Not content with holding title to one of the harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the world, Uganda’s parliament is considering a bill that would outlaw identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer.
The country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, passed in 2023, already provides a sentence of life in prison for gay men who have sexual relations, and in extenuating circumstances, even death.
The new measure would criminalize Ugandans for simply saying they’re anything but straight.
Among more than 30 African nations that ban same-sex relations, the proposed law would be the first to criminalize just identifying as LGBTQ+, according to Human Rights Watch.
The proposed law was introduced with the goal of combating “threats to the traditional, heterosexual family,” according to a copy shared with Reuters.
In an awkward mashup of identifying prohibitions, language in the bill echoes executive orders issued by the U.S. president in his crusade against the transgender community.
The measure mandates punishment of up to 10 years in prison for any person who “holds out as a lesbian, gay, transgender, a queer or any other sexual or gender identity that is contrary to the binary categories of male and female.”
The bill also criminalizes the “promotion” of homosexuality and “abetting” and “conspiring” to engage in same-sex relations.
Much of the bill’s content is revived from the original “Kill the Gays” law, passed in 2013 but overturned by Uganda’s high court on technical grounds.
That law criminalized lesbianism.
“One of the most extreme features of this new bill is that it criminalizes people simply for being who they are as well as further infringing on the rights to privacy, and freedoms of expression and association that are already compromised in Uganda,” said Oryem Nyeko, Uganda researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Speaker of the Parliament Anita Among, the rabidly homophobic lawmaker who helped usher the Anti-Homosexuality Act into law, sent the new bill to committee for debate and public hearings after it was read to legislators.
Among urged fellow lawmakers to reject intimidation, referencing threats by Western countries to impose travel bans on those responsible for the legislation.
“This business of intimidating that ‘you will not go to America,’ what is America?” she asked.
Ugandan lawmakers, the speaker prominent among them, have for years warned of “degenerate Western values” threatening Ugandan families and sovereignty.
Among was urged on in her anti-Western pose by Russia’s ambassador to Uganda, who encouraged her to fast-track the “Kill the Gays” law through parliament in 2023. It passed overwhelmingly and was cheered by lawmakers.
“This is the time you are going to show us whether you’re a homo or you’re not,” Among told the packed chamber.
A U.S. Court of Appeals just reversed a ruling made by a District Court judge in 2023, overturning his permanent injunction against Texas’ wide-reaching and vaguely worded drag ban, which the judge claimed infringed on First Amendment rights.
The plaintiffs in The Woodlands v. Paxton issued a joint statement, saying, “Today’s decision is heartbreaking for drag performers, small businesses, and every Texan who believes in free expression. Drag is not a crime. It is art, joy, and resistance — a vital part of our culture and our communities. We are devastated by this setback, but we are not defeated. […] We will not stop until this unconstitutional law is struck down for good.”
Texas S.B. 12 was signed into law in June 2023 by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and was set to go into effect on September 1 of the same year. While the bill ostensibly made it a crime to provide “sexually oriented performances” in a commercial space, on public property, or in the presence of minors, the language of the bill and the rhetoric around it made it clear that it was intended to target drag shows in particular.
The law was quickly challenged by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups and drag groups, including The Woodlands Pride, Abilene Pride Alliance, and 360 Queen Entertainment. The case of The Woodlands v. Paxton went to U.S. District Court Judge David Hittner, who originally placed a temporary injunction on the law when plaintiffs’ arguments made it clear that the bill would impinge their First Amendment rights if it was allowed to go into effect. Hittner then doubled down by extending the injunction and then making it permanent in September 2023.
At the time, Hittner wrote that the bill “impermissibly infringes on the First Amendment and chills free speech,” while making it clear that he felt the bill discriminated on point of view, was overly broad, and vague. “Not all people will like or condone certain performances,” Hittner continued in his original decision. “This is no different than a person’s opinion on certain comedy or genres of music, but that alone does not strip First Amendment protection.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit made a majority ruling today to reverse Hittner’s ruling and remanded the case back to his court. The justices declared that most of the plaintiffs in the case did not have the requisite standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place, as they found the performances of The Woodlands Pride and Abilene Pride insufficiently sexual to have a real risk of punishment under the law’s wording.
They now require that Hittner revisit the case, focusing only on the claims from 360 Queen Entertainment, whose performances include simulated sexual acts and include other features more likely to be targeted by S.B. 12. They are also requiring Hittner to make his new decision under the standard established in the Supreme Court case for Moody v. NetChoice, which set the precedent for First Amendment challenges to only be viable if the law is unconstitutional more than it is constitutional.
