LGBTQ+ discrimination
More than 200 people submit opponent testimony against bill to limit health care for LGBTQ youth
A handful of parents of transgender children spoke out against a controversial bill that would limit health care for LGBTQ+ youth. They were among the more than 200 people who submitted opponent testimony against House Bill 68 — also known as the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act (SAFE Act) — Wednesday morning to the House […]
A parents bill of rights for the rest of us
There’s no question that parenting has gotten harder in this country. Gun violence is now the leading killer of children in this country, a brutal fact made clearer with each new school shooting. Child care is out of reach for many parents, while the rising cost of college clouds the future for their kids. For many reasons, […]
DeSantis, in Iowa, says GOP stance in culture wars will help win elections
IOWA – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told Iowa Republicans Friday that standing strong in the culture wars around issues like education, criminal justice, and health care in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic will help their party win elections. DeSantis, along with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, spoke to more than 600 Iowans at the Iowa […]
Veteran, lifelong athlete, coach, parent, and trans man: Barring trans kids from athletics is awful
To start it off simply, since I was 5 years old, I have loved everything about sports. I can’t imagine my life without the lessons sports have taught me, and the teammates who became my community along the way. As a lifelong Ohioan, it breaks my heart to think that transgender youth in my home […]
National ban on transgender athletes in girls’ sports passed by U.S. House panel
WASHINGTON – The U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee early Thursday passed a bill on a party-line vote that would block transgender girls from competing in school sports consistent with their gender identity, a reflection of a broader push in multiple states to curb the rights of transgender student athletes. The bill, H.R. 734, introduced by Rep. […]
The GOP’s culture wars would be laughable if they weren’t deadly
Republicans are resorting to their age-old tactic of manufactured moral outrage to distract from the fact that they have no economic agenda other than to enrich the already wealthy. It couldn’t have been clearer than in the GOP response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. While the president at least paid some […]
House GOP member reintroduces bill to deny gender-affirming health care to Ohio youth
The following article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland. An Ohio bill to limit health care for LGBTQ+ youth that was postponed by […]
Ohio GOP to reintroduce bill to prohibit transgender girls from school sports
The following article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland. A bill to prohibit transgender girls in Ohio from playing school sports will be […]
U.S. House GOP preps for debates on ‘parents rights,’ school vouchers and transgender athletes
WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans laid the groundwork for some top legislative priorities during a Wednesday hearing that examined public funding for charter schools and voucher programs, as well as increasing parents’ oversight of school curriculum. The Republican chair of the Education and the Workforce Committee, North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, provided a forum for […]
Transgender people in rural America struggle to find doctors willing or able to provide care
This story was originally published in Kaiser Health News. For Tammy Rainey, finding a health care provider who knows about gender-affirming care has been a challenge in the rural northern Mississippi town where she lives. As a transgender woman, Rainey needs the hormone estrogen, which allows her to physically transition by developing more feminine features. […]
LGBTQ kids need protection from bullies and violence, not adults targeting and bullying them too
I grew up in a struggling, post-industrial Ohio town in the 1990s where ignorance and intolerance often reigned. I stood up to bullies my whole life, and when put under physical threat, I fought them. No bully can intimidate me, and so even though I was definitely a weird kid, I was also funnier, smarter, […]
Club Q survivors at U.S. House hearing denounce anti-LGBTQ rhetoric
Survivors of a deadly attack at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs and other advocates told a U.S. House panel Wednesday that political rhetoric and policy fights dehumanize LGBTQ people and contribute to such violence. Democrats and Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee largely sympathized with the survivors, but drew different conclusions […]