As back-to-school season is in full swing, many teachers are on edge. There were 277 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in 2025 that were meant to restrict student and educator rights. These include trans-exclusionary pronoun laws and so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws, which disallow teachers from educating students about sexual orientation or gender identity. And in June, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of parents who wanted to opt their children out of classes that featured books with LGBTQ characters.
In addition, there have been numerousfalse claims that teachers are grooming their students by discussing LGBTQ issues in the classroom. Vice President JD Vance has said that childless teachers are “trying to brainwash the minds of our children,” and President Donald Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that children are undergoing transgender surgery at school.
We wanted to understand how queer and ally teachers are navigating the political climate. So we called up six of them from various red and blue states to get their take on teaching in America in 2025.
Watch the video or read the transcript below.
Spencer Macnaughton: Hi everyone, I’m Spencer Macnaughton. Today I am here with a set of teachers from across the United States, LGBTQ teachers and allies alike, and we want to get their perspective on what it’s like to be a teacher in America, as we’re in the throes of back-to-school season. Everyone, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.
Daniel Greenspan: Great to be here.
SM: So I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t start right away with the events that happened last week with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. How do you approach a subject like this that is so complicated for adults to discuss with your students, if at all?
DG: I’m in a much more rural area and I definitely got asked about it. I’m kind of on edge about the whole topic because several teachers in my district have been fired just over the last week. I try not to discuss it if possible. It’s a shame that we can’t discuss controversial topics, but you know, they are kids and they’re prone to misinterpret things, and the second a parent gets wind of it, you’ll be very quickly removed.
SM: I feel like if I had kids, I’d want my kids to be learning about tough topics from their teachers, but you’re saying that you’re worried that you could get fired if you talked about that. Is that a sentiment that’s felt across the board here?
Mardy Burleson: Absolutely. Absolutely.
SM: Mardy, tell us more about that.
MB: Well, I have been on the receiving end of a group of parents, community members, for just being an ally. And it’s been pretty horrific, and to the point where it’s now a lawsuit that I initiated because it got so threatening that I had no choice.
SM: And Mardy, just for folks and people listening who don’t know your story, you essentially gave a worksheet to your students that asked them what their pronouns were, and that got out to some of the parents in your class, and you were subsequently doxed, called a groomer, and really harassed online for many, many months to the point where you were afraid to walk down aisles in the grocery store. Is that all accurate?
MB:That is accurate. Yes, that is accurate. I was on paid admin leave for my own safety. I mean all the teachers in here knows what they are, they’re just get-to-know you questionnaires at the beginning of the year and there was an optional question on there: What are your preferred pronouns? And, it got crazy online, it was like threats [on] my life.
SM: When you go through that at school, getting doxed by parents in the community because you’re trying to teach about pronouns, tell me what that does to you personally from a mental health perspective.
MB: Well, I mean, it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting, the amount of weight of the worry, of the guilt, the shame, and you know, to be honest, the biggest toll aside from my family that it took out on them having to deal with the backlash of me being an ally, was my kids that I teach. At that point, I was teaching middle school, and they pulled me out the very next day after this story was written about me. They, the district, pulled me out, put me on paid admin leave immediately. And there were at least two kids that were gender neutral in a different class than this one, where this parent was. One of them, every day—I wasn’t allowed to communicate with them at all—none of my students previously—and every day she would go to my bestie’s room and be like, “Ms. King, is Ms. B coming back?” Every single day. My friend would be like, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it.”
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SM:It’s such a balance too that the LGBTQ community has become so politicized and, you know, there’s been dozens and dozens of anti-LGBTQ bills from book bans, to don’t say gay laws, to so many rules about can you use pronouns? Can you not use this? Particularly in red states. I’m curious as allies or as queer teachers, how has it inhibited you or stifled your ability to teach what you want as it relates to LGBTQ studies?
AJ Pound: Something that really sticks out to me is that at my first—at the suburban school that I was subsequently bullied out of by a series of parents and then a new principal who just didn’t want to take the flak, I guess. We did like a poem-a-day type of thing. And one poem, one of them, was by a non-binary poet. I mentioned it in class, and a parent sent me a nasty email. That kind of thing really, especially when you’re a new teacher, sticks with you, and it just makes you afraid to touch, to even get close. That was a total non-invasive way, I think, of just bringing in a queer voice, and the response from just that attempt really put me off. It’s one of those things, though, where you just have to accept that at school, unfortunately, you have to be on and performing 100% of the time already. So it’s just adding that little extra bit of hiding.
J. Everett Irwin: I had had over a decade into the district that I was teaching at when I started using gender neutral names and they/them pronouns in story problems for math. I thought I was in a safe position, and it came back again.
DG:There’s definitely a degree of detraction from the lessons. I couldn’t read something by James Baldwin and not mention how his sexuality influenced the work. That’s incredibly disrespectful. There’s a degree of shame almost in not standing up for this stuff. To think this stuff doesn’t trickle down to the kids is naive.
SM:You said a word there that I thought was striking is “shame.” You feel shame, some shame when you can’t teach that.
DG: You know, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this job? It’s to help kids grow and become better human beings. Everyone’s so quick to jump on, we have an agenda, but really my only agenda is helping kids out. There are easier and better ways to make money if I wanted. I want to be able to teach this stuff and it feels shameful not to allow myself to kind of live in that fearful state.
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AP: As a young teacher, I came out when I was student teaching. My first day at this school, as a brand new first-year teacher, was my first classroom. I was so excited. I had my rainbow planner sitting on my desk. After school that day, my principal told me that a parent called in and was crying in tears on the phone, worried about her daughter and how I was going to corrupt her daughter because of my rainbow planner. So there were too many things going on at once where it was like, I felt shamed that I had upset a parent, that this indicated that I was bad at my job or I wasn’t a safe teacher. I felt shamed that people were threatened by my identity. I felt shamed that a student in my classroom was upset. Then I also felt shame that I was shamed because I was like, wait, no, I’m proud, I’m out, right? I’m over this. But I think there’s something that happens when you’re raised in a society that tells you constantly to [be] quiet and squash it down. There are kids in my classroom right now who feel the way I do or feel worse than I do because the world they’re entering is not safe for them.
Kaitlynn Pelletier:My first three years of teaching were in Maine, and I was teaching in a really tiny, tiny, tiny small town. A student, a transgender student, came up to me and asked me to start a [Gay-Straight Alliance] GSA. And I was like, yeah, I’m down. Then I went forward with the principal, trying to see if I could do that. He kind of made it impossible to do. He was telling me it couldn’t be anything to do with rainbows, the name had to be something completely not related to pride. Anytime a student came out, I would have to report that to the parents. I feel like he just kept putting things in my way to get it so that I couldn’t ever start this, and then COVID happened, and then I couldn’t anyways. So I feel so bad for that student because I know she was very much bullied there.