One of the Appeals Court judges partially dissented, presenting concerns that the decision “turns a blind eye to the Texas Legislature’s avowed purpose: a statewide ‘drag ban.’” In doing so, he highlighted the rhetoric used by Republicans during the bill’s passage, which clearly expressed their intent, regardless of the letter of the law.
Both Texas and many of its cities already have laws on the books that protect minors from witnessing sexually explicit performances. Gov. Abbott shared on X/Twitter an article titled “Texas Governor Signs Law Banning Drag Performances in Public,” adding the words “That’s right.” Similarly, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) said it was to “ban children’s exposure to drag shows.” The author of the bill, state Sen. Bryan Hughes (R), provided “drag shows” as an example of the “sexually explicit performances” that would be prohibited.
While the intent is clear from the comments of those involved, the bill’s original text demonstrates the motivations that underpinned it. An earlier version of the bill has a line under the definitions of “features” in “sexual conduct” that includes “a male performer exhibiting as a female, or a female performer exhibiting as a male, who uses clothing, makeup, or other similar physical markers and who sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience.” That definition would include everything from Tom Holland’s Lip Sync Battle appearance to cosplayers.
The House Committee report from May 26, 2023, shows the line removed. Instead, the definition of “sexually oriented performances” is edited to include “exhibition of sexual gesticulations using accessories or prosthetics that exaggerate male or female sexual characteristics,” which clearly targets breast forms and packers common in drag shows.
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled President Trump’s State Department can prohibit transgender Americans from listing their gender identity on their passports, for now.
It hands another legal victory for Trump in his efforts to eviscerate what his administration calls “gender ideology.” The Justice Department brought the emergency appeal after lower courts blocked the passport policy for being rooted in “irrational prejudice.”
“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment,” the majority wrote in its unsigned ruling.
The ruling appeared to be along the court’s 6-3 ideological lines, though the justices do not have to publicly disclose their votes.
In dissent, the court’s liberals called the ruling “pointless but painful perversion.”
“Such senseless sidestepping of the obvious equitable outcome has become an unfortunate pattern,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
“So, too, has my own refusal to look the other way when basic principles are selectively discarded,” the dissent continued.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer called lower rulings blocking the administration’s policy “untenable,” casting them as infringing on Trump’s constitutional authority over foreign affairs.
“The President’s choice to revert to prior policy and rely on biological sex—a choice that bound the State Department—should be the last place for novel equal-protection claims or Administrative Procedure Act objections,” Sauer wrote in court filings.
The State Department policy requires passport holders to use their sex assigned at birth as their sex designation, prohibiting transgender people from matching it with their gender identity. The policy also removed the option for people to select “X,” leaving male and female as the only two options.
“This new policy puts transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people in potential danger whenever they use a passport,” American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Chase Strangio warned in court filings.
Strangio and the ACLU represent transgender and nonbinary Americans who are suing over the State Department’s changes.
They argue it violates federal law and constitutional equal protection rights, convincing a federal district judge appointed by former President Biden and later the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the policy.
It marked the latest case implicating Trump’s Day 1 executive order that cracks down on what he calls “gender ideology” to reach the Supreme Court. Previously, the justices issued emergency orders allowing the administration to enforce its transgender troops ban and cancel diversity-linked health grants.
As Virginia Democrats celebrated big wins both at home and in other closely watched races across the country following Tuesday’s off-year elections, one gay couple in the state woke Wednesday morning to find that their farm had been vandalized — and not for the first time.
“It’s medical waste that is strewn all the way across the entrance of our farm,” Kevin Graham, the owner, along with his husband Dragan Kurbalija, of Gardening Gays Farm, told The Advocate. “There are bedsheets that have human feces and urine on them. You can smell the human waste while you’re out there standing near it.”
The couple, who bought the 27-acre farm on U.S. 301 in conservative King George County four years ago, told the outlet they believe this was an intentional act of anti-LGBTQ+ hate.
“It does not appear to be an accident,” Graham said. “You look up and down the roadway, and everywhere else is completely clear. The trash is only at our entrance.”
“Nobody puts human feces in a regular trash bag and drives it on the back of a truck to the dump,” Kurbalija added. “It definitely feels personal.”
King George County residents voted Gardening Gays Farm the county’s Overall Best Business, Best Family-Owned Business, and Best Agricultural Business this year.
But at the same time, this isn’t the first act of defacement they’ve endured. In a video posted to the farm’s Facebook account, Kurbalija explained that the couple found trash strewn at the farm’s entrance a few weeks ago.
“It seemed like an isolated incident, perhaps,” Kurbalija says in the clip, “but today, this is very intentional, very deliberate.”
