That was supposed to say “Hello, friend” but I fucked it up and I’m leaving it because it feels equally fitting. Maybe you, like me, are in the darkness right now and are just trying to get by until the light comes back. It will. I promise. Between the weather, tricksy brains and (motions wildly to everything) all of the traumatic bullshit going on in the world right now, your body is just acting the way it probably should and you need to take care of it and be gentle to yourself.
This week I was planning on getting organized but then a depression hit me and I found myself staring at the blank gridded planner I’d bought because SURELY THIS ONE WILL FIX ME but then it didn’t fix me and so instead of outlining all of the stuff I’m behind on I instead screamed into the internet for bit, donated to several important causes, amplified what I could and then I turned off my phone and found myself doodling on the planner because my brain was just not going to be able to work the way I needed it to.
Each line counted off a moment. A sort of meditation.
I didn’t even have the bandwidth to find my sketch book so I just kept drawing, using the strange grids to find my way, and knowing each mindless pattern would get me closer to the other side, when I’d have the energy to be human again.
Dorothy Barker helped.
I’m using the word “helped” lightly.
And each doodle got me through a bad hour.
The terrible messy ones I drew when my hands shook from anger or anxiety.
And the calmer ones I drew in the quiet, small hours of the night when I needed to remember that there is peace and light out there even if we can’t always see it.
I drew and drew and dropped each picture onto the floor where the cats could lay on them and contemplate why I still wasn’t in bed yet.
And as of today I have not gotten anything organized at all and my planner is a mess of pointless drawings. Except (I remind myself) they’re not pointless at all, if you look at them with the right eyes.
“I am not good at planning. Or organizing. Or calculations. Or any of the things this ledger is supposed to be for. But I am quite good at silly little doodles. And that is worthwhile too.”
So this is just my little reminder to you…find joy…create…don’t be afraid to use a ledger as an easel or a dog as a paperweight or this letter as a hug. It’s okay if all you are doing right now is surviving. That is sometimes one of the hardest things you will do.
So far, it’s not illegal for us to acknowledge that February is Black History Month, so here we are, doing just that. Ha! There is even some Black History for this very date in Peace and Justice History:
February 1, 1960 Greensboro first day: Ezell A. Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond leave the Woolworth store after the first sit-in on February 1, 1960. Four black college students sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and were refused service because of their race. To protest the segregation of the eating facilities, they remained and sat-in at the lunch counter until the store closed. Four students returned the next day, and the same thing happened. Similar protests subsequently took place all over the South and in some northern communities. By September 1961, more than 70,000 students, both white and black, had participated, with many arrested, during sit-ins. On the second day of the Greensboro sit-in, Joseph A. McNeil and Franklin E. McCain are joined by William Smith and Clarence Henderson at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
February 1, 1961 On the first anniversary of the Greensboro sit-in, there were demonstrations all across the south, including a Nashville movie theater desegregation campaign (which sparked similar tactics in 10 other cities). Nine students were arrested at a lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and chose to take 30 days hard labor on a road gang. The next week, four other students repeated the sit-in, also chose jail.
In light of current events, I thought it’d be good to review how Black History Month came to be. Below is a bit on its beginnings.
Black History Month was first observed as Negro History Week in February 1926, but the inspiration for the commemoration began over a decade earlier through a steady stream of electrifying events, discoveries, and other celebrations of Black excellence. In 1915, American historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson attended the national celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of emancipation in Washington D.C. This event was widely attended and proved to be profoundly inspiring for Dr. Woodson who, later that year, joined forces with A. L. Jackson, William B. Hartgrove, George Cleveland Hall, and James E. Stamps to establish the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, known today as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH 2024). ASALH had the ambitious goal of educating the public about the achievements, inventions, and progress made by Black Americans, and though the Association’s intellectual efforts were remarkable – they began to publish The Journal of Negro History in 1916 and founded Negro History and Literature Week in 1924 – Dr. Woodson had a wider vision of his mission. Wishing to continue to discover and celebrate the history of the Black past, Dr. Woodson announced the celebration of Negro History Week through a press release.