Alyssa Hamilton: For me, I’m very grateful that I work in a building that, I think our administrators, as well as a majority of the staff, we understand that when we’re building a curriculum, a curriculum should look like a mirror to our students and not necessarily them looking through a window.We try to incorporate all of our students’ lived experiences to make our pedagogy culturally relevant and responsive. We’re really lucky to work in school districts in New York City that allow us to have that kind of onus in our curriculum. Because I think if I was in another school district where I felt like any of my students’ voices were being stifled or their lived experience wasn’t being shown within the classroom, just from the curriculum standpoint, you start to see lack of engagement. If I’m a student who I totally cannot relate to what you’re presenting to me and you don’t try in any way to make it relatable, then there is no context. If there’s no context, then there’s no question that I’m going to want to answer. I want the creativity and the experiences and the cultures, the socioeconomics, the gender identities, the sexualities of my students to be present within what I’m doing in the classroom so that they feel like even though we might be reading Chaucer, there’s some point in the lesson where they can identify as themselves within that piece of the curriculum. That all happens when you have the classroom community and culture built in from day one of the school year.
SM: That’s awesome.
MB: Wow! Just wow.
SM: Mardy, how is what Alyssa described to you that she’s up to in New York City differ from what you’re up to in South Carolina?
MB: It is the polar opposite. I am not allowed to incorporate other voices. So I’m teaching entrepreneurship right now, and even as we’re going through entrepreneurial traits and then the behaviors of entrepreneurs and stuff, there’s major traits in there, of a true entrepreneur, include compassion and understanding world cultures and all of this. And I had to water all my stuff down intentionally, including different faces and different pronouns, and I had to go back and well, I don’t want to say whitewash, but in South Carolina, that’s exactly what it is. Our department, our superintendent, has adapted the Prager University as a statewide acceptable curriculum base.
SM: And PragerU, for those listening, is a designated anti-LGBTQ hate group by many civil rights groups and extremely far right in its ideology and has been, to Mardy’s point, adopted in many school districts across the U.S. Sorry, go ahead.
DG: It’s unbelievable.
MB:Yeah, the whole state of South Carolina. It’s not even an LGBTQ plus, it’s brown and black skinned people and kids. It is… I mean, we’re the home of Nancy Mace.
AP: It’s awful. I definitely struggle with anxiety and depression. It feels like everything I do in the classroom is under a microscope lens. I was the emotional support teacher, they literally called me that, for this group of kids in my middle school. These are real children who really needed an adult who would listen to them. Just listen. That’s all I did. They came into my classroom while I was grading things at the end of the day, and then they left when they were comfortable leaving. That was it. But that’s exactly where those parents that didn’t like me, that principal that didn’t like me, wanted to take it. They were like, well, that’s suspicious, or what have you.
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SM: Playing into the conspiracy that queer teachers are pedophiles.
AP: Correct. When you’re a queer teacher, you have to be perfect. Any mistake that you make becomes blown up. Whereas somebody who isn’t in the minority group gets the benefit of the doubt, that doesn’t exist when you’re queer as a teacher. It just gets stripped from you so fast. Every conversation about queer teachers has this weird undertone of, well, you’re in it for the wrong reasons. I just want to help kids. Like that’s the most innocent and most like, I don’t know, most moral—in my opinion anyways—most moral possible motivations in the world is I want to help the next generation have a better time than I did. I want kids, like me, who suffered in school, like me, to not have to suffer. So then the mental health piece of that is that you have to carry the weight of that constantly. It’s not something you can put down. It’s not like I come home and I’m like, wow, I don’t have to worry about my gay kids anymore. They’re not fine. Now they’re in worse places. Cause at least when they’re in my classroom, I know they’re safe. I know for a fact, some of them aren’t safe when they go home, and I can’t do anything about that.
SM: I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I wanna go back to PragerU. Just for the people watching this who don’t know, PragerU’s videos and lesson plans are approved as supplemental educational resources in at least eight states. Some key points about what they’ve done with LGBTQ issues: They released a 21-minute film called Detrans, which promotes the idea that gender-affirming care is dangerous, and the film and the campaign faced strong criticism from LGBTQ advocacy groups. The human rights campaign called the content “hate-filled propaganda.” You, Daniel, said that it was unbelievable when we mentioned PragerU in some of the schools. Tell us more about why you said that.
DG:I’m just astonished. I’ve never ever seen that. They’re not a university. They call themselves Prager University. They’re not, it’s a YouTube channel. And a lot of it’s inaccurate, historically or otherwise. I can’t believe that they would allow that.
SM: How frustrating is it for you as a teacher when you’re like, this is historically inaccurate, this is coming after marginalized groups, and now it’s being implemented in many states where I’m expected or encouraged to teach this?
AH: I’m in a very, very lucky position to be in New York City, while all of the things are happening in the world. Like I know that our chancellor’s regulations in New York City, they supersede whatever’s happening federally. It’s heartbreaking to hear that there’s like stifling that’s happening with that because at the core of a teacher, we’re there to help children. In my building, we have a Christian club that the kids go to. We also have, you know, a Muslim club where the kids who are Muslim, they get to go and speak and be heard and they’re around like-minded children and teachers who share the same values. We have our GSA. We have a African-American studies club. There’s so much diversity within the building. I think a lot of times people speak about teachers, and they think teachers have the ability to indoctrinate children with whatever their stance is. I think that if non-educators took a step into the classroom, they’d realize that teachers are not actually indoctrinating kids with any type of view. In fact, we’re there to teach them how to have, at least in my school, how to have conversations and discussions where you might not agree with a person, but you have to respect where they come from. We’re there to teach respect. We’re there to teach diversity.
SM:And, Alyssa, I know you obviously. I know you’re yourself a devout Christian, right? How do you think the government and school districts are weaponizing Christianity as it relates to curriculums in schools?
