On Tuesday, Boise City Council members approved a resolution designating three flags, including the Pride flag, as official flags of the City of Trees.
The vote comes amid ongoing tensions between Boise Mayor Lauren McLean and the Idaho Attorney General over a new state law, House Bill 96, which regulates which flags local governments can display.
“A city should be able to put up flags at various times for whatever reason the community might want,” community member Patti Raino said, “and this is a community that supports, certainly pride. Has always supported pride.”
Hundreds of people showed up to rally in support of the city before the meeting started. About a dozen of those were protestors against the resolution — including Robert Coggins.
“I’m just a native Idahoan,” he said. “I feel like I do not have a voice, and this mayor does not let me have a voice. I think [the flag is] exclusionary. It doesn’t represent me.”
Council President Colin Nash, who sponsored the resolution, said it would help “memorialize” flags the city flies and ensure compliance with state law.
“It’s important for us, not only to communicate to any law enforcement that might be interested, but also to the public that we’re doing this out of a sense of duty, rather than defiance of the state legislature,” Nash said before the vote.
Nash added the flags represent the city’s values and responsibilities.
“This is our lawful expression of our dedication to ensuring all members of our community feel seen, respected, and welcome,” he said. “I think there is an expectation among the opponents of it, that the government should remain neutral in issues like this. I’m not neutral on defending marginalized neighbors.”
The resolution includes not only the Pride flag but also designates the blue City of Boise flag and the white organ donor flag honoring National Donate Life Month as official city flags.
City officials say the resolution acknowledges and formally ratifies that flags flown at Boise City Hall comply with Idaho state law.
The council meeting did not include public testimony on the resolution. During the council discussion, McLean reminded the public in attendance they could not speak after several members of the audience made comments towards the council.
The city announced last week, attorneys from Holland & Hart have volunteered to represent Boise pro bono if any legal action is taken against the city regarding this matter. The volunteer legal team includes Erik Stidham, Jennifer Jensen, Alex Grande and Anne Haws.
Organizers and the Kennedy Center have canceled a week’s worth of events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights for this summer’s World Pride festival in Washington, D.C., amid a shift in priorities and the ousting of leadership at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions.
Multiple artists and producers involved in the center’s Tapestry of Pride schedule, which had been planned for June 5 to 8, told The Associated Press that their events had been quietly canceled or moved to other venues. And in the wake of the cancellations, Washington’s Capital Pride Alliance has disassociated itself from the Kennedy Center.
“We are a resilient community, and we have found other avenues to celebrate,” said June Crenshaw, deputy director of the alliance. “We are finding another path to the celebration … but the fact that we have to maneuver in this way is disappointing.”
The Kennedy Center’s website still lists Tapestry of Pride on its website with a general description and a link to the World Pride site. There are no other details.
The Kennedy Center did not respond to a request from the AP for comment.
The move comes on the heels of massive changes at the Kennedy Center, with President Donald Trump firing both the president and chairman in early February. Trump replaced most of the board with loyalists, who then elected him the new Kennedy Center chairman.
The World Pride event, held every two years, starts in just under a month — running from May 17 through June 8 with performances and celebrations planned across the capital city. But Trump administration policies on transgender rights and comments about Kennedy Center drag performances have sparked concern about what kind of reception attendees will receive.
“I know that D.C. as a community will be very excited to be hosting World Pride, but I know the community is a little bit different than the government,” said Michael Roest, founder and director of the International Pride Orchestra, which had its June 5 performance at the Kennedy Center abruptly canceled within days of Trump’s takeover.
Roest told the AP he was in the final stages of planning the Kennedy Center performance after months of emails and Zoom calls. He was waiting on a final contract when Trump posted on social media Feb. 7 of the leadership changes and his intention to transform the Kennedy Center’s programming.
Immediately the Kennedy Center became nonresponsive, Roest said. On Feb. 12, he said, he received a one-sentence email from a Kennedy Center staffer stating, “We are no longer able to advance your contract at this time.”
“They went from very eager to host to nothing,” he said. “We have not since heard a word from anybody at the Kennedy Center, but that’s not going to stop us.”
In the wake of the cancellation, Roest said he managed to move the International Pride Orchestra performance to the Strathmore theater in nearby Bethesda, Maryland.
Crenshaw said some other events, including a drag story time and a display of parts of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, would be moved to the World Pride welcome center in Chinatown.
Monica Alford, a veteran arts and culture journalist and event planner, was scheduled to organize an event June 8 as part of Tapestry of Pride, but said she also saw communication abruptly end within days of Trump’s takeover.
