim bipartisan support.
Advocates for that law say it’s important, as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has expressed interest in revisiting a decade-old ruling that protects gay marriage federally. He expressed the opinion after the court struck down federal abortion protections. Should marriage protections fall, Virginia is among states that would immediately ban the unions.
Roem reiterated the risks of conversion therapy, saying medical care for transgender people like hormone therapies or surgeries are constantly subject to medical review to assess quality of care, while talk-based conversion therapy isn’t.
Roem, the state’s first transgender senator, said she has been on the receiving end of efforts to dissuade her from her sexual identity but it never stopped her from embracing being transgender.
“I spent 13 years in Catholic school — I heard everything,” she said. “I am just as trans today at age 40 as I was when I got into Catholic school in 4th grade.”
Ultimately, what the conversion therapy ban came down to for Democrats, she and Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax said, is public health. Given how various medical associations have denounced conversion therapy, they felt it had no place in state-licensed counselor’s services.
“I have no problem if somebody wants to go look at religious counseling from their priest or their minister, their rabbi, their imam — that’s perfectly fine,” Surovell said. “When somebody goes to get therapy from somebody licensed by the Commonwealth of Virginia, there’s a different set of rules applied. You can’t just say whatever you want because you have a license. That’s why we have professional standards, that’s why we have statutes.”
While several studies have shown negative mental and physical health impacts of conversion therapy on LGBTQ+ people, the Raymonds said a 2024 report in the United Kingdom called for more research on gender identity services for minors. However, the report’s author noted their belief that “no LGBTQ+ group should be subjected to conversion practice.”
With an appeal deadline having passed, lawmakers could further tweak their 2020 law when they convene next year.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect that the order was issued in June and announced in July. Sen. Surovell also said “imam” rather than “mom.”
In their celebratory video below, the group rants about LGBTQ “contagion among young people.”
Last year the Family Foundation joined a hate group coalition seeking to “save” the 2024 Republican Party platform from caving on LGBTQ issues.
In 2023, the Family Foundation successfully pressured Virginia lawmakers against repealing the state’s still-existing ban on same-sex marriage.
Also in 2023, a spokesman for the group claimed that they’d been refused service by a Virginia restaurant due to their anti-LGBTQ activism.
MONUMENTAL VICTORY
Founding Freedoms Law Center won a major, free speech victory for all Virginia counselors—securing their right to offer compassionate, common-sense talk therapy to minors who seek help with unwanted sexual feelings or identity confusion. pic.twitter.com/ahoJ5rY68J
— The Family Foundation of Virginia (@TFFVA) July 1, 2025
July 2, 1776 New Jersey became the first British colony in America to grant partial women’s suffrage. The new constitution (temporary if there were a reconciliation with Great Britain) granted the vote to all those “of full age, who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money,” including non-whites and widows; married women were not able to own property under common law.
July 2, 1777 Vermont became the first of the United States to abolish slavery.
July 2, 1809 Alarmed by the growing encroachment of whites squatting on Native American lands, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh called on all Indians to unite and resist. By 1810, he had organized the Ohio Valley Confederacy, which united Indians from the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Menominee, Ottawa, and Wyandotte nations. For several years, Tecumseh’s Indian Confederacy successfully delayed further white settlement in the region. Chief Tecumseh Tecumseh’s efforts
July 2, 1839 Slave ship Early in the morning, captive Africans on the Cuban slave ship Amistad, led by Joseph Cinquè (a Mende from what is now Sierra Leone), mutinied against their captors, killing the captain and the cook, and seized control of the schooner. Jose Ruiz, a Spaniard and planter from Puerto Principe, Cuba, had bought the 49 adult males on the ship, paying $450 each, as slaves for his sugar plantation. More about Amistad Joseph Cinquè
July 2, 1964 Jobs and Freedom march April 28, 1963, Washington DC U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, thus barring discrimination in public accommodations (restaurants, stores, theatres, etc.), employment, and voting. The law had survived an 83-day filibuster in the U.S. Senate by 21 members from southern states. “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come,” said President Johnson to his press secretary, Bill Moyers later that day. He anticipated a shift in white southern voting from the Democratic to the Republican party in response to the law. Massive demonstrations a year earlier ensured passage of the Act.