AH: My students don’t know my religious beliefs. My students don’t know my political beliefs. That’s not my place. It’s not my place to say—as the role model in the room—it’s not my place to say, “Oh, well I’m a Christian and you guys should be praying every night.” No, now there are discussions where race or sexuality or religion come into play. I allow my students to lead those conversations and those discussions with each other under parameters, like I said, of respect and rapport, and there are going to be different religions in the room. I tell our kids the very first day, implicit bias and explicit bias stops at this door. When you come in and you’re working with your peers, my expectation to you as my students is that you’re able to articulate yourself respectfully. You’re going to have a rapport in this classroom community with people who are different than you are and that is okay. I feel like our world would be a lot better if people kind of stood in the, it’s okay, let them be. Let people be. Let people be Christian, let people be Muslim, let people be gay, let people be straight, let people identify how they want, let them be. The more we understand the concept of “let them be” in this world, I feel the less division there will be.
SM: That was really nice. I do want to talk about our president, Donald Trump. Trump has attacked many different groups, but also teachers. He said that promoting woke gender ideology, which he says teachers are doing in many cases, is nothing less than child abuse. He has said that schools are now almost exclusively teaching kids how to be transgender. When you have a president who’s setting the tone for the country, supposedly, saying rhetoric like this about teachers, what is the effect for you guys on the ground there?
AH: There’s so much division because of the rhetoric that’s coming directly from politicians, and it’s trickling into the classroom. It is heartbreaking to see or have children leave anybody’s classroom for me. The kids are walking out, and you see rejection written on their faces. You see sadness, you see kids who don’t—I’m getting goosebumps. You have kids who are afraid to say something because they don’t want the teacher to get in trouble because they’re afraid of retaliation. That is what you’re seeing.
KP: That’s what I always echo back to my students, is that at this school we’re all important, we’re all valid. So it wouldn’t be nice to exclude somebody because what if it was you?
AP:Everything that we’re trying to do that is good doesn’t matter because it has this perception from this very large crowd, this very loud crowd, of being dangerous. No matter of facts, no matter of truth can get through to them, because they’ve picked their own version of reality that they wish to impose upon all of the rest of us, regardless of what real damage it does.
JEI: It’s wild to me how the “facts don’t care about your feelings” crowd absolutely care about how their feelings might or might not be affected by that.
SM: This has been obviously a heavy conversation in many ways. I want to know though, from you guys as teachers, what’s giving you hope with the next generation?
DG: We were having just a quick conversation about what a stereotype was. One kid started talking about his gay brother, and a girl, you know, she didn’t know what she was saying, but she used a slur by accident. The reaction from the class was pretty overwhelmingly, “Hey, you can’t say that.” I was kind of ready to shut it down and we moved on after that, but I didn’t really need to correct them, I didn’t need to do anything myself. That made me really proud.
KP: I really love students’ rejection of authority. Which also, it makes my life miserable a lot, it makes classroom management very difficult. But I love that they don’t just follow whoever the most powerful person in the room. I love that they question everything. I think that’s really important, and I think they’re so strong-willed, and I think that’s exactly what we need from the next generation.
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MB:Of all these community members that we have, I’ve taught more than one of their kids now. And there are a few that are still, not still, but they’ve been indoctrinated at home for hate. And there’s a few of them. But what I’ve seen more overwhelmingly is a lot of colorblind, a lot of gender blind, it’s like no big deal to them.
SM: Just to underscore for the audience, you’re essentially in the Bible belt, where you’re saying that it’s overwhelmingly no big deal. I mean, that’s another major marker to me of progress.
MB: Yeah, it’s crazy to see the evidence of it. I have a lot of hope.
SM: I do think there’s a lot of parents who might be misinformed about LGBTQ issues and maybe not inherently hateful, but just afraid for their kids. What would your message to those parents be?
AP: If you would just sit in a room with me, and we could have a cup of coffee, and we could get to know each other a little bit, I’m not trying to harm anyone. I get fear. Like fear is real. It’s something that you have to combat. But it’s hard and so like, if you need somebody to hold your hands, I’ll hold your hand. I’m totally here for that. I just wish that when your hand was reaching out, it would not sharpen your claws, right? Put those away. So if, you know, if you come to me and you have an honest question, I’ll hear any kind of… The phrasing doesn’t matter to me. It can be as offensive-sounding. As long as I know that your intention is good, I don’t care if you use the right terms. I want you to know that your child is safe with me and I want you to know that every child in my classroom is safe with me, regardless of what parentage they’re coming from. Regardless of what situation they’re in. When I say my classroom is a safe space, I don’t mean it’s safe just for queer people. I mean that it’s safe for everyone, and that’s what I want those parents to know.
AH: If parents understood that by understanding each other’s identities, we end up building stronger connections, it creates trust within the household, and it builds that bridge between school and home so that we’re supporting every single student in a meaningful way. Not looking at it as we’re standing across from each other, but like we all want the best for your child. So, let’s stand side by side so that we can make sure that that learner, that little light, can actually shine.
JEI: As the parent of four adult children, my youngest turns 18 in a couple of months. They have all become their own unique people. If you have children and you’re sending them to me or anywhere else, they’re going to be who they’re going to be. You can either try to change that and possibly do incredible damage, or you can be supportive and help them figure out how to be safe through that.
SM: I love it.
JEI: And that’s what I’m here for.
SM: Thank you, I think that’s a wonderful place to end. You guys are absolutely fantastic and saints of society to educate the next generation. Caitlin, Daniel, Everett, AJ, Mardy and Alyssa, thank you all so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted today. We learned a lot.
Additional reporting by Hope Pisoni
Editor’s note: In the video, Mardy Burleson’s name is misspelled. Her first name is spelled M-A-R-D-Y, and Kaitlynn is spelled K-A-I-T-L-Y-N-N.
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Following the assassination of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) co-founder Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, there’s been significant posthumous discussion about who he was and what he left behind. President Trump and the Republican Party have described him as a martyr, making his funeral into a 200,000-person event comparable to those of deceased presidents, while calling for retribution against the “radical left” and trans people, despite the fact that the man who killed him is cisgender and his political affiliation is unclear.
Some liberals have mourned Kirk, casting him as a champion of civil dialogue. Meanwhile, critics of his often hateful beliefs have faced repercussions, with retaliatory firings of educators, writers and reporters.
Given the volume of discussion about Kirk and his legacy surrounding LGBTQ issues, Uncloseted Media decided to assemble the receipts. Here’s a track record of Kirk and TPUSA’s actions and statements on the queer community.
Oct. 4, 2016
TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk publishes a manifesto that outlines the group’s vision and political strategy, where he complains that “personal and overall freedom” are being lost in “exchange for ‘micro’ freedoms like taxpayer-funded contraception and gay marriage.”
He writes that TPUSA’s strategy is inspired by what he describes as the LGBT movement:
“We are using the same message delivery methods and many of the same organizing tactics. They use social media, rallies, and pop-culture messaging, just like we do. Despite our very different agendas, there is no question we have adapted our movements into the times in which we live.”