The fact that the latest incident came on the heels of a Democratic sweep in Tuesday’s elections is not lost on Graham and Kurbalija. In Virginia, former U.S. Rep. and LGBTQ+ ally Abigail Spanberger (D) beat outgoing Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears to become the state’s first female governor. Democratic candidates also won the races for the state’s lieutenant governor and attorney general, and Democrats also increased their majority in the Virginia House of Delegates, flipping at least 13 seats.
But, as The Advocate notes, Earle-Sears — whose campaign leaned heavily on anti-trans rhetoric cribbed from the president’s 2024 campaign — managed to carry King George County by a double-digit margin.
“We don’t lean into or talk politics with anybody,” Graham told the outlet. “But the fact that this happens after an election day, with what took place here in Virginia last night, really rubs you the wrong way even more than it would’ve on any other regular Wednesday.”
Still, Graham said he and Kurbalija are confident in their community’s support for Gardening Gays Farm. “They have our back, and there are people in this town who speak up for us when we’re not in the room.”
In the video posted to the farm’s Facebook account, Kurbalija explained that the couple called their business “Gardening Gays Farm” to make it clear to anyone who comes through their gates exactly who they are.
“When we moved into this community four years ago, we came, pulled up our boots, and got right to work, providing a safe space, providing a service, providing something that we thought this community needed and wanted,” Kurbalija said. “None of this is ever going to stop us from what we’re doing.”
President Donald Trump’s administration has warned Vermont that its policies meant to support LGBTQ foster youth may violate federal law, potentially threatening federal funding.
The Oct. 16 letter, written by Alex Adams, assistant secretary of the federal Administration for Children and Families, directed Vermont Secretary of Human Services Jenney Samuelson to provide a written response explaining how the state would address Adams’ concerns.
“It has been brought to my attention that certain policies and procedures in Vermont deny qualified foster and adoptive parents the opportunity to provide children a loving home solely because they cannot, in good conscience, commit to affirming a hypothetical child’s gender identity,” Adams wrote. “Such policies are contrary to the purpose of child welfare programs and inconsistent with our interpretation of federal diligent recruitment plans and constitutional protections, including the First Amendment.”
Other states, including Massachusetts, New York and California, have received similar letters. Vermont’s involvement was first reported by The Imprint, a nonprofit news publication focused on vulnerable children and families. About a third of foster youth identify as LGBTQ, according to multiple studies.
While Adams’ letter does not reference specific Vermont policies, in 2024, two Vermont couples sued the Department for Children and Families, arguing that policies requiring foster parents to affirm a foster child’s sexual orientation or gender identity are unconstitutional and discriminate against Christians. A second lawsuit related to foster parent policies was later brought by a separate family that year.
The prominent conservative legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom represented the couples in the first suit. Similar lawsuits have cropped up across the country, including in Oregon, where a federal appeals court eventually ruled the state’s policies intended to protect LGBTQ foster youth violated free speech. The Vermont lawsuits now sit with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after the families appealed a lower court’s ruling against them.
Per Vermont’s Department for Children and Families policy, “discrimination and bias based on a child or youth’s real or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression” is prohibited.
A department spokesperson said no one was available Tuesday for an interview regarding the letter from the federal government and instead requested questions in writing.
In a statement, Aryka Radke, a Department for Children and Families deputy commissioner, wrote that the department “is committed to ensuring that young people in our custody are safe and supported. We are currently reviewing the letter with our legal team.”
Radke did not respond to questions about what funding could be at risk.
While Adams, in the letter, did not explicitly threaten to withhold federal funding from Vermont, he did allude to the possibility.
“Please provide a written response outlining how you will review and, where necessary, amend policies to bring them into alignment with these values and applicable law,” he wrote. “As you know, my responsibilities include monitoring the use of relevant federal funds and ensuring compliance with federal law.”
The Administration for Children and Families did not respond to a request for comment.
“When the sun rose on 1 Nov., 2025, Pride morning in Palapye, the open space where the march was scheduled to begin was empty. I stood there trying to look calm, but inside, my chest felt tight. I was worried that no one would come. It was the first-ever Pride in Palapye, a semi-urban village where cultural norms, religious beliefs, and tradition are deeply woven into everyday life.
I kept asking myself if we were being naive. Maybe people weren’t ready. Perhaps fear was going to win. For the first 30 minutes, it was me, a couple of religious leaders and a handful of parents. That was it. The silence was loud, and every second felt like it stretched into hours. I expected to see the queer community showing up in numbers, draped in color and excitement. Instead, only the wind was moving.
