The Anti-Defamation League and the advocacy group GLAAD issued a report in June indicating an increase in harassment and violence against gay and transgender people, including online bullying, gatherings of armed protesters outside drag shows and bomb threats against hospitals that provide gender transition care. In the first three weeks of June there were 101 such incidents, more than twice the number during the same time period the year before. (...)

At the Brownsville building where Mr. Sibley lived alone in a studio, his neighbor, Beckenbaur Hamilton, 51, said he had warned the younger man against being so open about his sexuality. Mr. Hamilton, who is also gay, recalled attacks he had suffered in his 20s when going out to clubs, and said that he has recently been overhearing comments on the street about “all these rights” gay people have.

“It is dangerous,” Mr. Jordan said of the legislation, “and takes the country in the wrong direction.”

Representative Bob Good, Republican of Virginia, derided the measure as the “disrespect for marriage act.”

“This bill certainly disrespects God’s definition of marriage,” Mr. Good said, “and his definition is the only one that really matters.”

Slovenia becomes first post-communist country to legalise same-sex marriage and adoption


The Slovenian parliament on Tuesday passed an amendment allowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt after a constitutional court ruling made it the first country in Eastern Europe to do so.

The family law amendment was passed by 48 MPs, with 29 against and one abstaining.

Slovenia, which emerged from the break-up of Yugoslavia, is the first former communist country to endorse this reform in Europe, as most of its neighbours do not allow civil unions or same-sex marriages.

The government of Estonia came the closest in 2016 by agreeing to recognize same-sex unions created in other countries. Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Montenegro have laws establishing same-sex civil partnerships - and in Hungary, even talking about homosexuality in front of children has been punishable by a fine since the summer of 2021.

In July, Slovenia's highest court ruled that the law defining marriage as only between a man and a woman discriminated against gay and lesbian couples.

It suspended the contested articles with immediate effect and ordered parliament to amend the text within six months.

"With these changes, we are recognising the rights of same-sex couples that they should have had for a long time," State Secretary Simon Maljevac told MPs when presenting the amendment.

The main opposition party, the Slovenian Democratic Party, criticised the court's decision and organised several rallies against the new law.

"The best father will never replace a mother and vice versa," said SDS parliamentary group chairman Alenka Jeraj at the opening of the debate.

(...) Let me say first that the country has quickly evolved on the acceptance of gayness, and that includes an evolution among Black people. But as acceptance and visibility rise, the minority who feel threatened by gay people has grown louder. They talk in apocalyptic terms about a “gay agenda” destined to recruit throngs to a gay “lifestyle.”

Let’s clarify: Being gay is not a lifestyle that one can choose, like being a jet-setter or a bohemian; it is an immutable feature of a life. Also, there is no explosion of gayness simply because gay people are now more visible than they once were. They still account for less than 10 percent of the population. Gallup recently measured a modest rise in those identifying as L.G.B.T. in the United States, to 5.6 percent in 2021 from 4.5 percent in 2017.

That is a tiny fraction of the entire population. And yet they are still targets. I don’t see a gay agenda in this story but an anti-gay agenda.

So first, let me say this: Whenever I encounter a passionate homophobe, my mind immediately focuses on his passion. Why would a straight man devote so much time and energy to hating gay people? What is the return?

Is this something that settles on the brain, these particular brains? And why can’t the thought be quickly and easily vanquished?

I am always reminded of what James Baldwin told The Village Voice in a 1984 interview: Macho men are “far more complex than they want to realize.” As Baldwin put it: “They have needs which, for them, are literally inexpressible. They don’t dare look into the mirror. And that is why they need faggots. They’ve created faggots in order to act out a sexual fantasy on the body of another man and not take any responsibility for it.”

In other words, some homophobes outwardly attack that with which they inwardly battle. (In the case of these rappers, I accept their identities at face value and imply nothing to the contrary. That’s their business, not mine. See how that works, fellas?)

But there is another idea that Baldwin expressed in that interview that I think is even more important to explore, that “the sexual question and the racial question have always been entwined.”

So many things about this observation ring true.

I have always contended that all of the -isms and -phobias are cousins, that in a society that creates a hierarchy of humanity with white, straight, cisgender men at the apex, every person who is not white or straight or cisgender or male gets assigned a lower order of being.

In that sense, racism and sexism, homophobia and transphobia all branch from the same tree.

And one bias can influence and amplify another. (...)

During Sunday’s “Swamp Rangers” radio program, radical anti-LGBTQ activist Scott Lively declared that God stripped Donald Trump of the presidency because of Trump’s promotion of the LGBTQ agenda by giving a gay man, Richard Grenell, prominent positions within his administration.

Lively was an ardent supporter of the former president and had hoped that Trump would use his presidency to destroy the LGBTQ movement by enacting Russian-style anti-gay laws in the United States. Since that didn’t happen, Lively said that God had no choice but to remove Trump from office.

Lively lamented that Trump was good on just about every issue, “except on the homosexual issue, which I think is his biggest mistake” and “the reason why he lost the election.”

“He defied God on a fundamental tenet of the Bible and never repented of it,” Lively said. “If Donald Trump was, as I believe, God’s man in the White House for four years, why did God not preserve it? Because if God had given him favor, nothing that mankind could have done could have removed him from that office. And yet the one thing that he did during that time that would virtually guarantee God’s favor being removed was to put his own personal stamp of approval on behavior that God condemns in the harshest possible terms in the Bible, which is specifically male homosexuality.”

“Trump fully endorsed and backed and applauded (Richard) Grenell,” Lively added, “(who) was an outspoken advocate for the central doctrine of the progressive movement, which is queer theory.” (...)