Kirk also references Jonathan Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership at New York University Stern School of Business, who has likened being a conservative graduate student on campus today to being a closeted gay student in the 1980s.
Nov. 21, 2016
Screenshot of Professor Watchlist.
TPUSA launches the Professor Watchlist, a database cataloging “anti-conservative” college professors. Many targeted professors later face harassment. A gay professor says that when they were placed on the watchlist, they began receiving anti-LGBTQ emails on their work account. And a tenured professor at the University of Florida who was placed on the watchlist and tagged with sharing a “racial ideology” says that all four professors at her university who are on the watchlist are either a person of color or someone who identifies as LGBTQ.
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Jan. 25, 2017
TPUSA co-hosts an event with College Republicans at CU Boulder called “Why Ugly People Hate Me.” The event features far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who was in the middle of his Dangerous Faggot Tour which challenged “political correctness” on college campuses. Yiannopoulos claims to be an “ex-gay,” born-again Christian who “demoted” his husband to “housemate.”
April 25, 2018
Kirk at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2018. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
A Huffington Post report finds that Shialee Grooman, then TPUSA’s national field director, had a long history of racist and homophobic posts, including one that read, “Okay. All of you are f*ggots.” In a statement to HuffPost, Kirk says Grooman is a “former employee,” and TPUSA issues a company-wide memo announcing social media background checks and offers to assist employees in making their social media posts less public.
Nov. 22, 2019
At a TPUSA event called “Culture War” in Florida, Kirk addresses a heckler who accuses him of betraying conservatism by tolerating gay and transgender individuals and warns of a slippery slope to normalizing pedophilia. Kirk tweets, “I believe marriage is one man one woman biblically” but goes on to say that he doesn’t think gay people should be excluded from the conservative movement.
Sept. 14, 2020
TPUSA launches TPUSA LIVE, a new media hub that they say provides “daily conservative content” that includes “hot takes, opinions, and reactions to breaking news.”
Other articles include transphobic headlines inspired by conspiracy theories that trans women are actually male creeps trying to invade women’s spaces. Some headlines include:
TPUSA launches the School Board Watchlist, modeled after their Professor Watchlist, to monitor high school officials they deem too progressive. The watchlist now seems to be defunct.
Oct. 14, 2021
Kirk publishes an op-ed titled “On Sexual Anarchy” that is rife with anti-LGBTQ animus. He writes:
“The facts that there are only two genders; that transgenderism and gender ‘fluidity’ are lies that hurt people and abuse kids; and that God’s good, loving, and joyful ideal for our lives is for a man and woman to be joined in a lifelong marriage covenant—these are all under official opprobrium in 2021.”
Feb. 18, 2022
A University of South Carolina student posts screenshots of racist and homophobic messages from two group chats affiliated with the school’s TPUSA chapter. The president of the chapter later releases a video apology, saying that “these remarks have no place being made in our organization,” though this video would later be taken down.
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April 8, 2022
On his podcast, Kirk says: “[Gay people] are not happy just having marriage. Instead, they now want to corrupt your children.”
In another episode the following week, Kirk falsely links trans people to inflation.
“There’s a direct connection to inflation and the trans issue. You say, ‘Charlie, come on. They couldn’t be further apart.’ No, they’re exactly the same. They’re the same in this aspect—when you believe that men can become women, why wouldn’t you also believe that you could print wealth?”
June 2022
Drew Hernandez, host of TPUSA FRONTLINE on YouTube, spends Pride Month calling LGBTQ people “mentally ill” and dubs it “groomer month.” Hernandez also says parents who bring their children to Pride events should be arrested. Months later, YouTube would remove the videos.
July 6, 2022
On his podcast, Kirk rejects a previous perspective he held: “There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication. It’s a fiction. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.”
Oct. 12, 2022
The Student Government Association at Maryland’s Towson University formally condemns the university’s TPUSA chapter after leaked messages show the group’s members allegedly using racist, homophobic and ableist slurs. Some of the messages refer to Pride Month as “f*ggot month” and the monkeypox outbreak as the “f*ggot virus.”
Feb. 17, 2023
Discussing trans women in women’s bathrooms, Kirk says, “These people are sick. … I blame the decline of American men. … Someone should’ve just took care of it the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s or 60s.” Journalist Erin Reed, whose reporting focuses on the trans community, responds to Kirk’s remarks by saying he is “openly calling for the lynching of transgender individuals.”
May 28, 2023
Kirk defends TPUSA’s partnership with Shawn Bergstrand, a registered sex offender who served time in federal prison for attempted “coercion and enticement” after trying to persuade “a minor female” to “engage in sexual activity.”
He defends Bergstrand on X and simultaneously attacks Target for selling Pride merchandise: “I’m told … that he’s a nice person who did something wrong over a decade ago, and unlike Target, he repented and the experience led him to his faith. Good for him. That’s the Gospel.”
Sept. 11, 2023
Screenshot of 2023 speech.
In a speech, Kirk describes transgender people as a “throbbing middle finger to God” and trans swimmer Lia Thomas as “an abomination to God.”
Oct. 11, 2023
David Boyles, an instructor at Arizona State University, posts a photo of his injuries on Instagram. Photo courtesy of David Boyles.
A TPUSA-affiliated crew assault David Boyles, a queer Arizona State University professor who teaches English and is a co-founder of Drag Story Hour Arizona. The crew shouts accusations about drag shows and sexuality, “accusing [him] personally of pedophilia and hating America,” and ultimately shove him to the ground after he tries to block their camera from recording. Campus police say they investigated the interaction as a “potential bias or prejudicially motivated incident.” Both suspects would plead guilty in court. The professor had been featured on TPUSA’s Professor Watchlist in part for teaching an LGBTQ-themed class on pop culture and politics.
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March 20, 2024
In a debate, Kirk says, “I believe marriage is between one man and one woman, but if you ask me do I have hate in my heart for somebody that doesn’t choose the [heteronormative] lifestyle … of course not.”
April 1, 2024
Kirk calls for gender-affirming clinics to be banned: “We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.”
June 6, 2024
Trump has spoken at multiple TPUSA events through the years. Trump appears here at the 2019 TPUSA Teen Student Action Summit. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Trump appears at a TPUSA event, signaling collaboration with Kirk’s organization for his second presidential campaign, which was centered around anti-trans ads. Trump delegates many campaign responsibilities to Turning Point Action, the political advocacy arm of TPUSA. Trump tells the crowd, “Arizona is being turned into a dumping ground for the dungeons of the third world.”
