Trans refugee speaks about fleeing brutal anti-LGBTQ+ persecution in Russia-occupied territories

Six months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Lilia Khvylka had a decision to make.

The transgender Ukrainian, who grew up on the Crimean Peninsula, was already living under Russian occupation; Vladimir Putin invaded and annexed that Ukrainian territory in 2014.

Now Khvylka was under house arrest for posting pro-Ukrainian messages on social media, she told Mezha, an independent Ukrainian news outlet.

“They opened a case against me under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. This is a very serious crime, which they classify as terrorism. They were going to set a preventive measure for me literally in the coming days.”

Khvylka had already been outfitted with an ankle bracelet to monitor her movements.

She recalled taking part in the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, which ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and restored the 2004 Constitution of Ukraine.

The same year, Putin invaded Crimea.

“When the Russian authorities arrived, freedom of speech completely disappeared. Ukrainian activists and journalists immediately began leaving or disappearing,” Khvylka said.

At the same time, Khvylka was navigating her transition.

“At 16, I already knew I would undertake a transgender transition, because I am a girl. But I was very afraid to go to doctors in Russia or talk to anyone about it.”

In Crimea, she was forced to hide her identity; there, she was known as Illya Gantsevskyi.

Facing the prospect of 15 years in prison for her posts and terrified her true identity would come to light, Khvylka fled. The so-called head of the Republic of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, had already declared war on LGBTQ+ people.

“I cut off my bracelet and ran away,” she said.

Khvylka left the peninsula through Russia and Belarus, holding only a Ukrainian birth certificate. Volunteers, whom she found online through an underground network of supporters, helped in her getaway.

With her flight to freedom, Khvylka avoided a fate that other LGBTQ+ Ukrainians have been unable to escape.

“This included torture, torment, public humiliation, bodily injuries, and sexual violence,” said human rights lawyer Karolina Palaychuk.

Documented testimonies from people in the Kherson region, occupied by Russia for nine months at the start of the war, confirm the terror inflicted on LGBTQ+ people in the Russian-occupied territory.

“One of the people who gave these testimonies said that he was stopped at a checkpoint, his phone was checked, they saw the relevant content, and they immediately threw him into a basement,” said Iryna Yuzyk, manager for the Center for Human Rights, ZMINA. “There, they beat him, forced him to wear a red dress, took him to interrogations in a red dress, naked, they tormented him. He was lucky to survive.”

Another captive was Diana, a 24-year-old lesbian.

“She used to work as a shop assistant. She had colorful hair; they drew attention to her. They came with searches to her home, found a rainbow flag, and also threw her into the basement, where there were another 15 people. Then they lined them up and shot them at random. Only four survived.”

Human rights advocates are advising all LGBTQ+ Ukrainians — in particular activists who have a history of advocacy in conflict with Russia’s 2023 Supreme Court ruling declaring the LGBTQ+ community a “terrorist organization” — to leave the occupied territories, where protection under Ukrainian law no longer applies.

According to NGO Prozhektor, at least 50 people who’ve left the occupied territories have endured torture and violence due to their LGBTQ+ identity.

Seven victims have filed statements; thirteen are witnesses to other crimes.

September 12, 2025 0

Supreme Court allows trans kids in South Carolina to use the right bathrooms in school

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

The U.S. Supreme Court said Wednesday that South Carolina cannot enforce its anti-trans bathroom ban against one transgender student while his challenge to the law moves through the courts.

The law, which went into effect in 2024, requires students in South Carolina public schools to use bathrooms that align with their “biological sex … as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.”

Last year, a 13-year-old transgender boy identified in court documents as John Doe was suspended for using the boys’ restroom at his Berkeley County school. Despite none of his peers objecting to his use of the boys’ restroom, when Doe returned from suspension, school staff were instructed to police his bathroom use, and teachers began dividing students into “boys” and “girls” lines before restroom breaks to enforce the policy.

Faced with constant harassment by teachers and the threat of another suspension, Doe’s parents withdrew him from the school and enrolled him in an online program.