But slowly, gently, just like courage often arrives, people started to show up with a rainbow flag appearing from behind a tree and a hesitant wave from someone standing at a distance.
That’s when I understood that people weren’t late, just that they were afraid. And their fear made sense. Showing up openly in a small community like Palapye is a radical act. It disrupts silence. It challenges norms. It forces visibility. Visibility is powerful, but it is never easy. We marched with courage, pulling from the deepest parts of ourselves. We marched with laughter that cracked through the tension. We marched not because it was easy, but because it was necessary,” narrates activist Seipone Boitshwarelo from AGANG Community Network, which focuses on families and friends of LGBTIQ+ people in Botswana. She is also a BW PRIDE Awards nominee for the Healing and Justice Award, a category which acknowledges contributions to wellness, mental health, and healing for the LGBTIQ+ community across Botswana.
Queer Pride is Botswana Pride!
Pride is both a celebration and a political statement. It came about as a response to systemic oppression, particularly the criminalization and marginalization of LGBTIQ+ people globally, including in Botswana at some point. It is part of the recognition, equality, and assertion of human rights. It also reminds us that liberation and equality are not automatically universal, and continued activism is necessary. A reminder of the famous saying by Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody is free until everybody’s free.”
The 2023 Constitutional Review process made one thing evident, which is that Botswana still struggles to acknowledge the existence of LGBTIQ+ people as full citizens. Instead of creating a democratic space for every voice, the process sidelined and erased an entire community. In Bradley Fortuin’s analysis of the Constitutional review and its final report, he highlighted how this erasure directly contradicts past court decisions that explicitly affirmed the right of LGBTIQ+ people to participate fully and openly in civic life. When the state chooses to ignore court orders and ignore communities, it becomes clear that visibility must be reclaimed through alternative means. This is why AGANG Community Network embarked on Palapye Pride. It is a radical insistence on belonging, rooted in community and strengthened through intersectionality with families, friends, and allies who refuse to let our stories be erased.
Motho ke motho ka batho!
One of the most strategic decisions made by the AGANG Community Network was to engage parents, religious leaders, and local community members, recognizing their value in inclusion and support. Thus, their presence in the march was not symbolic, but it was intentional.
Funding for human rights and LGBTIQ+ advocacy has been negatively impacted since January 2025, and current funding is highly competitive, uneven and scarce, especially for grassroots organizations in Botswana. The Palapye Pride event was not funded, but community members still showed up and donated water, a sound system, and someone even printed materials. This event happened because individuals believed in its value and essence. It was a reminder that activism is not always measured in budgets but in willingness and that “motho ke motho ka batho!” (“A person is a person because of other people!”).
Freedom of association for all
In March 2016, in the the Attorney General of Botswana v. Rammoge and 19 Others case, also known as the LEGABIBO registration case, the Botswana Court of Appeal stated that “members of the gay, lesbian, and transgender community, although no doubt a small minority, and unacceptable to some on religious or other grounds, form part of the rich diversity of any nation and are fully entitled in Botswana, as in any other progressive state, to the constitutional protection of their dignity.” Freedom of association, assembly, and expression is a foundation for civic and democratic participation, as it allows all citizens to organize around shared interests, raise their collective voice, and influence societal and cultural change, as well as legislative reform.
The Botswana courts, shortly after in 2021, declared that criminalizing same-sex sexual relations is unconstitutional because they violated rights to privacy, liberty, dignity, equality, and nondiscrimination. Despite these legal wins, social stigma, cultural, and religious opposition continue to affect the daily lived experience of LGBTIQ+ people in Botswana.
The continuation of a declaration
AGANG Community Network is committed to continuing this work and creating safe and supportive spaces for LGBTIQ+ people, their families, friend, and allies. Pride is not just a day of fun. It is a movement, a declaration of queer existence and recognition of allyship. It is healing and reconciliation while amplifying queer joy.
New digital IDs in the UK could be “catastrophic” for Trans+ people, who could be forced to out themselves when showing their ID – even if they don’t include a sex marker on them.
Keir Starmer announced the new scheme at a gathering of centre-left parties at the Global Progress Action conference. He said the move was designed to ‘crack down’ on people who don’t have the right to work in the UK getting jobs.
If the UK implements these IDs, it would join countries including Bosnia and Herzegovina, United Arab Emirates, China, Greece, France and Afghanistan.
However, within just hours of the announcement, he faced massive opposition to his ‘Brit Card’ system, withover a million people signing a parliamentary petition not to proceed. While we were monitoring the form, it was rising by around 200-300 new signatures every ten seconds.