Accounts of the contributions of Black Americans were notably absent from history books, credited to white men, or omitted altogether. Progressive communities and schools were ripe for the rich history that Negro History Week offered. Matching the popularity of the week, Woodson and the Association established an annual theme for the celebration to guide and inspire educators. Weary of those simply wishing to capitalize on a popular event, “Woodson warned teachers not to invite speakers who had less knowledge than the students themselves” (ASALH 2024). Additionally, ASALH expanded their offerings to provide study materials: pictures, lessons for teachers, plays for historical performances, and posters of important dates and people. This cemented the celebration of Black history in schools and communities, and Negro History Week grew in popularity throughout the following decades, with mayors across the United States endorsing it as a holiday.
Negro History Week grew into Black History Month in 1970 under the leadership of Black educators and students at Kent State University and would become a federally recognized event six years later. President Gerald Ford recognized Black History Month in 1976 during the celebration of the United States Bicentennial. He urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history” (Franklin 2022). Today, nearly one hundred years after that initial celebration, it is prudent to reflect on the designed purpose of Black History Month and discover that after all this time, these lessons are still relevant, inspiring, and necessary. As Dr. Woodson said, “Real education means to inspire people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin with life as they find it and make it better” (Woodson 1933).
Pictured: Dr. Carter G. Woodson, The “father of Black history”
Photo Credit: Addison Norton Scurlock, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
ASALH. 2024. Carter G. Woodson Timeline: ASALH – the Founders of Black History Month. December 19. Accessed January 16, 2025. asalh.org/carter-g-woodson-timeline/.
Woodson, Carter G. 1933. The Mis-Education of the Negro. Trenton: Africa World Press.
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All right! So, we see that Black History Week then Month has been around for at least 20 years longer than our current POTUS, who seems to be ignoring the month’s existence. But, there’s no reason any of the rest of we the people have to! Including all history makes the US so much richer in knowledge. Most local historical and cultural organizations are going to have commemorations this month. What fun it will be, and how community-unifying for each of us to find an activity near us, and join in!
Texas is at the forefront of pushing Christian nationalism along with all its prejudices. Misogyny, strict gender stereotypes, and enforced being straight. They require young people to marry in opposet gender marriages and produce as many children as possible. Why? It promotes their faith while filling church pews which funds more money for the church. Hugs
Suit against Debra Lynch is latest from Texas’s Republican attorney general amid ongoing attacks on abortion pills
Ken Paxton, Texas’s attorney general, outside the US supreme court in Washington DC on 1 November 2021. Photograph: Rod Lamkey/Newscom via Alamy
As part of its ongoing crusade against abortion pills, Texas sued a nurse practitioner on Tuesday, accusing her of shipping pills into Texas in defiance of the state’s abortion ban.
The nurse practitioner, Debra Lynch, operates a Delaware-based group called Her Safe Harbor, which mails abortion pills to women living in states with abortion bans. Now, Texas wants a court to block Lynch from “performing, inducing or attempting abortions” in Texas, on the grounds that Texas law only permits physicians to facilitate abortions in cases of medical emergencies.
Groups like Her Safe Harbor have proliferated in the four years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, as Delaware and a handful of other blue states have enacted so-called “shield laws”. These laws typically aim to protect abortion providers from out-of-state prosecutions, lending legal cover to providers who ship pills across state lines.
But such efforts have enraged anti-abortion advocates and sparked a legal war between states that protect abortion rights and states that ban the procedure. Texas has already sued a New York-based doctor, Margaret Carpenter, over allegations that she mailed abortion pills into the state, while Louisiana has indicted both Carpenter and a California-based doctor named Remy Coeytaux. Officials in New York and California, which also have shield laws on the books, have refused to cooperate with those efforts.
The safeguards offered by each state’s shield law vary. Eight states, including New York and California, clearly allow providers to use telemedicine to prescribe abortion pills to patients located in states where the procedure is banned. But legal experts have questioned whether Delaware’s shield law, which was first passed in 2022, always protects providers who offer telemedicine across state lines.
Delaware’s law was expanded in late 2025, in part to clarify that officials may not aid out-of-state investigations into abortion providers – a move that may offer Lynch additional protection. The Texas case may then depend on when, exactly, Lynch mailed abortion pills into the red state, according to Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis school of law, who studies the legal history of reproduction.
But, Ziegler added: “It doesn’t sound like they know when any of the abortions happened.”
The cases against Carpenter and Coeytaux largely rest on allegations of specific abortions. The Texas case against Lynch, however, focuses on media reports that feature Lynch saying she mails pills to Texans or advises Texans who want abortions.
After Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Her Safe Harbor and other abortion-providing groups in August, Lynch said she had no plans to stop mailing pills. In fact, in the hours after news of the letter broke, the group received more than 150 requests for pills from Texas, Lynch said at the time.
“None of our providers are primarily concerned with our own wellbeing or our own legal status,” Lynch previously told the Guardian. “All the horrors that women are facing because of these ridiculous bans and restrictions outweigh anything that could possibly happen to us as providers, in terms of a fine or a lawsuit or even jail time, if it were to come to that.”
Lynch did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
ICE is a white supremacy white nationlist / Christian nationalist group that is driven to remove nonwhite people and non-Christian people from the country. They are driven by hate and malice. They are former / current gang thugs that live to terrorize those they disagree with or hate. In their minds might makes right and so they always go around in packs picking on easy prey. Hugs
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is investigating allegations that agents left “racist death cards” in the vehicles of detained individuals.
“ICE is investigating this situation but unequivocally condemns this type of action and/or officer conduct. Once notified, ICE supervisors acted swiftly to address the issue,” a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson wrote in a statement to Newsweek. “The ICE Office of Professional Responsibility will conduct a thorough investigation and will take appropriate and swift action.”
Why It Matters
ICE is facing growing scrutiny over its tactics amid President Donald Trump’s ramped up immigration enforcement. Support for the agency has dwindled in recent weeks—a recent YouGov poll found Americans are split about whether to abolish ICE. Forty-five percent each said they support and oppose the proposal. It surveyed 1,722 adults from January 16-19, 2026.
What to Know
In Colorado, an advocacy group named Voces Unidas said last week that ICE agents who detained nine Latino individuals left ace of spades cards inside the abandoned vehicles. The cards identify ICE’s field office in Denver and were later found by their family members, according to the organization’s statement.
Alex Sánchez, president and CEO of Voces Unidas, said in a statement the group was “disgusted” by their actions.
ICE agents approach a house before detaining two people on January 13, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. | Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
“Leaving a racist death card behind after targeting Latino workers is deliberate intimidation rooted in a long history of racial violence. This is an abuse of power, and it has no place in any society that claims to value human dignity,” Sánchez said.
During the Vietnam War, soldiers used the Ace of Spades card as an intimidation tactic against the Viet Cong, according to HistoryNet.com. Voces Unidas described their use in Colorado as “deliberate psychological harassment.”
The DHS spokesperson also told Newsweek that ICE is held “to the highest professional standard.”
“As our brave law enforcement arrests and removes dangerous criminal illegal aliens, including murderers, rapists, and gang members from our communities, America can be proud of the professionalism our officers bring to the job day-in and day-out,” the spokesperson said.
ICE has ramped up enforcement in states like Minneapolis and Maine over recent weeks. In Minneapolis, two individuals, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both 37-year-old U.S. citizens, have been fatally shot by federal agents from ICE and U.S. Border Patrol, drawing increased scrutiny toward the administration’s hardline immigration approach. Some agents are expected to depart from Minneapolis as early as Tuesday.
What People Are Saying
Author Seth Abramson wrote to X: “ICE agents in Colorado have been leaving ace of spades cards behind when they detain someone, a psychological warfare technique the United States Armed Forces used against its mortal enemies during the Vietnam War. If you don’t think Trump is at war with his country, think again.”
The Colorado Democratic Party wrote to X: “This is disgusting on so many levels. Families of those arrested by ICE near Vail say agents left behind branded ‘death cards’ after arrests, a racist intimidation tactic, according to advocates and community leaders. Our communities deserve better, and we await the results of DHS’ investigation.”
What Happens Next
ICE operations continue across the country as Trump aims to carry out his campaign pledge of mass deportations. Criticism is also likely to continue, with a government shutdown possible over funding for ICE over the situation in Minnesota.
A longtime Republican Party strategist is cautioning Donald Trump that his days of bulldozing opponents and receiving little to no opposition are drawing to a close, which is a harbinger of worse things to come if he loses control of Congress.
As Naftali Bendavid of the Washington Post wrote on Saturday, the president is getting it from all sides as world leaders in Davos not only ignored his demands to be handed Greenland, but also pushed back, while at the same time at home, his immigration policies have given rise to massive demonstrations, including a strike that shut down the city of Minneapolis on Friday.