The following November, Doe’s family, along with LGBTQ+ advocacy group Alliance for Full Acceptance, filed a class action suit challenging the South Carolina law. As MSNBC notes, a district court judge in the state halted the case in July after the Supreme Court announced it would hear two cases related to transgender women’s participation in sports. Doe appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which issued an injunction in the boy’s favor in August, preventing the state, the school district, and other defendants from enforcing the law against him while the appeal proceeds through the courts.

According to MSNBC, the three-judge panel cited the court’s 2020 ruling in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board that trans students are entitled to use restrooms aligned with their gender identity. However, George W. Bush-appointee Steven Agee stipulated that the Grimm decision was the only reason he sided with Doe and expressed hope that the Supreme Court would overturn that case, which he described as having been decided wrongly.

That same month, South Carolina asked the Supreme Court to lift the Fourth Circuit’s injunction, arguing in its emergency relief application that Grimm was wrongly decided and that the Fourth Circuit should have considered the Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld Tennessee’s restrictions on gender-affirming care for trans youth. The state argued that it, the school district, and students were “suffering actual, ongoing, material harms” due to Doe being allowed to use the boys’ restroom at school.

On Wednesday, a six-justice majority denied South Carolina’s request, with Republican appointees Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch saying they would have sided with the state, according to HuffPost.

In its order, the Court wrote that its denial of South Carolina’s application was “not a ruling on the merits of the legal issues presented in the litigation.” Rather, the justices wrote, “it is based on the standards applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court.”

September 11, 2025 0

House Republicans file bill to bar trans students from bathrooms, sports teams

States must ax transgender references from sex ed or risk losing funds, Trump admin says

Whitehall, Ohio passes LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination protections, bans conversion therapy on minors

Illinois debuts legal hotline for LGBTQ+ support

DOJ demands private info on trans youth patients from 20 gender-affirming medical providers

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued subpoenas to medical providers who offer gender-affirming care to transgender youth, demanding that they provide private information on their young patients. The subpoenas demand “billing documents, communication with drug manufacturers, patient’s Social Security numbers, addresses, emails, Zoom recordings, voicemails, encrypted text messages, as well as every writing or record of whatever type” doctors have made from January 2020 to the current day, The Washington Post reported.

While Attorney General Pam Bondi admitted last month to sending 20 subpoenas to hold “medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology” accountable, she didn’t specify which organizations and individuals received the subpoenas. Anonymous informants told the aforementioned publication that some of the subpoena recipients (who got the subpoenas in June) operate in states with laws protecting gender-affirming care for youth. One trans civil rights activist called the incident an “unprecedented and disgusting violation of medical privacy.”

“[The government] is using its investigative powers to target medical providers based on a disagreement about medical treatment rather than violations of the law,” Jacob T. Elberg, a former federal prosecutor specializing in health care fraud, told The Washington Post. He added that the DOJ must show that the information it demanded is “relevant to a legitimate law enforcement probe.”

The publication contacted numerous clinics and professionals offering gender-affirming care for youth, but none would say whether they had received a subpoena, citing fears of violent threats or government retaliation. Other hospitals have been closing their trans youth clinics and erasing any mention of gender-affirming care from their web pages to avoid federal threats to cut funding or pursue prosecutorial charges.

“The subpoena is a breathtakingly invasive government overreach,” said Jennifer L. Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at the LGBTQ+ legal advocacy group GLAD Law. “It’s specifically and strategically designed to intimidate health care providers and health care institutions into abandoning their patients.”

Fewer than 3,000 teens nationwide receive puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy, according to a 2025 JAMA analysis of private insurance data, The Post noted.

Responding to the news, transgender civil rights lawyer Alejandra Caraballo wrote via Bluesky, “This is an unprecedented and disgusting violation of medical privacy,” adding, “The fact that no lawsuit has been commenced challenging these subpoenas in court is ominous. My best guess is that many of the providers have complied and now DOJ is potentially sitting on the records of thousands of trans youth covering everything from therapy notes to pre- and post-op photos.”