Alford has a long history with the Kennedy Center and organized the first-ever drag brunch on the Kennedy Center rooftop in 2024, and said she regarded the institution — and its recent expansion known as The Reach — as “my home base” and “a safe space for the queer community”
She said she was still finalizing the details of her event, which she described as “meant to be family-friendly, just like the drag brunch was family-friendly and classy and sophisticated.”
She said she mourns the loss of the partnership she nurtured with the Kennedy Center.
“We’re doing our community a disservice — not just the queer community but the entire community,” she said.
Roest said he never received an explanation as to why the performance was canceled so late in the planning stages. He said his orchestra would no longer consider performing at the Kennedy Center, and he believes most queer artists would make the same choice.
“There would need to be a very, very public statement of inclusivity from the administration, from that board, for us to consider that,” he said. “Otherwise it is a hostile performance space.”
One of the lead organizers of WorldPride 2025, set to take place in D.C. May 17-June 8, told members of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, known as COG, on April 9 that due to the recently implemented anti-trans policies of the Trump administration, it may be dangerous for trans people traveling from abroad to attend WorldPride in D.C, according to a report by WTOP News.
The WTOP report says the message of concern was delivered by Ryan Bos, executive director of D.C.’s Capital Pride Alliance, which is the lead organizer of WorldPride 2025. The news report says Bos spoke at a meeting of COG, which consists of local government officials from D.C. and the surrounding suburban counties in Maryland and Virginia.
“It’s possible that we may actually issue a statement telling trans folks internationally not to come, or if they come, they come at their own risk,” WTOP quoted Bos as saying.
“So, these are the things that we will be discussing with the D.C. government and our partners to determine how best to communicate that to ensure that we’re getting the resources to the folks that need it,” Bos said according to the WTOP report.
WTOP reported that some members of the COG board expressed concern over the news that it may be harmful for trans people to travel to the D.C. area for WorldPride.
“It’s really shameful that you all are having to consider making statements like that,” WTOP quoted Frederick County, Md., Executive Jessica Fitzwater as saying. “It’s really heartbreaking.”
D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who attended the COG meeting, told Bos, “I’m disheartened to hear that, but I hope you also recognize you’ve got partners in this room that want to be right there with you to make sure this is a wonderful, successful event, a safe event, that’s going to take place across the whole region,” WTOP reports.
Capital Pride Alliance, in response to a request for further comment on Bos’s remarks at the COG meeting, said in a brief statement that Bos’s presentation was limited to what “may happen.” The statement said no official decision has been made regarding a possible warning for trans people considering attending WorldPride.
Florida state Republican lawmakers have advanced a bill that would allow public employees and state contractors to openly discriminate against LGBTQ+ co-workers without fear of punishment.
The so-called “Freedom of Conscience in the Workplace Act” (S.B. 440) would forbid public employers from requiring workers to use transgender people’s personal pronouns and forbid employers from punishing any employee for expressing “a belief in traditional or Biblical views of sexuality and marriage, or … gender ideology.”
The legislation would also remove “nonbinary” gender options from employment forms and forbid any entities from requiring workers to undergo LGBTQ+ cultural competence training. The bill would not apply to private employers.
“The bill really does promote government employees and contractors to harass transgender individuals by allowing them to intentionally misgender them by using disrespectful pronouns and having no consequences,” Florida state Sen. Kristen Arrington (D) said, according to Advocate. “And this is a license to discriminate free from accountability.”
The Senate Government Oversight and Accountability Committee initially declined to vote on the bill last week after receiving hundreds of comment cards opposing it. However, the committee ultimately voted 5-2 along party lines to advance it. It now heads to the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration.
Florida resident Claudia Thomas, the first out gay commissioner of Sanford City, said the bill insults LGBTQ+ people like her and wastes government resources, Florida Politics reported.
“I would love to get back to trying to solve my city’s problems about water, clean water, housing, etc,” Thomas said. “And if I have to start wasting my time talking about pronouns and people not respecting my friends, it would make me sad.”
One bill would ban local governments from enacting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies (including any recognition of Pride Month) by defunding these initiatives and removing local officials who promote them. Another would prohibit any taxpayer funds from supporting DEI initiatives in state agencies, among state contractors, or grantees.
Yet another bill would ban Pride flags on government property, and another would restrict the ability of people under the age of 18 to seek reproductive healthcare without parental consent.