Adding to that, the targets of his retaliation campaign are not rolling over and are instead fighting –– and suing –– back instead of being cowed.
Bendavid is reporting, “Foreign leaders, meanwhile, appeared to conclude they had little to lose from openly accusing Trump of thuggery, something they had been reluctant to do before,” while adding that lawmakers like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D), California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Sen Mark Kelly (AZ-D) have openly challenged Trump’s authority believing he will back down.
According to GOP adviser Mike Madrid, one year into his second term, the president is finding he is facing a radically changing political landscape as the polls show voters are turning against him in a stunning reversal.
“I don’t think there is any question. It’s the prime minister of Canada. It’s the pope,” he told the Post. “There is this new energy when our allies are rattling the saber back, and that is in turn emboldening folks at home.”
The Post reports notes that the pushback to Trump is undeniably being effective as his threats to invade Greenland if he didn’t get his way quickly dissipated, and the plans to invoke the Insurrection Act at home withered quickly away in the face of resistance.
That led Madrid to warn Trump, ““In the past six months, everything has changed. The fever swamp is still full force, but there is no question there are breaks. The question is, can [Trump] hold it together? And if this is happening before the midterms, imagine what happens if the Democrats take one or both houses.”
As republicans lose control due to the public being upset with what they are doing they don’t change their views / actions, but instead they try harder to restrict voters rights to vote. They don’t believe in democracy or being public servants; they believe in a one party rule where they are the party in control. Why? Because it gives them all they want, power, fame, fortune, and the ability to control how other people live. The goals of these people who are not interested in others living as who they are and having happy quailty lives but in having total control over how others live to force them to live according to the church doctrines of their version of the religion. But the thing about this SAVE act is it would keep married women from voting if they have not updated all of their identification and other requirements. I experienced this when Ron and I got married. I took his last name. I think everyone who reads the blog understands why. I had to change everything and then take all that documentation to the election supervisor’s office: my marriage certificate, my socialsecurity name change, and so much more. How many people fail to do that and then go to vote and can’t? Hugs
House Republicans are proposing sweeping changes to the nation’s voting laws, a long-shot priority for President Donald Trump that would impose stricter requirements, including some before Americans vote in the midterm elections in the fall.
The package released Thursday reflects a number of the party’s most sought-after election changes, including requirements for photo IDs before people can vote and proof of citizenship, both to be put in place in 2027. Others, including prohibitions on universal vote-by-mail and ranked choice voting — two voting methods that have proved popular in some states — would happen immediately. The Republican president continues to insist that the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden was rigged.
“Americans should be confident their elections are being run with integrity — including commonsense voter ID requirements, clean voter rolls, and citizenship verification,” said Rep. Bryan Steil, chairman of the House Administration Committee, in a statement.
“These reforms will improve voter confidence, bolster election integrity, and make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat,” said Steil, R-Wis.
The legislation faces a long road in the narrowly-split Congress, where Democrats have rejected similar ideas as disenfranchising Americans’ ability to vote with onerous registration and ID requirements. The effort comes as the Trump administration is turning its attention toward election issues before the November election, when control of Congress will be at stake.
The administration sent FBI agents Wednesday to raid the election headquarters of Fulton County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta, seeking ballots from the 2020 election. That follows Trump’s comments earlier this month when he suggested that charges related to that election were imminent.
The top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, said Trump and the Republican Party are trying to “rig” the system.
“This is their latest attempt to block millions of Americans from exercising their right to vote,” Morelle said in a statement. He said he would “fight the bill at every turn.”
Republicans are calling their new legislation the “Make Elections Great Again Act” and say their proposal should provide the minimum standard for elections for federal offices.
The 120-plus-page bill includes requirements that people present a photo ID before they vote and that states verify the citizenship of individuals when they register to vote, starting next year.
More immediately, this fall it would require states to use “auditable” paper ballots in elections, which most already do; prohibit states from mailing ballots to all voters through universal vote-by-mail systems; and ban ranked choice voting, which is used in Maine and Alaska.
States risk losing federal election funds at various junctures for noncompliance. For example, states would be required to have agreements with the attorney general’s office to share information about potential voter fraud or risk losing federal election funds in 2026.
And starting this year, it would require states to more frequently update their voting rolls, every 30 days.
