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Now That Trump Has Won We Must Reassure LGBT Youth That Our Movement Is Resilient and We Are Not Alone

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Responding to the Impending Trump-Induced LGBT Health Crisis

The prospect of a Trump presidency has aptly been described as a “mental health crisis” waiting to happen.

Even before the campaign began in earnest, LGBT health advocate D.A. Stewart warned that “A Trump presidency would not only be dark and disturbing for LGBT Americans, it could very well mean taking several steps backward in our general health as a community, undoing years of public health strides in inclusive care for underserved populations in our country.”

Not surprisingly, in the days immediately following the election, there was a dramatic spike in calls to organizations and support groups that serve the mental health needs of the LGBT community.

The Trevor Project and TransLifeLine, organizations that provide suicide hot lines for LGBT youth and the Trans community, respectively, reported a record number of calls from people concerned about the election results. Similarly, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, an organization founded in 2005, logged an unprecedented number of calls from LGBT individuals coping with feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, and a sense of betrayal.

Screen_Shot_2016-11-27_at_12.36.55_PM.jpg“We started getting increased call volume at about 10 p.m. on election night, and it hasn’t slowed down at all,” Gretta Martela, director of Trans Line told Mother Jones on Nov. 11, and added: “In fact, it’s on the rise still.”

Steve Mendelsohn, deputy executive director of the Trevor Project, said queer youth who contacted his hotline are “telling us that they’re feeling anxious and scared…They talk about things that came up during the election campaign. So a fear that perhaps gay marriage will be reversed. Or that conversion therapy will be promoted. Or that their insurance might be taken away.”

The Trevor Project is currently training many more volunteers to help field the increasing volume of calls, Mendelsohn said.

The Crisis Text Line, a support network that people in distress can contact for help via text message, also reported a record number of messages.  The Crisis Text Line said in a press release that “The words ‘election’ and ‘scared’ are the top two things being mentioned” and “the most common association with ‘scared’ was ‘LGBTQ.’ ”

The increase in calls to these groups could have been predicted. We have long known that LGBT youth are at significantly greater risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors than heterosexual youth. Gay and lesbian adults also report a history of more suicidal ideation and attempts than their heterosexual counterparts. Transgender people, regardless of their sexual orientation, are also at greater risk for suicidal thoughts and attempts.

In addition to the general risk factors for suicide, such as depression and substance abuse, LGBT people also face additional stressors, such as discrimination and hate speech, as well as bullying and spiritual terrorism, that put us at an increased risk for suicidal behavior.

Indeed, a 2002 study by psychologists Bill Jesdale and Sally Zierler found a direct correlation between LGBT rights and the rate of suicide in adolescents. The study discovered that states that had enacted laws protecting LGBT citizens experienced a statistically significant decrease in their adolescent suicide rates. The study offered hope that by creating a more accepting climate for LGBT people, the rate of suicidal thoughts and behaviors among this population could be decreased.

A corollary of the Jesdale-Zierler findings is also likely true. When the rights of LGBT people are under attack, then suicidal thoughts and behaviors will occur at an increased frequency.

Hence, we must be especially vigilant when our rights are assaulted by politicians and hateful religious figures. Lives are literally at stake.

During this holiday period, when people in general are particularly subject to depression, we especially need to  reassure LGBT youth that our movement is a resilient one.

We have experienced setbacks before. In 1986, for example, the United States Supreme Court delivered a devastating blow when, in a 5-4 ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick, it upheld laws that criminalized homosexual activity even in private.

In response, the gay rights legal movement turned its attention to state courts, and over the next fifteen years achieved a string of important victories as state courts either struck down sodomy laws or indicated that they could not be enforced against consenting adults whose conduct was private and non-commercial.

Although there were losses in the state courts, many of the lawsuits ended in victory for the LGBT plaintiffs who challenged the laws, and a few states during the 1990s legislatively repealed them, so that by 2003, when the issue again reached the Supreme Court, barely a dozen states retained actively enforceable sodomy laws on their statute books, and in only four states were those laws solely targeted at same-sex conduct.

In 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court summarily reversed Bowers v. Hardwick in an expansive ruling that has been pivotal to the legal and social progress that we have made since.Â

Similarly, in our epic quest for marriage equality, there were many defeats in court and at the ballot box before the tide turned in our favor, first in a few state courts, then in public opinion and in more state and federal courts and, finally, in the Supreme Court itself.