However, Democratic lawmakers have also introduced legislation that would formally repeal the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, repeal the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which forbids instruction on LGBTQ+ issues in K-12 schools, eliminate so-called “LGBTQ+ paníc defenses in queer-bashing criminal cases and restore parents’ rights to access gender-affirming care for trans kids.
A state lawmaker is calling on the Legislature to “completely” defund the University of Texas if it doesn’t shutter its Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department and LGBTQ studies program, which he has decried as liberal indoctrination that taxpayers should not fund.
The demand by Rep. Brian Harrison on Wednesday comes after a barrage of posts on X from the Republican lawmaker from Midlothian that draw attention to public universities’ LGBTQ+ and gender-related course offerings, despite no law barring such curriculum.
After an “undercover” visit to the UT campus Tuesday, Harrison criticized the university’s exhibit on “Black queer ecstasy,” which showcases art that has often been excluded from historical representation; Pride flags flying around campus; books on gender, transgender issues and queerness; and event flyers for roundtables on Black feminism, transgender people’s well-being and multiple resource posters for LGBTQ+ people.
In doing so, Harrison has amassed 45,500 followers on X whom he calls “liberty bots” — more than triple the followers Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows has accumulated.
In its recently approved budget proposal, the Senate does not call to defund UT.
In an interview Wednesday, Harrison told the American-Statesman that his impromptu visit to UT was spurred by an event hosted by the Department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies on disparities in health outcomes and gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary people of color.
“The voters of Texas do not want their money spent on gender ideology,” Harrison said. “It’s a very visible embarrassment. The state of Texas is supposedly run by all the Republicans down here. We can’t do the basics.”
UT and the head of the LGBTQ studies program declined to comment. The chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Department did not return Statesman requests for comment.
But queer organizations doubt Harrison’s threat has standing.
Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of Equality Texas, the largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization in the state, said government intervention in what universities can teach could constitute viewpoint discrimination, a violation of the First Amendment. It would also infringe on the academic freedom that makes UT “top of their class,” he said.
“Freedom requires that we allow ideas that are different from our own, ideas that might even make us uncomfortable,” Pritchett said in a statement to the Statesman. “Harrison wants conformity, but Texans believe in Freedom at all costs.”
Harrison said painting his demands as government censorship is “absurd,” saying anyone can study anything as long as taxpayers aren’t funding the material.
“This is scary for my community, absolutely, but for the Republican Party because they’re showing their hand,” Adeeko said. “It’s telling us that state officials, people who are passing laws, don’t understand who we are, and they’re using that lack of understanding as their primary basis to deny us the right to have well-being and our needs” met.
Harrison and other lawmakers should talk to queer students and organizing groups if they want to understand what being transgender and being queer in Texas means, Adeeko said. Until then, LGBTQ+ people will continue fighting against legislative threats.
“This isn’t like the power boss (go) girl slay he thinks it is. It’s worn out,” Adeeko said of Harrison’s crusade. “It’s really just trying to dog pile all this hopelessness onto the people they go after, and it’s not working.”
Adeeko said Harrison has a duty to serve queer and transgender Texans as a state representative, and the queer community will continue supporting one another until then.
Harrison: ‘Past time the Republican Government of Texas grows a backbone’
Harrison’s visit to UT, according to his X thread, included entering inside buildings, sneaking into a conference and stealing a pamphlet on nonmedical gender transition resources that he called “one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read.”
UT is a public university, but there are rules on who can access its buildings for security purposes. According to the university’s emergency management website, “with few exceptions such as museums, libraries and during certain events, university-owned buildings and facilities are not considered open to the public.”
When asked if he had legislative support to cut UT’s budget if the programs remain, Harrison criticized state elected members from the Republican Party for not publicly supporting his demands and said that many lawmakers privately agree with him. He said he will continue demanding that public money not be used to fund LGBTQ+ studies and will look to find support.
“The voters of Texas do not want their money spent on DEI, they do not want their money spent on liberal gender ideology,” Harrison said. “It’s past time the Republican government of Texas grows a backbone.”
The State Department has not commented a report that indicates it plans to remove LGBTQ-specific information from their annual human rights report.
Politico on March 19 reported the Trump-Vance administration “is slashing the State Department’s annual human rights report — cutting sections about the rights of women, the disabled, the LGBTQ+ community, and more.” The Politico article notes it obtained “documents” and spoke with “a current and a former State Department official who were familiar with the plan.”
“We are not previewing the human rights report at this time,” a State Department spokesperson told the Washington Blade on March 21.
Congress requires the State Department to release a human rights report each year.