Stephen Richer, a Republican who clashed with Trump over the president’s false election conspiracy theories while he served as the recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, posted on the social media site X that the bill is reminiscent of a Democratic effort to reshape national elections in the opposite direction that floundered during Biden’s term.
He wrote that the legislation “flattens federalism, and takes away many rights from the states.”
Similar Republican proposals have drawn alarm from voting rights group, which say such changes could lead to widespread problems for voters.
For example, prior Republican efforts to require proof of citizenship to vote have been criticized by Democrats as disenfranchising married women whose last names do not match birth certificates or other government documents.
The Brennan Center for Justice and other groups estimated in a 2023 report that 9% of U.S. citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, do not have proof of their citizenship readily available. Almost half of Americans do not have a U.S. passport.
Trump has long signaled a desire to change how elections are run in the United States. Last year he issued an executive order that included a citizenship requirement, among other election-related changes.
At the time, House Republicans approved legislation, the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act,” that would cement Trump’s order into law. That bill has stalled in the Senate, though lawmakers have recently revived efforts to bring it forward for consideration.
….
Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
I often say that a lot of anti-trans anti-gay anti-LGBTQ+ people have their feelings because they don’t feel different from the cis straight majority so can’t understand or accept that such things because they simply don’t feel that way. If they don’t feel it it can’t be real which is the same with how many white people feel about racism. Remember the old question of how do you know you’re gay or trans or lesbian or nonbinary or what ever simply because the people who grew up straight and cis felt normal in society? But if you ask them when they knew or how they knew they were straight and / or cis they are confused. If a boy at 10 comes out as gay the parents freak out, but if that same kid starts showing interest in girls the parents are ecstatic about their boy growing up. Why the difference? Because one fulfills their expectations and the other … well it just is not like them. It simply comes down to tradition and what feels normal for them. Every person who asked me if I tried to change my sexual orientation and there have been so many, to them I ask have you? They act offended. Why would I do that and I reply, then why should I. Then if they persist for some reason that I should do conversion therapy I ask could they convert from their straight / cis desires to being LGBTQ+? Again they are stunned why they would do that and instantly claim not I couldn’t do that. Then again why ask me to do it? Hugs
Providing objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, original journalism that investigates America’s anti-LGBTQ landscape and elevates everyday American heroes. Expect two rigorously reported stories every weekend.
On Oct. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case that challenges Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy.
Shortly after, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) sent an email to their supporters quoting Paul in Ephesians 6:12: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
The email goes on to say, “You might think that a law like this might be just a ‘Colorado problem.’ Sadly, laws like this exist in 22 other states,” referencing other parts of the U.S. that have instituted conversion therapy bans.
This sort of language about conversion therapy is nothing new for the Christian legal group representing Kaley Chiles. Unlike most legal organizations, ADF is sharply anti-LGBTQ. Since their inception over 30 years ago, the group has fought to maintain anti-sodomy laws, uphold the right to discriminate against gay couples and overturn Roe v. Wade.
In recent years, a major element of their fight has been to legalize the discredited practice of conversion therapy.
The Supreme Court appears poised to rule in favor of ADF, which could effectively invalidate conversion therapy bans for minors by licensed professionals across the U.S. This victory would add to the organization’s already-high win streak, which they say is around 80%.
“I don’t think anyone is undermining LGBTQ rights as relentlessly as ADF,” Peter Montgomery, research director at the advocacy group People for the American Way, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “They’re shaping the culture for generations to come.”
Although nearly every major medical association has denounced conversion therapy, ADF is arguing that disallowing the practice is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
“This case is part of its crusade to turn religious freedom into a license to harm others,” says Amy Tai, the co-author of an amicus brief in Chiles v. Salazar that is urging the Supreme Court to uphold the Colorado law. “It is part of a larger effort and movement to harm LGBTQ people and strip them of their constitutional rights.”
ADF, originally the Alliance Defense Fund, was founded by evangelical anti-gay activists in 1994. Alan Sears, their former CEO and president, co-authored “The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today.” The book calls homosexuality a “disordered sexual behavior” and equates it with pedophilia and states that gay people on college campuses are involved in “the promotion of sexual relations between adults and children.”
