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A man has been charged in the murder of a 22-year-old transgender woman he was dating who was found dead last month, according to Houston police. The body of Tracy Williams, also known as Tracy Single, was found on July 30 about 3:30 a.m. in a parking lot on Interstate 10 in Houston, officials from the Houston Police Department said in a press release. She had sustained a "puncture wound" and severe lacerations, police said. Joshua Dominic Bourgeois, 25, was considered a suspect after investigators learned he had been in a "dating relationship" with Williams, police said. He was arrested...

Protesters gathered outside a Los Angeles bar Saturday night after a video surfaced on social media of two transgender women being forcibly and violently removed from the venue by bar staff and security after allegedly being the target of a hate crime by other patrons. A group of volunteers and staff members from Bienestar Human Services, a local nonprofit organization, had just finished attending and speaking at DTLA Proud, an annual two-day event that celebrates the LGBTQ community, when they were aggressively approached by a heterosexual couple at Las Perlas bar, according to a press release from Bienestar. "My friend...

Several LGBTQ organizations wrote a letter to GLAAD's president urging the group to abandon a push to pass an amendment enshrining LGBTQ rights in the Constitution. HuffPost reported Friday that a letter signed by the Human Rights Campaign, National LGBTQ Task Force, National Center for Transgender Equality and others urges GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis to cease efforts to advance an amendment campaign and instead engage with local advocacy groups to support their efforts. “While we certainly believe that the challenges facing the LGBTQ community require bold action, we also believe that advancing an amendment campaign is a harmful approach...

The Log Cabin Republicans endorsed President Trump's 2020 reelection bid on Friday, nearly four years after the conservative LGBT organization declined to endorse then-candidate Trump in 2016. The group said its national board of directors voted to endorse Trump after consulting with its chapters across the country. Log Cabin Republicans Chairman Robert Kabel and Vice Chairwoman Jill Homan argued in a Washington Post op-ed on Friday that Trump has helped remove LGBTQ rights as a wedge issue in the GOP, citing his administration's policies on ending the spread of HIV/AIDS as well as his push to get other countries to...

Lawyers bringing a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America said Tuesday they believe they've turned up allegations of sexual abuse against more than 350 people not previously identified in files released by the organization. Attorneys with the Abused in Scouting group filed a lawsuit Monday in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, alleging a one-time scout leader sexually abused a minor identified only by initials. The suit alleges that the abuse of the then-12- or 13-year-old victim by an assistant scout leader started around 1974 or 1975 and continued until about 1980. It also says that the lawyers received allegations of...

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Gavin Grimm, a young man who has become a national face for transgender student rights, returns to a Virginia courtroom Tuesday to continue fighting against his former high school’s transgender bathroom policy. A federal judge in Norfolk will hear arguments over whether the Gloucester County School Board violated Grimm’s rights when it banned him from using boys’ bathrooms. The hearing is the latest step in a yearslong legal battle that has come to embody the debate over transgender student rights, an issue that is far from settled in school systems across the nation. Grimm, now 20,...

In 1969, Forest Hills was a long way from Christopher Street, and a bizarre incident of vigilante tree chopping showed just how far. Only days before the Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village, a mob of some 20 local men descended on the southern edge of Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Using power saws and axes, they leveled a grove of trees that was known as a gay cruising spot. According to a New York Times report at the time, “15 dogwood trees, 11 London planes, a number of wild-cherry trees and other greenery” were felled. The parks department estimated the trees...

he California State Assembly voted 9-2 to send to the state senate a resolution calling on “religious leaders to counsel on LGBTQ matters from a place of love, compassion, and knowledge of the psychological and other harms of conversion therapy.” While no one would argue with the aim of being more loving and more compassionate in our counsel of our fellow man, the people’s representatives do not possess any authority in the arena of religious practice. Article I, Section 4 of the California Constitution reads, in relevant part: “Free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference are guaranteed....

FULL TITLE: Brazilian mother, 27, and her lesbian lover, 28, 'tore off her nine-year-old son's penis before beheading him because he reminded her of her father' A Brazilian mother and her lesbian lover are accused of ripping off her nine-year-old son's penis before beheading him because he reminded her of her dad. Rosana Candido, 27, and Kacyla Pessoa, 28, also allegedly sewed a fake female sex organ onto the body because he 'wanted to be a girl' before scraping the boy's skin off his face. They also tried to gouge out his eyes using a knife after mother Candido stabbed...

It's telling that, in order to claim that science is on their side, trans activists need to bully actual scientists into silence about what the data and human experience actually suggests. According to legend, Galileo defiantly muttered “and yet it moves” after the Inquisition forced him to abjure his Copernican views. Although unverified, this story became a popular anecdote in the history of science, giving voice to the passionate love for inquiry and truth, even in the face of dogmatic threats of violence. If the transgender movement has its way, we shall soon see many more like Galileo, forced by...