The mock-ups shareddo not include a sex marker, and only require name, date of birth, nationality or residency status, and a photo. So far, Ministers have stressed there will never be a reason to carry IDs around or to produce them other than for work.
Implications of mandatory ID for LGBTQIA+ people
Keyne Walker, TransActual strategy director, tells QueerAF that even before the plans were announced anti-trans groups have already been lobbying ministers, civil servants and right-wing parliamentarians “to ensure that the single governmental record held lists trans people as their ‘birth sex'”.
Walker believes this scheme could easily be weaponised and hijacked by MPs who are already trying to push anti-trans policies through Parliament. “It could provide the answer to the fundamental unworkability of bathroom bans… you don’t need to ask people to show their birth certificate if instead they have to scan an ID card to take a pee.”
Trans legal researcher, Jess O’Thomson, warns that the policy could have a “catastrophic” potential even just with the risk that it outs Trans+ people who haven’t yet got the legal recognition they need ahead of applying for a job:
“We know that anti-trans campaigning groups are looking for any opportunity to strip back trans people’s rights even further. I have no doubt that these groups will push for digital ID to record “biological sex”, forcibly outing trans people, and pushing them further out of public life.
“The real worry is that our government might go along with them, or else an amendment to the legislation could be forced through. These IDs could be catastrophic for the queer community.”
The UK’s history of ID cards
The UK hasn’t had a nationwide mandatory ID scheme since WWII, which ended after Lord Chief Justice Goddard said in a high court that the continuation of the wartime ID card scheme was an “annoyance” to much of the public and “tended to turn law-abiding subjects into law breakers”. Winston Churchill’s government scrapped them following the ruling and wider criticism over costs and police misuse –BBC
In more recent years, Tony Blair’s Labour government legislated for voluntary ID cards in the early 2000s, but the scheme was scrapped in 2011 by the Conservative-led coalition, which argued it was too costly and intrusive.
Analysis: Lists of queer people are incredibly vulnerable to being weaponised against us
“It is a big red flag when authoritarian governments that keep talking about putting people in camps start making lists of queer people,” Keyne Walker from Trans Actual remarked to QueerAF.
That, of course, is a big-picture view of this story – and we should be careful to see the news in its context at this stage, given there are scarce details on the scheme.
But the warnings from legal and privacy campaigners come amid a wider slide into authoritarian policies the UK has been adopting in recent years, including plans tomake it possible to criminalise wearing a mask at Pride events.
Indeed, from reporting on queer news for the best part of a decade now, I know well that the privacy concerns about the dangerlists of queer people can create, which we’re already hearing from campaigners are far from new.
Privacy campaigner and founding member of QueerAF Kyle Taylor, says on the surface, digital ID cards may seem innocuous enough – but you need only look to history to see how easily marginalised groups become victims of state-sponsored discrimination or violence:
“The last thing you want is for the government to know who you are and where you are when they decide to, for example, make conversion therapy mandatory. Make no mistake, privacy is power and this puts everyone at risk. Especially our community.”
There has always been a present danger of bad actors weaponising central lists; it’s one of the reasons the Covid Track and Trace appwas eventually decentralised amid opposition to how it could create a list of disabled people.
This is a development we should watch carefully, especially amid a growing focus and battleground on the right to privacy amid potential segregation of Trans+ people in public life.
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As first reported by Manchester Evening News, at least two children were given leaflets that featured the logo of Grace Fellowship Manchester, a group “dedicated to Biblical Christianity” and based at St Stephen’s Church in the town of Middleton, which is five miles northeast of Manchester. Its website shows that it appears to be linked to Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas.
The one leaflet, a photograph of which was shared by a parent on social media, was headlined “ARE YOU A GOOD PERSON?”
Underneath the header was a graphic of a mobile phone with a mimic text exchange.
“Hey, I’ve got a question for you. Are you a good person?” the first mock text message reads.
“YES! I’m good! Not perfect… but I’ve never done anything that bad!” the reply reads.
In response, the next text states: “The Bible says; Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, no swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God.”
“Is that really in the Bible?”
“Yes!” the text confirms. “It’s 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. But keep reading to find out how you can be forgiven and have eternal life.”
Surrounding the text exchange were the words including “Homosexuals”, “Drunkards”, “Idolators” and “Swindlers”.
“God designed marriage to be between one man and one woman”
Another leaflet including the statements: “God designed marriage to be between one man and one woman. And anyone who indulges in sex outside of marriage…. no such person will inherit the Kingdom of God. BE NOT DECEIVED!
“God isn’t being cruel in warning us. He shows us we’re in trouble so that we’ll realise how desperately we need his help to fix us.”