D. James Kennedy, another founder, has preached about “reparative” therapy for gay folks. In a 1993 fundraising letter for his Christian media organization Coral Ridge Ministries, he asked “Would you want your son, daughter, or grandchild sharing a shower, foxhole, or blood with a homosexual?”
A third founder was the late James Dobson, who advised several presidents and argued that conversion therapy could “cure” people.
Since ADF launched, many powerful political figures with anti-LGBTQ beliefs have worked for them. While working as an ADF spokesperson between 2002 and 2010, House Speaker Mike Johnson described gay folks as “destructive” and argued that support for homosexuality could lead to support for pedophilia.
Kristen Waggoner speaking at a press conference in 2018 (Groversawit)
And their current president, Kristen Waggoner, has delegitimized the harm conversion therapy causes by defining the practice as merely having conversations.
Today, their influence in the U.S. government is stronger than ever, with ties to all three branches. In addition to Speaker Johnson, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has been a paid speaker for ADF at least five times since 2011. And in May, President Donald Trump appointed Waggoner to the newly-formed Religious Liberty Commission.
All of these resources and connections are employed to advance an anti-LGBTQ agenda. “They want to see what they see as the God-defined order for gender and marriage be imposed into law,” Montgomery says. “They are trying to create a legal regime in which people can claim religious beliefs to opt out of laws that apply to everyone else.”
History of Fighting to Criminalize Homosexuality and Legalize Conversion Therapy
Over time, ADF has incorporated these viewpoints into their litigation to try and dismantle legal protections for LGBTQ people.
“Just 20 years ago, they were still arguing in court that states should be able to criminalize gay people,” says Montgomery.
In 2000, for example, ADF funded amicus briefs in Dale v. Boy Scouts of America, a case where an assistant scoutmaster sued the Boy Scouts after the organization revoked his membership for being gay. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of ADF.
In 2003, when support for gay marriage was still low in the U.S., they filed an amicus brief to uphold the criminalization of gay sex in Lawrence v. Texas, arguing that the state has a right to regulate “public health and morality.” The group lost the case and sodomy laws were banned nationwide.
As public opinion changed and gay marriage became legal across America in 2015, ADF shifted to more nuanced arguments. “Now, because they know that most Americans favor LGBTQ equality, they’ve really reframed their arguments [around] religious liberty and free speech,” says Montgomery.
The organization has since set its sights on overturning state bans on conversion therapy. In 2018, ADF Senior Counsel Matt Sharp argued against a California bill that classified conversion therapy as fraud. And in 2019, the group sued New York City for a similar law, which led the city to reverse the ban out of fear the case would reach the Supreme Court.
A few years later, in 2021, ADF fought to overturn a statewide conversion therapy ban in Washington, where they represented Christian therapist Brian Tingley. In this instance, they argued that Washington’s law censored Tingley from speaking about gender dysphoria.
A federal appeals court unanimously upheld Washington’s law, with Circuit Judge Ronald Gould shutting down ADF’s argument, writing that: “Washington, like other states, has concluded that health care providers should not be able to treat a child by such means as telling him that he is ‘the abomination we had heard about in Sunday school.’”
Learning from their mistakes, ADF tried again with Chiles v. Salazar, claiming the Colorado law discriminates against Chiles’ viewpoint. Chiles is an evangelical therapist who received her counseling training and education from a seminary.
In their arguments to the Supreme Court, ADF says the conversion therapy ban encourages therapists to help minors explore LGBTQ identities and condemns assisting patients to align with their assigned gender.
Though intended to ban conversion therapy for all LGBTQ people, ADF’s case focuses on gender identity, capitalizing on souring U.S. public opinion on trans rights.
“Chiles believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex,” ADF wrote in a petition to the Supreme Court.
“ADF has tried to draw a connection between laws prohibiting conversion therapy and states attempting to force mental health professionals or doctors to treat transgender youth,” Christopher Stoll, senior staff attorney at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. But if the law passes, conversion therapy would become legal to practice on all LGBTQ people.
Another part of ADF’s success stems from manufacturing legal battles to advance cases that match their goals.
Chiles, for example, had not incurred any legal penalty from the Colorado district attorney. Instead, ADF filed a pre-enforcement lawsuit, claiming that she had censored herself and stopped accepting patients for conversion therapy following the law’s passage.