A Democratic state legislator in Colorado facing a recall effort over her anti-fracking vote announced Sunday that she has resigned following allegations reportedly stemming from a sexual-misconduct complaint. State Rep. Rochelle Galindo, who was elected in November, posted a statement denying the allegations without providing details, but House Speaker K.C. Becker said they were related to accusations of sexual misconduct outside the state legislature, according to 9News in Denver. Colorado Public Radio said that the Greeley police confirmed that a report “was filed against Galindo last week by a woman who worked on Galindo’s campaign. The contents of the report...

SAN FRANCISCO — Men are dogs, some more so than others. There are those, for example, who wear puppy hoods, harnesses, chain collars and tails while out and about. Sometimes they appear in packs. While hardly as mainstream as walking the red carpet with kink-adjacent accouterments, dressing up doggy style has become more visible in San Francisco and beyond. Puppy play enthusiasts are part of a larger community interested in bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism, collectively known as B.D.S.M. Participants primarily consider it a form of sexual role play, because they get to act like puppies — friendly, frisky, often...

If 'sex' in federal law is replaced with 'gender identity,' the government will be unable to ensure equal opportunities for women. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes has been serving grieving families in the Detroit area since 1910. But in recent years, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has targeted this small family-owned funeral home for punishment due to their refusal to participate in an employee’s so-called gender identity preferences. Why? To achieve its political objective: replacing “sex” in Title VII, a federal law, with “gender identity.” This means bypassing Congress to completely change the meaning of federal laws intended...

The share of Americans who identify as bisexual has tripled in the past decade – and women are behind the increase, according to new data from the General Social Survey. Some 3.3 percent of Americans identified as bisexual in 2018 – up from 1.1 percent in 2008, according to the GSS, a comprehensive poll that has tracked American attitudes and beliefs since 1972. While the share of Americans identifying as gay has seen some variation over the past decade, cumulatively the change was minimal: 1.7 percent in 2018 compared to 1.6 percent in 2008. Notably, 5.6 percent of U.S. women...

Is New Bedford Arts and Culture Gay Enough?” asks Steven Froias in a column in the Fall River Herald News. He adds: “The headline and phrase aren’t simply clickbait.” What’s the problem? The city of New Bedford isn’t spending enough money on funding queer culture to encourage artistic creativity, Froias says. “If queer culture and public arts education won’t be funded, respected, or supported by the city, we will never be the arts community people think we are,” he quotes one observer as saying.

The city of San Jose, California will fly rainbow flags near a new Chick-fil-A that is slated to open at the city’s airport. The city council voted 11-0 this week to display a rainbow flag and a transgender rights pink, blue and white flag near the San Jose International Airport. "I made the suggestion to put the flags next to the restaurant, and council members liked that idea but also said that maybe put flags elsewhere, too, like outside," Ken Yeager, the first openly gay elected official in Santa Clara County, told NBC News.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission on Tuesday dropped its latest case against Christian cakeshop owner Jack Phillips, handing him a second victory against state officials over his refusal to create cakes for certain LGBT events. Mr. Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, agreed in exchange to drop his lawsuit against the state, which he filed last year after the commission took action against him for declining to make a blue-and-pink cake to celebrate a transgender transition. Kristen Waggoner, who represents Mr. Phillips as Alliance Defending Freedom senior vice president, called the outcome “great news for everyone.” “We’re pleased...

After years of back and forth, a highly cited paper that appeared to show that gay people who live in areas where people were highly prejudiced against them had a significantly shorter life expectancy has been retracted. The paper, “Structural stigma and all-cause mortality in sexual minority populations,” was published in 2014 by Mark Hatzenbuehler of Columbia University and colleagues. As we reported last year, Mark Regnerus, of the University of Texas at Austin, published a paper describing his failed attempts to replicate the study in 2016: "After Regnerus’s study, Hatzenbuehler hired a colleague at Columbia, Katherine Keyes, to try...

<p>Chilling photographs captured the moment two pedophiles were executed in front of a large crowd in Yemen’s port city of Aden for raping and murdering a 12-year-old boy.</p> <p>Wadah Refat, 28, and Mohamed Khaled, 31, were convicted by a court of abducting Mohamed Saad, dragging him into one of their homes and sexually assaulting him in May 2018, the UK’s Daily Star reported.</p>

A Presbyterian pastor in California has resigned his church after congregants abandoned him over a sign he placed in front of the church building declaring that “homosexuality is still sin.” In early January, the Reverand Justin Hoke, pastor of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church in the small town of Weed, California, posted a sign in front of the church facility pointing out that “Bruce Jenner is still male,” referring to the high-profile U.S. Olympic Gold Medal athlete who changed his name to “Caitlyn” and now portrays himself as a woman. The sign went on to declare that “Homosexuality is still sin....