In Grace Fellowship Manchester’s Statement of Faith – which lists several pages of scripture from the Bible – whilst there are verses from Corinthians included, there is no direct citation from Corinthians 6:9-10.
The church says that its Statement of Faith was “written by the elders” of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas, which does cite Corinthians 6:9-10 in its own Statement of Faith. A slightly differently worded version reads: “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”
Grace Community Church’s views on LGBTQ+ issues are not particularly inclusive, stating that God only created male and female, “God intends for sexual intimacy to occur only between a man and a woman who are so married to one another” and the “only acceptable alternative to marriage between one man and one woman is the faithful single life of celibacy”.
“Discriminatory and offensive”
Speaking to the Reach PLC outlet, mum Victoria Loop said she was “angry” with the content of the leaflets, saying it is “just not appropriate for young children”.
” I am not against people expressing their opinions for the most part but when it becomes discriminatory and offensive it is just wrong,” Loop said.
“There were other leaflets amongst the other children’s treats however they were more appropriately worded and not on this level. My views on the matter is that there was quite some degree of misjudgement when deciding to include this particular leaflet in treats to young children.
She added: “I have many friends and family that this would hurt very deeply and I am angry on their behalf as much as for my daughter having to ask questions as why some people haven’t yet got the message in this age that homophobia, no matter how benign this may seem to some, is not acceptable. Let alone giving this opinion to children with no consideration of their innocence or family circumstance.
“I am aware that this may be an unpopular stance from many different religious groups, however the method of delivery of their rhetoric and beliefs in this case needs questioning and scrutinising. We have age restrictions on many things such as films and television and restrictions on products and publications for the protection of children.”
“Blatantly homophobic literature”
Local councillor Dylan Williams, who is a gay man that attends church, criticised the leaflets for both their homophobic and sexually explicit content.
“I believe most Christians will be upset by this blatantly homophobic literature and would condemn it. I am also concerned that people think it acceptable to give literature on it with adult words and sexually explicit language to Children as young as six,” Williams told Manchester Evening News.
“Homophobia seems to be becoming more and more prevalent leading some members of the community to feel unsafe and this is and should not be acceptable in our society. We must say no to hate.”
PinkNews has approached Grace Fellowship Manchester for comment.
Roz Keith found out her son was transgender on his terms.
The suburban mom was asking about haircuts, and Hunter, just shy of 14 at the time, texted her some photos. “He started texting me pictures of boys with short haircuts. And I said, ‘Oh, these are very masculine. And Hunter said, ‘Uh huh,’ and walked out of the room.”
It was typical teenage behavior, but the conversation that followed was life-changing, Keith said.
“I went upstairs, knocked on his door, and said, ‘What’s going on?’ And that’s when he told me. He said, ‘I’m a boy. I’m transgender.’ That was how he came out to me.”
Keith was caught off guard on multiple fronts. “All the little things from the time he was super little then became the hammer over the head.” She thought about Hunter playing with boy dolls, preferring time with boys to girls, choosing Narnia’s Prince Caspian over all the Disney princess costumes.
“I saw this one male avatar in a game, this buff, masculine character that he had created, and I said, ‘Oh, that’s a guy.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, okay.’ You know, no explanation. So, all along, I just kept saying ‘Okay,’ too.”
Keith wasn’t a helicopter parent. “We really encouraged our kids to be independent,” she said, “and we wanted them to be happy and successful and productive, whatever that meant for them.” But she also said a transgender child “just wasn’t in my consideration set.”
“In my world, I didn’t have a friend who had a trans child. We didn’t have any adult in our community who was trans or in the process of coming out or identified in any way remotely that way. So it was really a foreign concept from that perspective.”
While those conversations weren’t happening in Keith’s world, they certainly were in her precocious online teenager’s.
“He figured it out because he was watching YouTube, and he saw a trans person on this show talking about their coming out. And that was his light bulb moment. And he said, ‘Oh my God, that’s me.’”
Hunter spent a long time contemplating his revelation and researching what to do about it before he shared anything with his family.
“He’d been researching for two years,” Keith recalled. “He had a checklist of everything he wanted to do.”
With Hunter’s declaration, his state of mind came into focus for his mom.
“Based on things he shared when he was younger, he felt different, and he didn’t know why he felt different, and he didn’t have language to explain it,” Keith realized. “And it created a lot of struggle and conflict, and, I think, anger for him.”
“He said, you know, ‘I just felt like the weird kid.’”
Keith decided to close that gap – for her son and for others.