Even during the long nightmare of the George W. Bush administration, when we were scapegoated and our rights cynically used as a wedge issue to motivate the religious right to vote Republican, we not only persevered but made significant advances.

The specter of a Trump-Pence administration has no doubt shadowed our Thanksgiving celebrations, but we must not allow the disappointing election to cause us to forget the many successes we have achieved and the many blessings for which we should be grateful.

Screen_Shot_2016-11-27_at_12.30.52_PM.jpgWe need to emphasize that the 2016 election was not a referendum on LGBT issues and that Trump and Pence received no mandate to erode LGBT rights.

Moreover, we must remember that we are now better prepared than ever to resist the attacks on our rights that will come from a Trump-Pence administration stocked with homophobic politicians.

The election of Trump has encouraged and emboldened bigots and haters throughout the country, but we need to remember that we have unprecedented levels of support. We are not alone in our fight for equal rights and dignity.

We must keep our faith in Dr. Martin Luther King’s maxim that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Rather than surrender to despair, we must redouble our commitment to action.

Part of that commitment to action must be an increased vigilance in protecting the most vulnerable members of our society, including LGBT youth.

We must increase our contributions to such organizations as the Trevor Project, the TransLifeLine, and the Ali Forney Center, as well as to our advocacy organizations such as the NGLTF, the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, GLAD, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, GLAAD, and many others.

We must also remind young people that “It Gets Better.”

The “It Gets Better Project” grew out of a mental health crisis in 2010, when the nation was rocked by a series of well-publicized bullying scandals and by the suicides of a number of LGBT teens.

Alarmed by the suicide of Billy Lucas, a Greensburg, Indiana teenager who had been mercilessly bullied, Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller founded the project as a channel on YouTube that features videos of LGBT adults and allies reassuring young people that, however awful their predicament might seem at the time, “it gets better.”

“I realized,” Savage told a New York Times reporter, “that with things like YouTube and social media, we can talk directly to these kids. We can make an end run around the schools that don’t protect them, from parents who want to keep gay kids isolated and churches that tell them that they are sinful or disordered.”

The first video in the series featured Savage and Miller, who were both bullied in high school, explaining how fulfilling life became after they left high school, met each other, and began their family.

Soon after its launch, the series went viral on the Internet and grew to include tens of thousands of videos.

In the video below, made in October 2010 to benefit the Trevor Project, Broadway stars reassure young people in an original song written by Jay Kuo & Blair Shepard.

Perhaps the most powerful “It Gets Better” musical video is the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus’s rendition of Stephen Schwartz’s “Testimony.”

Schwartz’s 2012 composition features the voices of individuals in pain, but his work envisions triumph as suffering individuals come to find solace in communion with others. It acknowledges the heartbreaking anguish many gay people feel in a homophobic society, but it also joyfully celebrates the rewards of self-acceptance and the happiness that can be found by living life honestly.

If you just “hang in” and “hang on” and accept yourself, the song advises, you can experience “the joy of living with authenticity.”

Schwartz, who has written such hit musicals as Godspell (1971), Pippin (1972), and Wicked (2003), collaborated with Savage as he set to music the heartfelt testimony of contributors to the “It Gets Better” project. The result is an extraordinarily moving work that is beautifully performed by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus.

If you’re an LGBTQ person and need someone to talk to, these groups are ready to help:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-237-8255 (TALK)

Crisis Text Line: Text “GO” to 741741

The Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386

Trans Lifeline: 1-877-565-8860

GLBT National Youth Talk: 1-800-246-7743

Â

Image by Ted Eytan via Flickr and a CC licenseÂ

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News

‘Recycling Stale and Debunked Burisma Conspiracy Theories’: Raskin Refutes Comer’s Claims as ‘Effort to Smear Biden’

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3 hours ago

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June 5, 2023

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It is an internal FBI document used to record an informant’s unverified statement, and House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer wants it.

On Monday after weeks of threats and intimidation, Chairman Comer announced he will seek to obtain a contempt of Congress conviction against FBI Director Chris Wray, who refused to hand over to the committee the document, known as an FD-1023, which allegedly contains allegations of unlawful activity by then-Vice President Joe Biden.