The 2023 report specifically noted Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act that contains a death penalty provision for “aggravated homosexuality.” The 2022 report highlighted, among other things, anti-LGBTQ crackdowns in Afghanistan, Russia, and Hungary and so-called conversion therapy.
President Donald Trump since he took office has signed a number of executive orders that have specifically targeted the LGBTQ and intersex community. These include the “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” directive that, among other things, bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers.
A directive that Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued bans embassies and other U.S. diplomatic institutions from flying the Pride flag. (Former President Joe Biden in March 2024 signed a government spending bill with a provision that banned Pride flags from flying over U.S. embassies.)
A new anti-LGBTQ law banning Pride events and allowing authorities to use facial recognition software to identify those attending the festivities was passed in Hungary on Tuesday, leading to a large demonstration on the streets of Budapest.
Several thousand protesters chanting anti-government slogans gathered after the vote outside Hungary’s parliament. They later staged a blockade of the Margaret Bridge over the Danube, blocking traffic and disregarding police instructions to leave the area.
The measure, which is reminiscent of similar restrictions against sexual minorities in Russia, was passed in a 136-27 vote. The law, supported by Orbán’s Fidesz party and their minority coalition partner the Christian Democrats, was pushed through parliament in an accelerated procedure after being submitted on Monday.
Opposing legislators led a vivid protest in the legislature involving rainbow-colored smoke bombs.
At the protest outside parliament, Evgeny Belyakov, a Russian citizen who immigrated to Hungary after facing repression in Russia, said the legislation went at the heart of people’s rights to peacefully assemble.
“It’s quite terrifying to be honest, because we had the same in Russia. It was building up step by step, and I feel like this is what is going on here,” he said. “I just only hope that there will be more resistance like this in Hungary, because in Russia we didn’t resist on time and now it’s too late.”
The bill amends Hungary’s law on assembly to make it an offense to hold or attend events that violate Hungary’s contentious “child protection” legislation, which prohibits the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors under 18.
Attending a prohibited event will carry fines up to 200,000 Hungarian forints ($546), which the state must forward to “child protection,” according to the text of the law. Authorities may use facial recognition tools to identify individuals attending a prohibited event.
In a statement on Monday after lawmakers first submitted the bill, Budapest Pride organizers said the aim of the law was to “scapegoat” the LGBTQ+ community in order to silence voices critical of Orbán’s government.
“This is not child protection, this is fascism,” wrote the organizers of the event, which attracts thousands each year and celebrates the history of the LGBTQ+ movement while asserting the equal rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
Following the law’s passage Tuesday, Budapest Pride spokesperson Jojó Majercsik told The Associated Press that despite Orbán’s yearslong effort to stigmatize LGBTQ+ people, the organization had received an outpouring of support since the Hungarian leader hinted in February that his government would take steps to ban the event.
“Many, many people have been mobilized,” Majercsik said. “It’s a new thing, compared to the attacks of the last years, that we’ve received many messages and comments from people saying, ‘Until now I haven’t gone to Pride, I didn’t care about it, but this year I’ll be there and I’ll bring my family.’”
Government crackdown
The new legislation is the latest step against LGBTQ+ people taken by Orbán, whose government has passed other laws that rights groups and other European politicians have decried as repressive against sexual minorities.
In 2022, the European Union’s executive commission filed a case with the E.U.’s highest court against Hungary’s 2021 child protection law. The European Commission argued that the law “discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Hungary’s “child protection” law — aside from banning the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality in content available to minors, including in television, films, advertisements and literature — also prohibits the mention of LGBTQ+ issues in school education programs, and forbids the public depiction of “gender deviating from sex at birth.”
Booksellers in Hungary have faced hefty fines for failing to wrap books that contain LGBTQ+ themes in closed packaging. Critics have argued Orbán’s campaign amounts to an attempt to cut LGBTQ+ visibility, and that by tying it to child protection, it falsely conflates homosexuality with pedophilia.
Hungary’s government argues that its policies are designed to protect children from “sexual propaganda.”
Is Orbán trying to distract the electorate?
Hungary’s methods resemble tactics by Putin, who in December 2022 expanded Russia’s ban on “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” from minors to adults, effectively outlawing any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ activities.
Orbán, in power since 2010, faces an unprecedented challenge from a rising opposition party as Hungary’s economy struggles to emerge from an inflation and cost of living crisis and an election approaches in 2026.
Tamás Dombos, a project coordinator at Hungarian LGBTQ+ rights group Háttér Society, said that Orbán’s assault on minorities was a tactic to distract voters from more important issues facing the country. He said allowing the use of facial recognition software at prohibited demonstrations could be used against other protests the government chooses to deem unlawful.