July 2, 1992 President George H.W. Bush (the elder) announced that the United States had completed the worldwide withdrawals of all its ground- and sea-launched tactical nuclear weapons [see September 27, 1991].
Yes, this passed in the Senate, thanks to the VP’s tiebreaking vote. However, it’s still got rows to hoe in the US House; Spkr. Johnson wants to vote tomorrow. The thing to remember about our US Reps is, they’re up for election each 2 years. So, while firmly directing them in dealing with this dreadful bill, also firmly yet lovingly remind them that the OBBB will be hanging around their necks every step of the way of their campaigns like a bubblegum machine golden giant dollar sign necklace, if they vote in favor.
(Actually, if you didn’t when you contacted your Senators last week, you can still remind them of the same thing, unless they voted against, in which case, Thank Them. It took bravery to vote against, and they need to know we have their backs. And thank you very much. Now call.)
I hope everyone and their pets enjoy at least some peace these next few days! I hate fireworks, though I don’t mind them far away or on TV. I did used to like them, when I was a kid. 🎆
July 1, 1917 8000 anti-war marchers demonstrated in Boston. Their banners read: “IS THIS A POPULAR WAR, WHY CONSCRIPTION? WHO STOLE PANAMA? WHO CRUSHED HAITI? WE DEMAND PEACE.” The parade was attacked by soldiers and sailors, on orders from their officers.
July 1, 1944 A massive general strike and nonviolent protest in Guatemala led to the resignation of dictator Jorge Ubico who had harshly ruled Guatemala for over a decade. Juan José Arévalo Bermejo On March 15 of the following year, Dr. Juan José Arévalo Bermejo took office as the first popularly elected president of Guatemala, and promptly called for democratic reforms establishing the nation’s social security and health systems, land reform (redistribution of farmland not under cultivation to the landless with compensation to the owners), and a government bureau to look after native Mayan concerns. Jorge Ubico A decade of peaceful democratic rule followed, until a CIA-backed coup in 1954 ushered in a new, even more brutal era of dictatorial and genocidal regimes. [see June 27, 1954]
July 1, 1946 The United States exploded a 20-kiloton atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
July 1, 1968 Sixty-one nations, including the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union, signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which set up systems to monitor use of nuclear technology and prevent more nations from acquiring nuclear weapons. 190 countries are now signatories; Israel, India and Pakistan remain outside the Treaty. North Korea joined the NPT in 1985, but in January 2003 announced its intention to withdraw from the Treaty. Text of the Treaty
July 1, 1972 The first issue Publication of the first monthly issue of Ms. Magazine, founded by Gloria Steinem “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off,” Letty Cottin Pogrebin “Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so competent at everything else,” and others. Ms. Magazine today (It’s still Ms. Magazine! -A.)
July 1, 2000 Vermont’s civil unions law went into effect, granting gay couples most of the rights, benefits, protections and responsibilities of marriage under state law. In the first five years, 1,142 Vermont couples, and 6,424 from elsewhere, had chosen a Vermont civil union.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem | Steven Spearie/The State Journal-Register / USA TODAY NETWORK
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) confronted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the administration sending a gay man to a prison camp in El Salvador and not even knowing if he’s still alive. Noem said that it wasn’t her problem.
Noem, who has bragged in the past about shooting her dog to death, appeared before the House Homeland Security Committee for a hearing yesterday, where Garcia asked her about Andry Hernandez Romero, a gay hair dresser from Venezuela who came to the U.S. legally to escape anti-LGBTQ+ violence and who was sent to the CECOT camp in El Salvador, which is known for torturing inmates, earlier this year.
The administration, which sent immigrants to the CECOT without letting courts determine if they were in the country illegally or if they had committed any crimes, has refused to try to bring anyone back from the camp.