Ranking Member Raskin late Monday afternoon released a statement slamming Comer.

READ MORE: Comer Struggles to Defend Need for Internal FBI Document on Biden as He Seeks Contempt of Congress for Director Wray

“As the FBI explained at length during today’s briefing, and in previous conversations leading up to today’s accommodation, releasing this form publicly could place the Confidential Human Source in grave danger and undermine the integrity of FBI programs and investigations going forward,” Reskin said in a statement. “Yet, rather than acknowledge these legitimate law enforcement concerns, Chairman Comer has declared his intent to hold Director Wray in contempt of Congress to further promote debunked Republican conspiracy theories.”

“We now know what I had long suspected: that Chairman Comer’s subpoena is about recycling stale and debunked Burisma conspiracy theories long peddled by Rudy Giuliani and a Russian agent, sanctioned by former President Trump’s own Treasury Department, as part of the effort to smear President Biden and help Mr. Trump’s reelection campaign,” Raskin revealed.

Announcing,”here are the facts,” Raskin wrote, “the FD-1023 form, which we reviewed first-hand today, records what a Confidential Human Source told the FBI about conversations he had with individuals in Ukraine. The source, who has been described as highly credible by the FBI, told the FBI he could not provide any opinion on the underlying veracity of the information provided by these Ukrainian individuals.”

“Chairman Comer’s actions prove that his interest in issuing this subpoena was never about seeking the truth, but was always about weaponizing the powers of this Committee to hold Director Wray in contempt as part of MAGA Republicans’ efforts to discredit and ultimately ‘dismantle’ the FBI.”

READ MORE: ‘Indictment Anytime’: Experts Explain Significance of Trump’s Attorneys Meeting With DOJ – Warn Plea Deal Possible

Indeed, then-President Donald Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an infamous July, 2019 telephone call, to “do us a favor though.”

“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” Trump said, according to a declassified transcript released by the White House.

On Sunday Rep. Raskin told CNN Comer “admitted” this is an attempt to help Donald Trump. “It’s all about the 2024 campaign.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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Comer Struggles to Defend Need for Internal FBI Document on Biden as He Seeks Contempt of Congress for Director Wray

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5 hours ago

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June 5, 2023

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House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer (R-KY) Monday afternoon announced he will seek to obtain a contempt of Congress referral and conviction against FBI Director Chris Wray.

For months conservatives have been talking about a document supposedly damaging to President Joe Biden that the Federal Bureau of Investigation only recently verified exists. It is not classified, but it has also not been proven accurate. It was deemed so spurious even then-Attorney General Bill Barr questioned its credibility.

Chairman Comer has demanded Director Wray not only show him the document – which the Bureau did Monday – but hand it over to the Oversight Committee.

After the FBI, according to Comer, refused to hand over the document, Comer announced, “we will now initiate contempt of Congress hearings.”

On Monday, Comer said the FBI is using the document as part of an ongoing investigation.

READ MORE: Grassley Admits He Doesn’t Care if GOP’s Accusations Against ‘Vice President Biden’ Are True or Not – He Vows to Pursue Them

Comer announced he will seek contempt of Congress charges against Wray even after the Federal Bureau of Investigation briefed him Monday on the document, allegedly from an unverified whistleblower, claiming then-Vice President Joe Biden engaged in an unethical or unlawful act.

Some reports say the document alleges Biden accepted a bribe in exchange for enacting a policy decision, although there has been no evidence to support that claim.

When asked by a reporter why he is pursuing a contempt of Congress charge against Wray, since he has now seen the document and been briefed on it, Comer struggled to defend his actions.

“So why do you need to document at hand? You just got a chance to view it, so why do you need it? Why move forward with contempt when the FBI says they’re cooperating in good faith?” the reporter asked.

“Well,” Comer replied, “if, let’s just look at what what I’ve read in a lot of the media accounts. and and with statements that Ian Sam’s has made from the White House, that, ‘There’s no merit to this. this is crazy. This is a conspiracy theory.’ And you’re just supposed to take my word or, or the FBI’s word, I’m supposed to take the FBI’s word that they’re investigating this, or that, uh, you, you’re gonna write that the source is unverified wherever, remember, the main reason they’re not wanting to make this public is because they’re concerned about the source.”