June 8, 2024
Speaking on a podcast, Kirk attacks Ms. Rachel for quoting “love your neighbor” to defend Pride celebrations on “Songs for Littles,” her YouTube series that uses music and games to help toddlers develop language and social skills.
“Ms. Rachel, you might wanna crack open that Bible of yours. … Leviticus 18 [says] that ‘thou shall lay with another man, shall be stoned to death.’ … Ms. Rachel, you quote Leviticus 19, ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ The chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”
When opining about how Christians should act towards gay people, Kirk calls homosexuality an “error” and equates it to an addiction: “How do you love somebody? You love them so much to correct their error. … If you meet an alcoholic or you meet a drug addict, do you affirm their struggle? No! You say, ‘You’re better than this, let’s get you free from that.’”
When speaking about LGBTQ rights advocates, Kirk says, “First, they wanted you to affirm, and then they wanted you to celebrate and then they wanted you to participate. And if you don’t, they are willing to destroy your life.”
Oct. 28, 2024
Kirk wears a T-shirt with the slogan “xy = man” at an election rally in Arizona, referencing that sex and gender are biological and insinuating that trans people don’t exist.
Jan. 10, 2025
TPUSA and The Daily Wire release Identity Crisis, a documentary that cherry picks stories from detransitioners and parents fighting to protect children from gender ideology. The main expert in the documentary is Dr. Drew Pinsky, a TV personality who is not a gender specialist.
March 3, 2025
Kirk speaks at the 2025 TPUSA Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Texas. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
When asked by a gay conservative college student for advice, Kirk responds, “You are a complete human being. … We act as if the most important part of your identity is what you do in the bedroom. It doesn’t mean that much to me. If you asked from a perspective as a Christian, I don’t agree with that lifestyle.”
Aug. 25, 2025
“While we’re talking about flags, we should work to overturn every conviction for those arrested, fined, or otherwise harassed for the ‘hate crime’ of doing donuts over Pride flags painted on public streets,” Kirk writes on X, referencing a teenager who was arrested in St. Petersburg for doing circular “doughnut-burnouts” on a rainbow pride mural.
In a separate post, Kirk writes that “it should be legal to burn a rainbow or BLM flag in public.”
Sept. 10, 2025
Charlie Kirk is shot and killed while speaking at a TPUSA event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. In the moments leading up to his death, Kirk is speaking about gun violence.
The mainstream media spreads disinformation based on falseleaks from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that say the shooter had “expressions of transgender and anti-fascist ideology” written on the bullets.
Trans hate has risen since Kirk’s death, and trans students unaffiliated with the shooting have been doxxed and harassed.
“[People online] were asking for my class schedule,” Simone Goodheart, a trans woman and UVU alum, told Uncloseted Media. “A few of them made awful comments about my appearance and who I am as a person.”
Sept. 12, 2025
Kirk’s widow, Erika, issues a statement at the TPUSA headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, signaling an escalation of tension:
“If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country, and this world. … You have no idea the fire you’ve ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.”
Two weeks after Kirk’s assassination, a Texas man faces charges for threatening to open fire at the Abilene Pride Parade as “revenge” for Kirk’s death. In Facebook messages, he urges a friend to “lock and load and pay them back” and suggests they go “hunting fairies.” The FBI says his threats were targeted toward Pride participants.
Sept. 30, 2025
TPUSA returns to Utah for the first time since Kirk’s death to host a panel at Utah State University.
The panel discusses political tolerance. Jason Chaffetz, a former Utah State Representative, says, “I worry that we’re putting too much tolerance. You do not need a man with junk in a woman’s bathroom. End of story.”
When discussing LGBTQ allies who lit up the iconic Brigham Young University’s “Y” in the color of the trans flag, the moderator calls it “some of that evil that’s just seeping in throughout the state.”
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Sakler says she was white knuckling it, trying to get through life as a “shell of a person.” She began cutting, hitting and hating herself because of the rejection from her church community.
He was given a treatment plan that involved limiting time with LGBTQ affirming friends, reading articles designed to redirect his attractions, and practicing what the therapist called “male characteristic activities,” such as taking charge and asserting control. He told his therapist that his marker of when things would be better was “life [going] back to normal.”
The therapist also worked with his parents, telling them they had failed by allowing the “gay agenda” to threaten their family and “let the devil get into the house.”
Editor’s note: This article includes mention of suicide and self-harm. If you are having thoughts of suicide or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available here.
“You don’t feel secure in your masculinity,” Sam Nieves remembers his licensed therapist telling him at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. “Go grab a Playboy and find a way to enjoy it,” the Mormon therapist told him.
“He told me I can’t be straight if I don’t go fishing with my dad,” says Nieves, who was 20 at the time. “He told me I needed to play more sports, listen to country music, stuff like that. He told me something was wrong with me.”
After these sessions, which lasted about a year and a half, Nieves started experiencing crippling shame and self-loathing. He eventually developed excruciating migraines and memory loss.
“My therapist just helped me find better ways to help me to hate myself,” Nieves, now 41 and living in Seattle, Washington, told Uncloseted Media.
Sam Nieves as a young adult. Photo courtesy of Nieves.
Fourteen countries have a national conversion therapy ban, while many more have state or provincial bans. In the U.S., religious leaders can practice nationwide, though licensed therapists are not allowed to apply it to kids in 23 states.
While research around torture and mental health consistently suggests the practice should be banned, almost 700,000 LGBT adults have received conversion therapy at some point in their lives, including about 350,000 who received it as adolescents.
Despite all of this, on Oct. 7 the Supreme Court heard arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case that challenges Colorado’s conversion therapy ban and—if overturned—would have implications for the rest of the states with bans in place.
While the verdict will likely not be announced until June, the court seems poised to overturn it, suggesting that restrictions on therapists might violate the First Amendment’s free-speech clause.
“I’m emotionally devastated for the children who will lose the protections we fought so hard to give them,” says Nieves.
Conversion Therapy and Self-Hate
Unlike many young Americans who are forced into the practice by their parents, Nieves—who was raised Mormon—opted to see a conversion therapist because his church community said that if he didn’t change his sexuality, he was letting them down.
“I actively didn’t want to be attracted to guys,” he says. “And so it was always this confusing, gaslighting situation where they would tell me to stop being gay, even if I wasn’t doing anything. I was trying really hard not to. That’s when [the church] referred me to conversion therapy.”
Sam Nieves in his 20s. Courtesy of Nieves.