“Would you commit to just letting his mother know – as a mother-to-mother – if Andry is alive?” Garcia asked Noem. “He was given an asylum appointment by the United States government. We gave him an appointment, we said, Andry, come to the border at this time and claim asylum, he was taken to a foreign prison in El Salvador.”
“His mother just wants to know if he’s alive. Can we check and do a wellness check on him?”
Noem said she doesn’t “know the specifics” of Hernandez Romero’s case but said that since he’s in El Salvador, Garcia should be asking El Salvador’s government about him.
“This isn’t under my jurisdiction,” Noem said.
Garcia reminded her that she said that the Salvadoran prison is a “tool in our toolkit” for fighting crime.
“You and the president have the ability to check that Andry is alive and not being harmed,” he said. “Would you commit into at least looking and asking El Salvador if he is alive?”
“This is a question that is best asked to the president and the government of El Salvador,” Noem responded drily.
Garcia to Noem: "Can you commit to just letting his mother know mother to mother if Andry is alive? He was given an asylum appointment by the United States government."(Noem wouldn't commit to it.)
Hernandez Romero is a Venezuelan immigrant who trekked to the U.S. and entered legally last year at San Diego. There, he asked for asylum, saying that he was being targeted in Venezuela for being gay and due to his political beliefs. He was held in a CoreCivic detention center, where he was screened by Charles Cross Jr.
“The government had found that his threats against him were credible and that he had a real probability of winning an asylum claim,” his lawyer, Lindsay Toczylowski, said.
In March, he, along with over 200 other immigrants, was taken in shackles to the CECOT camp in El Salvador. Even his lawyer said she didn’t know what happened to him until he was gone and missed a hearing in his immigration case.
In a video from the CECOT, Hernandez Romero could be heard saying, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a stylist,” as he was slapped and had his head shaved.
It was later revealed that the evidence Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had against Hernandez Romero was his tattoos, which came from a report from the contractor CoreCivic, specifically from former police officer Charles Cross Jr., who lost his job with the Milwaukee police after he drunkenly crashed into a house and allegedly committed fraud. His name was subsequently added to the Brady List, a list of police officers who are considered non-credible for providing legal testimony in Milwaukee County.
Cross claimed that Hernandez Romero had crown tattoos associated with a gang. The tattoos are labeled “Mom” and “Dad” and are common symbols associated with his hometown of Capacho, Venezuela. Capacho is known for its elaborate festival for Three Kings Day, and a childhood friend, Reina Cardenas, told NBC News that it was that festival that awakened Hernandez Romero’s desire to be an artist.
“Andry dedicated his life to arts and culture, and he worked hard to better his craft,” Cardenas said.
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Two teenage girls were shot late Sunday night near Manhattan’s Stonewall Inn hours after the annual Pride March passed through the neighborhood.
The NYPD said the two people, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old, were shot around 10:15 p.m. in the West Village, busy with revelers celebrating the end of Pride celebrations.
One of the shooting victims was struck in the head, according to police sources. That girl, 16, was last said to be in critical condition. The other victim was said to be stable.
Police had not confirmed any arrests as of early Monday.
The shooting occurred in Sheridan Square, a few steps away from the historic Stonewall Inn, a landmarked site. The neighborhood attracted tens of thousands on Sunday for the annual parade and end to Pride Month celebrations.
Police did not share a possible motive or any suspect descriptions.
Police said at least two people were shot on Sunday, as Pride celebrations came to a close in New York City. NBC New York’s Charles Watson reports.
June 28, 1916 A one-day strike by 50,000 German workers was organized to free Socialist anti-war leader Karl Liebknecht, charged with sedition for his criticism of the government and the war later known as World War I. He was the first ever to be expelled from the Reichstag, the German parliament, voted out for his opposition to Germany’s role in the war. ——————————————————————————————————— June 28, 1969 Patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, being subjected to routine anti-homosexual harassment by the New York City police raiding the bar, spontaneously fought back in an incident considered to be the birth of the gay rights movement. Riot veteran and gay rights activist Craig Rodwell said: “A number of incidents were happening simultaneously. There was no one thing that happened or one person, there was just . . . a flash of group, of mass anger.” About Craig Rodwell A group of drag queens, who had been mourning the death earlier in the week of Judy Garland, mocked the police and threw things at them, and police were forced to retreat into the bar as the crowd of supporters grew; disturbances continued for days. The bar is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Stonewall and all it has inspired —————————————————————————————————- June 28, 1987 The Iranian Kurdish town of Sardasht was attacked by Iraqi aircraft with chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam Hussein had started the war expecting an easy victory against the new Shiite Islamic republic, even though Iran had three times the population. Victims of the mustard gas attack on Sarsasht, Iran ——————————————————————————————————- June 28, 2005 Seen in New York City on June 28, 2005
June 27, 1905 The IWW (Industral Workers of the World) was founded in Chicago.