“It’s a very common strategy of authoritarian governments not to talk about the real issues that people are affected by: the inflation, the economy, the terrible condition of education and health care,” Dombos said.
Orbán, he continued, “has been here with us for 15 years lying into people’s faces, letting the country rot basically, and then coming up with these hate campaigns.”
North Dakota lawmakers are on the verge of making their state the first to tell the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its decade-old ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
Similar efforts — which would not have any direct sway with the nation’s top courts — have been introduced in a handful of states this year. North Dakota’s resolution passed the Republican-led House in February but still requires Senate approval, which is not assured.
“The original Supreme Court ruling in 2015 went totally against the Tenth Amendment, went totally against the North Dakota Constitution and North Dakota Century Code (state laws),” sponsor Republican Rep. Bill Tveit said. “Why did I introduce it? Every one of us in this building took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the state.”
When the Legislature considers such resolutions, attorney and North Dakota National Guard member Laura Balliet said she wonders why she stays in her home state. The measure makes her feel unwanted, unwelcome and judged because of who she is, she said. She married her wife in 2020.
“I don’t know what this resolution does other than to tell people like myself, my friends and my family that we’re not welcome here, and I’m angry about that because I want to be welcome here. This is my home,” Balliet told the Senate panel that heard the measure on Wednesday — one in a stream of opponents who testified against it.
A push across states
Massachusetts-based MassResistance, which describes itself as an “international pro-family group” but has been labeled “anti-LGBTQ hate group” by the LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD, is pushing the resolution across the country.
Massachusetts became the first state to recognize same-sex marriage, in 2004. Over the next 11 years, most states began to recognize it through laws, ballot measures or court decisions before the Supreme Court made it legal nationwide.
Outside of Idaho and North Dakota, the measures have not progressed far, according to an analysis of legislation collected by the bill-tracking service Plural.
By contrast, there have been additional protections for same-sex marriage over the years, including a federal law in 2022. Since 2020, California, Colorado, Hawaii and Nevada have repealed old constitutional amendments that defined marriage as being allowed only between a man and a woman, and Virginia lawmakers advanced a similar measure this year. It could be on the ballot there in 2026.
Differing views
The North Dakota measure states that the Legislature “rejects” the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision and urges the U.S. Supreme Court “to overturn the decision and leave unaddressed the natural definition of marriage as a union between one man, a biological male, and one woman, a biological female.”
In the court’s 2022 ruling that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court should reconsider its precedents in the marriage decision and other past cases.
Soon after the measure passed the North Dakota House last month, several Republican state reps who voted for it stated they meant to vote no or regretted voting yes.
Republican Rep. Matt Ruby said he wished he had voted against the measure, saying his yes vote was for a different intent he realized wasn’t going to happen. The vote sent a bad message “that your marriage isn’t valid and you’re not welcome,” Ruby said. He said he supports the right for same-sex couples to be married.
Republican Rep. Dwight Kiefert said he voted for the resolution because of his Christian faith and that the institution of marriage was established in the Bible in the Garden of Eden between Adam and Eve.
‘Slap in the face’
The measure is a slap in the face to North Dakotans who are happily married and invested in their state, said Democratic Sen. Ryan Braunberger, who is gay and sits on the Senate panel that heard the resolution. The measure sends a dangerous message as North Dakota wants to grow its population and expand economically, he said.
“We want to make sure that we bring everybody in the best of the crop, and that runs the gamut of all sorts of different races, ethnicities, sexual orientations through that,” Braunberger said.
The measure is a declaration, if passed, that lawmakers would want to define marriage through what is arguably a religious lens, which dangerously gets close to infringing upon the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, said Cody Schuler, advocacy manager for the American Civil Liberties Union’s North Dakota chapter.
“Marriage defined as ‘one man, one woman’ is a particular religious view. It is not held by all religions, all societies or by nonreligious people, and so therefore it is dangerous to be making that kind of statement because it puts legislators on record as to how they might vote on law, on a binding law versus this nonbinding resolution,” Schuler said.
Ten years ago, Utah passed a landmark pair of bills that combined religious freedom protections with LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections.
Five years ago, many of the people behind what became known as the Utah Compromise spoke to me about why their balanced approach to religion and LGBTQ rights hadn’t yet caught on nationwide.
Last week, I checked in again with one of the key players to hear about where things stand today and whether she’s still hopeful that Utah’s “fairness for all” approach will spread to other states.