Nieves’ therapist insisted that his mom was too overbearing and his dad was not actively parenting, causing him to be gay. As his therapist continued to recommend that he engage in stereotypically masculine activities, he began to withdraw, cutting off friendships and avoiding community gatherings. His Mormon upbringing had taught him to feel shame, but conversion therapy solidified it.
“Conversion therapy gave me validation for why I hate myself. It was just building on top of what the church had already taught me,” he says.
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Links to Dissociative Identity Disorder
Nieves became depressed and eventually developed a mild type of dissociative identity disorder (DID), where he experienced one persona that carried shame and recognized he was gay, and another that tried to act straight. Headaches and mental fog were persistent. Thoughts of ending his life flickered through his mind.
“It was just nonstop, massive disassociation,” he says. “There was the Straight Sam and the Gay Sam. And the whole time, everyone was telling me Satan was working on me because something inside me was trying to be gay. So it was insane making. They were making me clinically insane.”
According to medical experts, repeated trauma like medical procedures, war, human trafficking, conversion therapy and terrorism can cause DID when it overwhelms a child’s ability to cope, causing their sense of self to fragment into distinct identity states as a survival mechanism. The trauma disrupts the normal integration of self, leading to symptoms like memory gaps, dissociation and distinct personality states.
When Hunter Moore, a 29-year-old queer woman now living in Washington, was subjected to conversion therapy from her church and parents, she developed DID.
Raised in rural Idaho and immersed in an Independent Fundamental Baptist church that condemned queerness as sinful, the constant fear and shame brought on by her church’s conversion therapy program fractured her sense of self. She attributes her condition to repeated trauma that caused her brain to wall off painful memories.
“I didn’t know how to handle it other than just to check out,” Moore told Uncloseted Media. “I still have a lot of memory gaps from the conversion therapy because of how intense it was. … Once I didn’t have the restraints of that church anymore, the memories started to return.”
Fear, Shame and Suicidal Ideation
Similar to Nieves and Moore, Addy Sakler, who grew up in a conservative Protestant community in Ohio, says conversion therapy was “slowly killing” her.
“I figured I liked girls in kindergarten but did not have the language to describe it,” she told Uncloseted Media.
Sakler knew she wouldn’t be accepted at her church, so she put herself in conversion therapy throughout her young adulthood.
But it didn’t work. Sakler remembers the first sneaking moments of affection between grad school classes with her first crush. But after each kiss, the joy was followed by shame.
“We’d feel a lot of guilt and break up and immediately go repent,” she says. Both women were part of a church ministry that promised to “pray away the gay,” a 12-week program of lessons and deliverance sessions meant to convert them to heterosexuality. Instead, Sakler says, it nearly destroyed her.
Addy Sakler and her boyfriend before she came out. Photo courtesy of Sakler.
“I felt like a zombie walking around. I was depressed and I tried to commit suicide,” she says. “I was in the hospital for a month, two different times. It created a lot of trauma.”
Sakler says she was white knuckling it, trying to get through life as a “shell of a person.” She began cutting, hitting and hating herself because of the rejection from her church community.
Addy Sakler as an adult. Courtesy of Sakler.
“You believe what they’re saying. They’re telling you you’re broken and to be right with God you have to be heterosexual and if you’re not changing, then you’re being attacked by Satan.”
For nearly 15 years, Sakler attended conversion therapy conferences across the country, including one put on by the now dissolved Exodus International.
According to the Williams Institute, LGBTQ adults who have undergone conversion therapy have nearly twice the odds of attempting suicide and 92% greater odds of lifetime suicidal ideation compared to those who haven’t. Among LGBTQ youth, the numbers are higher, with 27% of those who experienced conversion therapy attempting suicide in the past year.
In addition, survivors experience disproportionately high rates of depression, PTSD and substance abuse. According to the findings from one Stanford Medicine study, the psychological harm caused by conversion therapy mirrors that of other severe traumas known to cause PTSD—like sexual or physical assault, the loss of someone close, or even experiences of war and torture.
Isolation and Families Torn Apart
When Curtis Lopez-Galloway told his parents he was gay at 16, they drove him two hours away from his house in southern Illinois to a conversion therapist who used the sessions to berate him for not trying hard enough to change into “the man that God wanted” him to be.
Curtis Lopez-Galloway as a teenager. Photo courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
Lopez-Galloway remembers being told that his attractions to other men were a symptom of a deeper lack of masculinity, that he needed to “study women to understand what kind of man he was supposed to be” and that he should “bounce his eyes, and change his thoughts to something else whenever he begins to have an attraction toward a male.”
Curtis Lopez-Galloway’s treatment plan, courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
He was given a treatment plan that involved limiting time with LGBTQ affirming friends, reading articles designed to redirect his attractions, and practicing what the therapist called “male characteristic activities,” such as taking charge and asserting control. He told his therapist that his marker of when things would be better was “life [going] back to normal.”
The therapist also worked with his parents, telling them they had failed by allowing the “gay agenda” to threaten their family and “let the devil get into the house.”
Lopez-Galloway, who now runs the Conversion Therapy Survivor Network, a nonprofit that connects survivors of the practice, recalls frustration and shame spilling into screaming matches that tore his family apart. “My parents were miserable, I was miserable, and we would just take it out on each other,” he says. “I went to [my therapist] for six months, and he just abused me and made life worse. It pushed me deeper into the closet and made me anxious and depressed.”
Curtis Lopez-Galloway as a teenager. Courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
“[My therapist] would use therapeutic ideas but twist them in a way that was trying to change sexuality. … He would try to manipulate me in that sort of way and really broke me down as a person,” says Lopez-Galloway.
We reached out to the center Lopez-Galloway went to for treatment but they did not respond to a request for comment. Lopez-Galloway says his parents now acknowledge the harm the therapy caused, and he says their relationship has improved.
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Life After Conversion Therapy
For many survivors of conversion therapy, the trauma can last a lifetime.
Even 21 years later, Nieves still gets triggered. He dropped out of college during his last semester of counseling school because the practices were too similar to those manipulated and weaponized by his therapist. “The hardest part was fighting … to no longer be suicidal every single day,” he says. “I would say that’s the hardest part. … It’s the suicidality that you fight with once it’s over.”
Nieves and Moore have both found support in Lopez-Galloway’s survivor network, where they meet weekly and heal together in community. Sakler has found healing in therapy for PTSD, and has found acceptance with her wife and her queer community in Sacramento, California.
Despite this, the trauma often requires undoing self-hatred and discovering self-worth.