June 27, 1954 The first atomic power plant opened at Obninsk, Russia, near Moscow, and could generate up to 5 megawatts. The plant was ordered by Josef Stalin and—being graphite-moderated and water-cooled—could be switched to plutonium production in case it was needed. The facility was shut down in 2002.
June 27, 1954 Military action directed and funded by the CIA (Operation PBSUCCESS) forced the resignation of the Guatemalan President, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Winner of the country’s first election under universal suffrage, and having taken office in the country’s first peaceful transition of governments, he was accused by the U.S. of Communist influence. Following the coup d’etat, hundreds of Guatemalans were rounded up and killed. Jacobo Arbenz Guzman Between 1954 and 1990, human rights groups estimate, the security forces of successive military regimes murdered more than 100,000 civilians, including genocide against Guatemalan native peoples. More about Arbenz The CIA’s own documents on the action
June 27, 1973 President Nixon’s former White House counsel, John W. Dean, III, told the Senate Watergate Committee about Nixon’s “enemies list.”He released a 1971 memo, written by presidential advisor (now Rev.) Charles Colson, proposing the use of “available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” John Dean Twenty persons were to be subjected to IRS audits, litigation, prosecution, or denial of federal grants, and an additional list contained 200 names of other individuals and organizations considered enemies of the administration. The complete Enemies List and memos from Colson The president’s misuse of government agencies and powers, in pursuing those he saw as his political enemies, was the basis for one of the articles of impeachment that forced Nixon from office.
June 27, 1978 Seven citizens of the Soviet Union sought refuge in the American Embassy in Moscow as escape from government oppression of religious minorities. The Pentecostal Christians, known as the Siberian Seven, from two families, the Vashchenkos and Chmykhalovs, spent months in the basement of the embassy awaiting permission for all family members to emigrate to the U.S. One of their sons was already in prison for defying the military draft, and another was about to reach conscription age. Recently released from prison, Baptist Pyotr Vins was twice assaulted by police after trying to arrange his family’s emigration. His father Georgi, national leader of dissident Baptists, though due for release from a labor camp, faced five additional years of Siberian “exile.” The leader of a breakaway Seventh-day Adventist group was sentenced to five years of hard labor at age 83.
June 27, 1980 President Jimmy Carter signed a measure that required approximately 4 million U.S. men age 18 to 25 to register for the military draft, and all 18-year-old males thereafter. If there were to be a crisis, registered men would be inducted as determined by age and a random lottery.
June 27, 1986 The International Court of Justice (“World Court”) decided that the United States violated international law as well as its bilateral Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Amity with Nicaragua through its use of force against the Central American country. This included a trade embargo, the mining of harbors and bombing of airfields, as well as furnishing financial, military and logistical support to the so-called Contra insurgents. The Contras’ goal was to overthrow Nicaragua’s popular left-wing government. The Court also ruled that the U.S. should compensate the country financially.The Reagan administration had originally contested the standing of the Court to rule on such an issue, and it had walked out of Court after losing the ruling on jurisdiction, despite its treaty obligation to appear. The Court’s judgment to act had been decided 11-3 on almost all counts, those voting for the U.S. position being an American, a British and a Japanese judge. THE WORLD COURT IN ACTION by Howard N. Meyer More about the Court’s decision
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem | Steven Spearie/The State Journal-Register / USA TODAY NETWORK
Scottie's Playtime 