“All of these cases are, in a sense, made up cases. … They’re brought on behalf of therapists who have not actually been subject to any kind of investigation or penalty by either state or local governments,” says Stoll, who is representing Kansas City, Mo. as ADF and Missouri’s Attorney General challenge the city’s ban on conversion therapy.
This strategy is what makes ADF stand out. Montgomery says that unlike many other legal organizations, ADF also helps file lawsuits and writes the bills that directly challenge precedents and legislation they hope to change.
This was in part how they were effective in overturning Roe v. Wade. ADF drafted the Gestational Age Act, which banned abortion in Mississippi after 15 weeks of pregnancy. That law then became the central point of the Dobbs case, which overturned abortion rights nationwide.
“They’re just engineered to test these legal arguments, when really no dispute has arisen,” says Stoll.
When asked for comment, an Alliance Defending Freedom Media Relations Specialist redirected Uncloseted Media to a website criticizing the Southern Poverty Law Center, saying the group mischaracterizes ADF as a hate group.
How ADF Operates Globally
ADF’s efforts to dismantle conversion therapy and LGBTQ rights span far beyond the U.S. Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADFI) boasts about efforts in 70 countries, where they push anti-LGBTQ legislation as far as possible in each country.
In 2012, ADF’s then-legal counsel Piero Tozzi spoke at a conference in Jamaica, advocating for the prohibition of gay sex, stating that the “retention of the legislation prohibiting sodomy is a bulwark against this agenda.” And in 2013, members of ADF defended a statute in Belize that characterized LGBTQ sex as “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.”
“They’re one of the most powerful and influential Christian right religious extremist groups that we have operating in Europe,” Neil Datta, executive director of the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES.
Datta says with offices in six cities with international human rights centers, ADFI contacts political allies throughout the continent, feeding them legal briefs and direct arguments. Then, those partners take that information and rejig it to align with their country’s political discourse.
“They’re hiring Europeans, training them in the American model of social issues litigation from an anti-rights perspective, and then hoping that [they] will be running with this in European courts,” Datta says. “They bring know-how and capacity to the continent.”
Datta says the U.S. is where the organization conducts its litmus tests for anti-LGBTQ laws and legal arguments: “In the U.S., you have 50 little courts that you can try things out in,” he says. “[ADF] has their own range of different areas that they would like to be active in, and they hunt for opportunities where they can make some progress.”
That includes the defense of Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen, who in 2021 was tried for hate speech for condemning a Lutheran church for supporting a Pride event. With ADFI’s assistance, Räsänen was acquitted in 2023.
Making Headway to Ban Conversion Therapy Abroad
While ADFI has yet to succeed in overturning conversion therapy bans in Europe, Datta says some politicians with links to the group have promoted reintegrative therapy, another form of therapy that attempts to help folks suppress same-sex attraction. While the term attempts to distance itself from conversion therapy, it uses similar procedures to the condemned practice.
However, Datta says ADFI is taking steps to shift the discourse by lobbying against the Digital Services Act, a European Union regulation for online hate speech.
In October, ADFI penned a letter to the European Commission asking the organization to review the law. ADF has also posted various blogs on the legislation, one posing a hypothetical about gender identity, stating, “Let’s say you went on Facebook … to post something as common sense as believing that there are only two genders. … If someone were to report that as hate speech, the E.U. could pressure Meta … to remove the post lest it face those stiff financial penalties.”
ADFI has also expanded its horizons to Africa. In May, Bettina Roska, an ADFI legal officer based in Geneva, joined a consortium of anti-LGBTQ advocates in a Pan-African conference on “family values” in Nairobi, Kenya.
“They are trying to do the same thing in Africa, around the African Union, and the African human rights system,” Jamie Vernaelde, senior researcher at Ipas, a non-governmental organization that focuses on reducing the harm of U.S. foreign policy, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES.
Back in the U.S., the Supreme Court will rule on Chiles v. Salazar before the end of its current term next year. Their decision will potentially clear the way for conversion therapy to be practiced nationwide and abroad.
Vernaelde says that if Chiles v. Salazar is successful, ADF is hoping to bring their fight against conversion therapy worldwide in the same way they are expanding their anti-abortion lawsuits. Today, the group is attempting to undo abortion protections in the U.K. with the help of allies in the country’s right-wing Reform party.
“This is a template that they can use in other places that they can spread as widely as they want through their networks,” says Vernaelde.
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