In 2015, she founded Stand with Trans, a support network devoted to trans kids and their parents and caregivers. The nonprofit provides transgender and nonbinary youth with life-saving programs like mental health services, peer support groups, educational resources, and, most importantly, Keith says, “validation and empowerment.”
Stand With Trans also provides critical support to parents or guardians of trans youth. Its Ally Parents program allows loved ones to text, call, or email other parents of trans youth for connection and advice.
Letting go
“Parents can have a hard time when their child comes out and wants to transition to a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth,” Keith said.
“They struggle to let go of the child they thought they had and the dreams that they had, right? If a child was assigned female at birth, a parent might say, ‘I just imagined her walking down the aisle in the white dress,’ you know? And they grieve this child as if the child has died.”
“I never took that approach,” Keith said, “because I knew that my child was very much alive and that it was my job to make sure that he stayed that way. You know, it was my job to make sure that he was mentally well and that he got what he needed so he could thrive.”
For Hunter and his family, checking off those steps to transition wouldn’t come easily.
“There were no pediatric gender clinics who were seeing trans youth covered by our insurance. There were no therapists who we could find who were trained to see trans adolescents. There were no support groups. There were no parent groups. There was nothing for youth. Like, literally every phone call was a brick wall,” Keith said.
But Hunter wasn’t waiting on the details. He decided to come out on Facebook.
“My daughter came to me and said, ‘Did you see what Hunter posted?’ And I said, ‘No.’”
While Keith and her husband had talked to a few close friends about Hunter, the family hadn’t been sharing much “because it wasn’t our story to share — that was up to him.”
With Hunter’s announcement, “It was like the floodgates had opened,” Keith said.
The family agreed to tell their story.
They began speaking publicly about their experience. “And there was just like this swell of relief, I guess, and joy from families in the community who had been trying to manage this process with their kiddo and had no one to talk to. There was really nobody — medically, psychologically emotionally — just literally no one was there.”
“Families like mine, trans adults, multi-generational families, like, every member of the community were reaching out and saying, ‘Oh, my God, I could have uttered those words. Your son reminds me of my son.’”
Hunter’s story had inspired an outpouring of empathy and recognition, but the story he shared online didn’t address his lingering sense of isolation.
“Even my son said, ‘I don’t know anyone like me.’ And so as we started to meet families,” Keith said.
“I was literally arranging play dates for my 14-15-year-old. Like, I was inviting kids to come over and just hang out, and — fly on the wall — they talked about stupid stuff, like, ‘Oh, don’t you hate getting socks for Christmas presents?’ And it showed these kids that being trans didn’t mean that you weren’t like other kids. You know, you were just another teen.”
Those interactions became the heart of the mission that guides Stand with Trans today.
The rise of parents’ rights
The founding of Stand With Trans accompanied a rising awareness of gender diversity in the 2010s, but with that also came a conservative backlash wrought with anti-trans animus.
Before Hunter came out, “Nobody was talking about bathroom bills and trans girls in sports. Those conversations weren’t happening,” Keith said.
Since then, trans kids like Hunter have been buried under an avalanche of discriminatory legislation, from gender-affirming care bans to a trans-erasing, book-banning frenzy organized by groups like Moms for Liberty to an online hate campaign led by accounts like Libs of TikTok.
Adding fuel to the fire: the president’s obsession with “gender ideology” and his “us” vs “them” politics of division.
The right has hawked its anti-LGBTQ+ agenda under the same, one-sided banner: parents’ rights.
Keith said the phrase is self-serving.
“I don’t think that any government should be allowed to say what my child has or doesn’t have access to, because I’m the parent. They’re not in my home parenting my child, so they don’t know what they’re going through. How do you make that global statement?” she asked.
“It is up to me to make a decision about my child’s medical care,” Keith said. “And as far as my child goes, if he was denied the opportunity to go on testosterone and not medically transition, I think our conversation would be very different.”
Keith points to a perversion of theology as one basis of the far-right’s anti-trans animus.
“I’m not Christian. I was raised Jewish. But my understanding from my friends who are Christian and very affirming and very accepting, their response is, ‘The Jesus I know would open the door for everyone, and would welcome everyone to the table.’ There’s really a disconnect between saying you’re a Christian and then not being open to accepting people as they are, as they show up.”
“Far be it for me to tell anyone what they should believe,” Keith added, “but you don’t get to bring it into my home and tell me how to care for my child, because those aren’t my beliefs. That’s not what I understand, right? It’s a secular society.”
“Your belief system should not infringe on my rights.”
Seeing around the corner
Stand with Trans was born to help protect trans kids from the attacks by providing love, knowledge and support — and power over their own lives.