“[We’re] constantly saying, ‘We don’t know who we are,’” Nieves says. “We don’t know how to enjoy life. We don’t know what the meaning of life is. We’re like The Walking Dead. Because just like how you break a horse, they broke our spirits. They told us everything about us was wrong and we needed to conform. But no matter what we did, we couldn’t conform.”
Even with these survivors’ experiences, along with countless testimonies from other Americans over decades, the Supreme Court looks poised to overturn Colorado’s ban, with multiple justices describing it as “viewpoint discrimination.”
Nieves strongly disagrees and advises kids who are experiencing conversion therapy right now to stay strong and ask for help when possible. “This may very well be the most difficult time of your life. For many of you, it’s going to feel like a living hell, and you may even pray for death every night. I know this, because this is how [I] felt too,” he says. “Often, [conversion therapists] break other laws. If you think someone might be breaking the law during your conversion therapy, please seek out a trusted adult and let them know,” he says.
Above all, Nieves tells kids to push through no matter what. “It can and will get better if you promise yourself that you deserve authentic joy, free of lies and coercion. Community is out there waiting for you, if you can just hold on for one more day, one more hour, or even just for one more minute.”
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Professor of immigration and citizenship law at the University of Virginia, Amanda Frost joins the show to discuss her book You Are Not American: Citizen Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers. Live-streamed on September 22, 2025.
I know that the Christian religion has been on a push for forcing the US to be a theocracy run by their personal church doctrines. Why I don’t understand? Do they think that will earn them favor with their god? Is it simply a way for the leaders of the movement to gain more power / wealth? Is it simply they are terrified of after they die and are convinced that their forcing others to follow their church doctrines will get their god to give them more benefits in heaven. The religious strictures on sex and sexual stuff is rooted in an ancient not correct misunderstand of life and sexuality. I still do not understand why others watching porn upsets Christian republicans. I really don’t get it. Is it because they are afraid the people watching will masturbate? Is it because sexual arousal is fearful to them? I really wish someone could explain it to me. Even in the church boarding school I went to my senior year of high school they did not push that no sex stuff very hard, instead they occasionally reminded us not to touch ourselves. They need not have worried, in the boy’s dorm we were touching each other which in our kid brains got around the entire sin of jerking off thing. Hugs.
Michigan lawmakers have introduced a bill that would make it illegal to distribute pornography via the internet in the state.
HB 4938, introduced last week by six Republican members of the state House of Representatives, would “prohibit the distribution of certain material on the internet that corrupts the public morals.”
Pornography is the principal target, though the bill also seeks to criminalize depictions of transgender people.
The bill defines “pornographic material” broadly, to include “any content, digital, streamed, or otherwise distributed on the internet, the primary purpose of which is to sexually arouse or gratify, including videos, erotica, magazines, stories, manga, material generated by artificial intelligence, live feeds, or sound clips.”
The bill appears to exempt from the ban material protected by the First Amendment. Since pornography is constitutionally protected speech, this makes it unclear how the legislation could actually work.
According to the law, “prohibited material” means “material that at common law was not protected by adoption of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting laws abridging freedom of speech or of the press.”
XBIZ spoke with adult industry attorney and First Amendment expert Corey D. Silverstein to attempt to explain what this meant.
“I think they are trying to say that it would not be applicable to content not deemed as obscene under the Miller test,” he said. “But it is written so poorly that there is some uncertainty as to their angle, which also makes the proposal both vague and ambiguous.
“At the same time, it could be another attempt to undercut and soften the Miller test, which we have been seeing in various other states throughout the country,” he added.
The proposed penalties in the bill are severe, including up to 20 years in prison or a fine of up to $100,000, or both. It also allows for civil fines of up to $500,000 per violation.
The bill would require internet service providers to implement “mandatory filtering technology” to prevent Michigan residents from accessing “prohibited material” as defined in the bill, to “actively monitor and block known circumvention tools,” and to block access to specific websites on receipt of a court order.
The bill calls for the state attorney general to establish “a special internet content enforcement division” staffed with “digital forensics analysts, legal experts, cybersecurity specialists, and investigators” to enforce the proposed law.
Silverstein added that he doesn’t believe the bill has much of a chance at being adopted.
“This bill has virtually no chance of going anywhere, given the current makeup of the Michigan legislature and its far-left Democrat governor,” he said. “The bill is unconstitutional at every turn. Regardless, it is alarming that this type of thinking and government waste continues to occur.”
The bill was referred to the Committee on Judiciary.
Talk of porn bans has increased in recent months. Earlier this year, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah introduced federal legislation that would redefine almost all visual depictions of sex as obscene and therefore illegal, a goal that was also laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy blueprint, which has heavily guided the Trump administration’s agenda.
Update, Sept. 19: The bill’s reference to “known circumvention tools” includes VPNs, proxy servers and encrypted tunneling methods, which would make it nearly impossible to access adult content online within the state.
This is what the culture hate warriors want here in the US. They saw what Putin did in Russia and what Victor Orbán did in Hungary. They used the idea of protecting children to limit representation of LGBTQ+ people in society, then they moved it up the war against that community to erase it based on it was an attack on families. The question you need to ask why is family threatened by including same-sex couples as a family? What makes that family unit an attack on families? In their mind it is twofold, one in their mind it doesn’t produce its own offspring and also it offends tradition / religious tradition. We must never change what was done in the past forever in the minds of those who preach the way to live from a book written centuries ago as they read it on their new smartphone. We must find a way to stop this big money steam rolling over personal civil rights to install fundamental religious dictates on how everyone lives in the US. There are those who believe just admitting and allowing LGBTQ+ people to exist is promoting it. Is admitting and showing red hair people exist promoting red hair? Hugs
The council claimed the content “promotes homosexuality,” “disregards family values,” and “conflicts with the shared values of society.”
A scene from “Cobalt Blue”
Turkey’s media regulator has imposed fines on five international streaming platforms and ordered the removal of several films and series, citing violations of “national and moral values.”
The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) announced the penalties following inspections conducted under the government’s “Year of the Family” initiative. According to the regulator, the inspections aimed to “protect children from harmful content” and “combat productions that threaten the Turkish family structure and shared societal values.”
RTÜK fined the platforms the maximum penalty allowed, amounting to 3% of their annual revenues in Turkey. The decision affects Disney+, Prime Video, Netflix, HBO Max, and MUBI.
Among the targeted content are All of Us Strangers on Disney+, Those About To Die on Prime Video, Cobalt Blue on Netflix, Looking: The Movie on HBO Max, and Benedetta on MUBI.