Comer also told reporters, “All I know is there’s an ongoing investigation. They’ve confirmed there’s an ongoing investigation, using, this information. I assume that ongoing investigation is in Delaware. I don’t know that.But I assume that.”

Meanwhile, Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin was asked about Comer’s remarks that the document is part of an ongoing investigation.

Shocked and stunned, with his jaw literally hanging open, Raskin looked around as reporters told him what the chairman said, and he replied, “then I must have missed that because I had not heard that this is part of any ongoing investigation.

Comer, according to the clip below, also described the source of the allegation as “highly credible,” but Raskin appeared to correct Comer, saying the highly credible source “reported a conversation with someone else.”

Raskin has previously described the document as a “tip,” containing “unsubstantiated, second-hand claims.”

READ MORE: ‘Untrue and Hateful’: Nikki Haley Slammed for ‘Damnable Lie’ of Blaming Teen Girls Contemplating Suicide on Trans Kids

The unverified document, called an FD-1023 form, “has origins in a tranche of documents that Rudy Giuliani provided to the Justice Department in 2020, people briefed on the matter said,” CNN has reported.

“According to Comer,” CNN added last week, the FD-1023 form, “dated June 30, 2020, says [a] foreign national allegedly paid $5 million to receive a desired policy outcome, based on unclassified and legally protected whistleblower disclosures.”

“The allegations of wrongdoing by the then-vice president,” CNN added, many originating from sources in Ukraine, were dubious enough that Attorney General William Barr in early 2020 directed that they be reviewed by a US attorney in Pittsburgh, in part because Barr was concerned that Giuliani’s document tranche could taint the ongoing Hunter Biden investigation overseen by the Delaware US attorney.”

Watch the video clips above or at this link.

 

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‘Indictment Anytime’: Experts Explain Significance of Trump’s Attorneys Meeting With DOJ – Warn Plea Deal Possible

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11 hours ago

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June 5, 2023

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Legal experts responding to news Donald Trump‘s legal team Monday morning walked into the U.S. Dept. of Justice agree it likely means Special Counsel Jack Smith is nearing a charging decision, but warn it could also mean the ex-president, under criminal investigation for unlawful handling of classified documents, among other possibly unlawful acts, might be offered a plea deal to avoid serving time in prison.

Trump’s attorneys being at DOJ “suggests indictment anytime. This would be the last step, and if neither side offers something worth thinking about, then DOJ would pull the trigger,” says former Dept. of Justice official Harry Litman.

“Plenty of possible angles they might choose to play including guilty plea for noncustodial sentence,” he adds, referring to any possible plea bargain with no sentence behind bars. “But unless Trump side leaks, discussions will stay confidential.”

READ MORE: ‘No Longer the Lord’s Chicken’: ‘Christian Woman’ Says She’s ‘Grieving’ Over ‘Woke’ Chick-fil-A Hiring a Diversity Officer

CBS News’ Robert Costa and Rob Legare broke the news that Trump’s attorneys had gone into DOJ. Responding to that, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance offers up a few possible scenarios.

“The smart move here for Trump is a guilty plea to a misdemeanor if DOJ will offer one & a felony with no jail time if they won’t,” she says, pointing to her Substack newsletter where she discussed this very subject Sunday night.

“For those who dislike these possible outcomes (I would number myself in that group), it’s nonetheless important to understand the prior precedent that will shape DOJ’s charging decisions & any plea offers in this matter. This is Trump’s best possible outcome, not the country’s,” says Vance.

READ MORE: Classified Pentagon ‘War Plans’ Document Trump Bragged About in Audio Recording Is Missing: Report

She adds, “Trump seems incapable of saying he’s done anything wrong. To plead, he’d have to say under oath in open court that he was guilty. It’ll be interesting to see if he can do that, or would rather run the risk of being convicted of felonies that carry up to 20 years in custody.”

“Good sign,” says former federal prosecutor of 30 years, Glenn Kirschner, observing, “if Jack Smith had decided against charging Trump, there would be no need for this meeting. The last federal prosecutors often do before indicting is meet with the target’s defense team & give them an opportunity to present any evidence or arguments they want to offer.”

Dave Aronberg, Palm Beach County, Florida state’s attorney on MSNBC Monday morning said he believes Trump will be indicted this week.

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license

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