“Our mission is so simple,” Keith said. “It’s empowering and supporting trans youth and their loved ones. So that’s it. We know that if we educate and support the caregivers, the loved ones, the parents, that the young people are going to do better, and if we find ways to make life better and easier for them, they’re not only going to survive, but they’re going to thrive.
“I know with my own kid, they couldn’t see themselves having a future. I think it’s hard enough for young people who don’t see around the corners, right? It’s hard to even imagine, like, ‘What do I want to be when I grow up.’ But for trans kids, it’s even harder.
“So it’s really important for us to show these young people that they can do whatever they want to do,” Keith said.
“Being trans is one part of their identity. It doesn’t define who they are.”
Attacks on transgender rights didn’t start with Donald Trump — but neither did the movements resisting them.
Since 2022, 25 states have banned most gender-affirming care for trans youth, six of which make it a felony for doctors to provide the treatment. Two have banned surgery only. While only 14 and the District of Columbia have shield laws protecting the care, a small but growing coalition of “sanctuary cities” for trans people are filling in the gaps.
Many may know the term in reference to municipalities that limit cooperation with federal authorities like Immigration and Customs Enforcement that target immigrant communities, but “sanctuary cities” is also used to describe these places that aim to help transgender people.
These cities — of which there are an estimated fewer than 10 in the U.S. — are not superficial “safe spaces.” For trans kids and their families, they are meant to ensure that local resources aren’t used to aid officials from other jurisdictions prosecuting them or their doctors. They also prohibit officials from sharing information about someone’s gender, sex, or health care.
While the resolutions can’t overturn state or federal laws, “the closest point to the community is a council,” says Eric Guerra, mayor pro tem of Sacramento. The City Council voted unanimously to make Sacramento a sanctuary city in March 2024. It was the first state capital to adopt that status.
“It goes down to the fundamental belief that people are people, and we should respect people for who they are,” says Guerra, who was a council member at the time. “And that has helped let our cities move forward.”
Sanctuary city resolutions usually come when residents approach their city council members with evidence showing why they’re needed.
There wasn’t just one person who came forward and motivated officials to declare Olympia, Washington, a sanctuary city in January. Instead, several LGBTQ+ residents commented publicly that they were “feeling very fearful and unsafe” in the wake of Trump’s election, says Assistant City Manager Stacey Ray. The City Council initiated the resolution in response.
Public testimonials from community members about how they have been negatively impacted by anti-LGBTQ+ laws is what Guerra says can be legally considered “factual points of incidents that occur that go contrary to our nation’s fundamental beliefs.”
From there, resolutions go to city attorneys, who must make sure that they don’t go against the state or U.S. Constitution. Ray describes it as a “long, arduous process,” and says officials must consult with local law enforcement about “what we can do within our legal parameters” to enforce the resolution.
“One of the things our council said is they wanted something that was actionable. Not just ‘pretty words,’ but they really wanted something that would be seen as authentically providing the safety that folks were asking for,” Ray says.
California and Washington State have shield laws for abortion and gender-affirming care, making resolutions like those in Sacramento and Olympia in line with state law. Democratic-controlled cities passing local ordinances in Republican-controlled states can lead to more complications, like in Kansas City, Missouri.
The City Council there approved a sanctuary resolution for gender-affirming care in May 2023, shortly after the state legislature passed a bill banning the treatment for trans minors. While the city could not overturn state law, Mayor Quinton Lucas, who introduced the resolution, ordered local police and city personnel to make enforcement “their lowest priority.”
“It just means you have more fights, frankly,” Lucas says. “It also means that here in the red states, we have a little more experience with fighting.”
Sanctuary city resolutions are still helpful in blue states, especially under a federal government hostile to LGBTQ+ people. Since taking office in January, Trump has signed executive orders denying the existence of transgender people and banning federal support for gender-affirming care for those under 19.
“Trump has the authority over a bunch of federal employees, like with the civil rights protections he’s rolled back in hiring specifically for the federal government,” Guerra says. “I think people forget that those roles and those stages also exist in their local community.”
Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding from immigration sanctuary cities and could potentially do the same for cities that protect transgender health care and abortion access, prompting more than a dozen local governments — including the city of Sacramento — to file a lawsuit against the administration.
For Guerra, who is an immigrant, the benefits of protecting a marginalized group far outweigh the risk the Trump administration poses. Lucas also “encourage[s] every mayor with that opportunity to” stand up for LGBTQ+ rights.
“The thing that motivated me was our shared humanity,” he says. “When your state government or your federal government is saying you don’t deserve to exist and [is] trying to remove you as a human being, I think that those of us with whatever power, we have a duty to act.”
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