The council claimed the content “promotes homosexuality,” “disregards family values,” and “conflicts with the shared values of society.” It did not elaborate on the specific scenes or themes that led to the sanctions.
Under Article 32 of Law No. 6112, RTÜK is authorized to impose several administrative measures on broadcasting entities. These include warnings, suspension of programming, and fines. The council can also enforce temporary broadcast bans and revoke broadcasting licenses. (HA/VK)
Increase in violence since 2019 is linked to online campaigns seeking to sow disinformation and fuel hatred
A Malta Pride participant carries a giant rainbow flag during the parade in Valletta. Photograph: Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters
Europeans who do not fit the typical definition of male or female are grappling with an “alarming” rise in violence, the EU’s leading rights agency has said, as concerted campaigns seek to sow disinformation and fuel hatred towards them.
The findings from the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights, published on Tuesday, were based on responses from 1,920 people in 30 countries across Europe. All of them identified as intersex, an umbrella term referring to those with innate variations of sex characteristics and which can also include people who identify as trans, non-binary and gender diverse.
It found that since 2019, the rates of violence and harassment against intersex people have sharply increased – particularly among those who identify as trans, non-binary and gender diverse – far outpacing the increases reported by others in the LGBTQ+ community.
One in three surveyed, 34%, said they had been physically or sexually assaulted in the five years prior to the survey, up from 22% in 2019. Between 2019 and 2023, the rate of reported hate-motivated harassment had almost doubled, from 42% to 74%.
The survey also found that more than half, 57%, of respondents said they had been subjected “without their informed consent” to surgery or other medical treatment to modify their sex characteristics, while 39% said they were put through so-called conversion practices aimed at changing their sexual orientation or gender, compared with a rate of 25% among all LGBTQ+ groups.
The Vienna-based agency linked the rise to a wider climate of “increasing or persisting intolerance and bigotry, as well as intense online hatred campaigns” that had “instrumentalised” the LGBT+ community.
“Disinformation campaigns fomenting intolerance and prejudice are often waged by foreign and domestic actors acting to undermine European and western democracies and core values, such as dignity, equality and diversity,” the agency noted.
The result was a “weaponising” of the fact that many people know little about those who identify as intersex, trans, non-binary and gender diverse, allowing these campaigns to spread disinformation and “fuel hatred and violence against them”, it said.
The report echoes organisations across Europe, who have long warned of politicians using parliament, political rallies and media interviews to fuel anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and normalise discrimination across the continent.
In its findings this week, the EU agency warned that the impact of this discrimination was far-reaching for those who identify as intersex. “Their repeated victimisation and the multiple and compounded challenges they face can lead to severe exclusion and critical life situations such as homelessness, suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts.”
More than half of the intersex people surveyed, 53%, said they had contemplated suicide in the prior year. The figure was notably higher than the overall rate of 37% reported across all LGBTIQ groups.
The EU agency called on countries to add sex characteristics to the protected grounds in anti-discrimination legislation and do more to combat hate crimes and hate speech aimed at intersex people.
Their struggle requires an urgent response, said Sirpa Rautio, the director of the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights. “Intersex people in the EU experience alarming levels of exclusion, discrimination and violence,” she said in a statement. “They must be provided with targeted support that addresses their specific needs to ensure they can enjoy their fundamental rights and live in dignity.”
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Since June, Amtrak Police officers have arrested dozens of people for alleged “public lewdness” at New York City’s Penn Station, a sting operation that sent at least one person to an ICE detention facility — and which one university professor says was conducted, in part, through popular cruising apps like Sniffies.
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As reported by NYC news outlet The City on Wednesday, Amtrak Police arrested 23 people for public lewdness in June — LGBTQ+ Pride Month — after making only eight such arrests in the five months prior. “Lewdness” arrest numbers have remained high since then, according to the NYC-based Legal Aid Society, which told The City that 20 people were arrested for lewdness at Penn Station in a single day in September.
One of the people arrested in June was David, a 31-year-old gay man and healthcare worker who said he was arrested while trying to use a Penn Station urinal on his way home from visiting a friend. He was wearing a rainbow bracelet. David told The City that he was taken to a cell inside the station and handcuffed to a wall, at which point he heard one officer tell others “we got three more fag pervs.” The lewdness charge against him was eventually dropped, but David said he was “traumatized” by the experience.
Immigration attorney Danney Salvatierra also told The City that one of her clients, an asylum seeker from Mexico, was arrested by Amtrak Police while using the bathroom at Penn in July and immediately handed off to ICE agents. Salvatierra said the arrest documents did not contain a charge against her client, who spent over a month in a detention facility before being released by a judge.
Last week, City University of New York (CUNY) law professor Jared Trujillo posted a TikTok video warning others about sting operations in Penn Station bathrooms. Trujillo claims that police have been using Sniffies to lure potential cruisers to a bathroom near a police booth, then arrest them. The arrests come during a marked increase in visibility for Sniffies through print media like The New Yorker and New York Magazine, though Trujillo pointed out that the platform wasn’t the only way police have targeted travelers.
Be safe!! Amtrak officers are using Sniffies and otherwise approaching people in the men’s Amtrak bathroom at Penn Statuon and charging them with lewdness #sniffies#NYC#civilrightawyer#amtrak#pennstation
“There are other instances where officers will approach someone who’s at a urinal, the officer will touch himself or will just peer at the person, and if the person — who is there just trying to pee — responds in any way, that person is then arrested or at least charged with lewdness,” Trujillo said in his video. (In his comments to The City, David said he felt “watched” by a nearby man shortly before his arrest.) Trujillo further noted that such stings closely resemble tactics used in the past decade by Port Authority police, who settled a class action lawsuit over similar arrests in 2022, promising to end plainclothes bathroom patrols and step up sensitivity training.
“Police have long weaponized constitutionally dubious tactics to target men they perceive as gay. Officers sometimes expose or touch themselves, or leer at men, only to arrest the man — even when he has done nothing wrong,” Trujillo told Them in a statement Wednesday. “These arrests are about padding numbers, not public safety. They waste resources and inflict trauma, and the charges can carry devastating immigration and employment consequences. The Port Authority police engaged in the same conduct until Legal Aid sued and forced a settlement in 2022.”
Trujillo urged LGBTQ+ people to exercise caution when dealing with the police to reduce the chance of harm. “If you are arrested, invoke your right to remain silent and ask for an attorney,” he told Them. “Do not consent to police searching your phone.”
The arrests come during a marked increase in visibility for Sniffies through print media like The New Yorker and New York Magazine.
Scottie's Playtime 