Though there is no federal law banning gender-affirming care, the current presidential administration has sought to eradicate the practice through a January executive order (that has since been blocked by several courts). The order instructed the DOJ to extend the time that patients and parents can sue gender-affirming doctors and to use laws against false advertising to prosecute any entity that may be misleading the public about the long-term effects of gender-affirming care.

In April, Bondi issued a memo to DOJ employees, telling them to investigate and prosecute cases of minors accessing gender-affirming care as female genital mutilation (FGM); even though hospitals don’t conduct such female genital surgeries. The memo threatened to jail doctors for 10 years if they provide gender-affirming care to young people.

Gender-affirming care is supported by all major medical associations in the U.S., including the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, as safe and life-saving for young people with gender dysphoria.

One doctor interviewed by The Washington Post called the federal government’s crusade against gender-affirming care a “toxic plan” that will force some patients to detransition, potentially forcing them into adverse psychological and physical effects, including increased anxiety, depression, and the development of unwanted physical changes.

“This goes way beyond any degree of moral or ethical dilemma that any of us have ever experienced,” the doctor said. “It is completely scientifically and medically unfounded.”

Republican attorneys general in Texas and Tennessee have demanded similar patient information from providers of youth-centered gender-affirming care outside of their states, but they dropped their demands after courts blocked their efforts.

August 21, 2025 0

Virginia school board votes to refuse to follow administration’s anti-trans order

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

A public school district in northern Virginia voted yesterday to keep its current pro-trans policies despite the administration’s orders to ban trans students from using the restrooms and locker rooms associated with their gender.

The Loudoun County School Board voted to maintain its current policies regarding the facilities just days after the U.S. Education Department (ED) ordered the district – along with four nearby school districts – to ban trans students from using the facilities associated with their gender. The administration claimed that letting trans students use the appropriate facilities violated Title IX, the law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex in education.

The current administration reversed President Joe Biden’s interpretation of Title IX, which found the statute’s prohibition on discrimination “on the basis of sex” includes anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. The rules rely on the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that sex-based discrimination necessarily covers discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, because it’s impossible to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people without taking sex into account.

That is, denying trans students use of restroom facilities or making use of such facilities difficult solely because of their sex assigned at birth was, to the Biden administration, a form of illegal sex-based discrimination. And since many students can’t last an entire day of school without using the restroom, such discrimination could effectively deny trans students an education.

The ED investigated the Virginia school districts, saying it had gotten complaints alleging “that students in the Divisions avoid using school restrooms whenever possible because of the schools’ policies, and that female students have witnessed male students inappropriately touching other students and watching female students change in a female locker room.”

There is no evidence that trans people are a threat to cisgender girls and women in restrooms, but a 2021 study from UCLA’s Williams Institute found that trans people are four times more likely than cis people to be victims of violent crime.

The ED then ordered the schools to rescind their trans-inclusive policies within 10 days and to “adopt biology-based definition of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ in all practices and policies relating to Title IX.”

But the school board in Loudoun County voted 6-3 to keep its current policy, explaining in a statement that they are following precedent set by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. In 2020, that court affirmed a lower court decision in favor of trans student Gavin Grimm, who had sued his school district after he was told to use the bathroom in a bucket in a converted janitor’s closet and was called a “freak” at a school board meeting about his bathroom usage. The court found that Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution prohibited his school district from discriminating against him.

“Our priority remains the same: doing what is right for Loudoun County’s young people; focusing on educating our students and ensuring our schools are places where every child feels they belong,” the Loudoun County School Board said in a statement.

The other four school districts ordered to end trans equality have not yet said how they will proceed, but they have to respond by Friday, which will be the end of the 10-day period. Prince William County School Board members met with lawyers last week and issued a statement saying that it “continues to review and work through legal issues related” to the ED’s order and that the board “remains firmly committed to fostering a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment for all students and staff.”