Robin Fretwell Wilson, a professor of law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told me that Utah remains united behind the Utah Compromise and has passed several more carefully constructed religion-related policies in recent years on topics like adoption and conversion therapy.
But she added that today, just like five years ago, it’s rare to find a lawmaker outside the Beehive State who is willing to plant their flag in the middle ground between opposing groups and champion balanced solutions to contentious conflicts.
“Right now, we’re mining a streak of meanness,” Wilson said. “Fairness for all doesn’t feel like it’s in the air.”
From 2015 to 2020, Wilson and other stakeholders met with policymakers from 10 to 15 other states about the fairness for all approach to lawmaking.
That list hasn’t grown over the past five years, and the federal Fairness for All Act from 2019, which drew inspiration from the Utah Compromise, hasn’t advanced in Washington.
However, the act’s supporters did score a big win in December 2022 when federal lawmakers passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which strengthened legal protections for married same-sex and interracial couples while affirming religious freedom rights.
The Respect for Marriage Act built on aspects of the Fairness for All Act and Utah Compromise, and it likely wouldn’t have passed if work hadn’t been done in the years preceding its introduction to educate lawmakers about the value of balancing religious freedom and gay rights, Wilson said.
But although it was significant, it feels like a missed opportunity to Wilson and others.
That’s because, instead of holding it up as an example of what’s possible when religious liberty advocates and LGBTQ rights advocates work together, the Biden administration chose to put the spotlight on the importance of protecting gay marriage.
“You can’t be doing something that marries up the interest of gay folks and religious folks on that scale and forget to say anything about the religious folks,” said Wilson, who was at the White House ceremony for the law.
Even before that event, Wilson placed her hope in state rather than federal policymakers because she’s long believed they’re better-positioned to find balance.
Today, as in 2020, as in 2015, she believes that states like Utah will lead the way to a world in which people of faith and LGBTQ individuals — and LGBTQ individuals who are people of faith — can live authentically in public and private without fear of retribution.
“I’ve never really placed my hopes in Congress. I’ve always placed my hope in state legislators,” Wilson said. “I’m hopeful because I’ve seen fairness for all become a script for Utah.”
The Department of Defense has announced that 800 military members who were discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) have received upgrades to honorable discharges.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin shared the news today, highlighting that just over a year ago, the Department began proactively reviewing the records of former service members discharged due to their sexual orientation under DADT. These individuals may have been eligible for an upgrade to their discharge status or a change to their reason for separation but had not yet applied for the change.
“After a year of exceptional work, the Military Department Review Boards directed relief in 96.8% of the 851 cases that they proactively reviewed,” Austin said.
This marks a significant step in addressing the injustices faced by LGBTQ+ service members during the DADT era.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) was a 1990s policy that prohibited gay and bisexual individuals from serving openly in the military. Under this policy, service members couldn’t openly declare their sexual orientation, but the military was also barred from actively investigating, harassing, or discriminating against non-straight personnel. While it aimed to provide some level of protection, the policy still enforced secrecy and led to the discharge of countless LGBTQ+ service members.
An estimated 14,000 service members were separated under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) with less-than-honorable discharges before the policy was repealed in 2011. These discharges meant that veterans received fewer benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs, including assistance with home loans, tuition, and healthcare.
Last year, a group of veterans filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Department of Defense, seeking to overturn their less-than-honorable discharges. The lawsuit argued that many veterans, discharged because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, were given a discharge status or separation codes publicly linked to “homosexuality,” depriving them of the benefits they earned through their service.
Veterans with less-than-honorable discharges often face significant hurdles when applying for jobs, apartments, and loans, as they are required to present their DD-214 discharge papers — documents that can involuntarily out them as LGBTQ+ every time they are shown.
“This case is not about damages,” said Jocelyn Larkin, one of the lawyers involved in the lawsuit. “It’s about changing that piece of paper because the impact of changing it is so incredibly consequential for our clients.”
This past January, Reps. Robert Garcia (D-CA), Mark Pocan (D-WI), and Chris Pappas (D-NH) sent a letter to Secretary Austin urging him to expedite the process of upgrading less-than-honorable discharges for LGBTQ+ service members. They noted that many veterans who sought upgrades have experienced a prolonged, burdensome process that often required legal help, and that many were unaware they even had the option to seek an upgrade.
Today, Secretary Austin reported that 96% of the service members separated under DADT have now received honorable discharges. “We will continue to strive to do right by every American patriot who has honorably served their country,” Austin said.
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