The Bad News

Let’s get started at pretty close to the bottom, where the Conga Line of Shit-Brains known as the heads of Health and InHuman Services announced a metric fuckton of measures to ban most forms of gender-affirming care for trans youth. The two biggest ones were barring any medical facility that gives any kind of youth gender-affirming care access to funds from Medicare or Medicaid, and prohibiting Medicaid funds for paying for any kind of youth gender-affirming care. They also called the guidelines and research on youth gender-affirming care as "incredibly weak" and "experimental interventions". Doctor Oz (the humbug) also went on a ridiculous rant about the cost of gender-affirming surgeries. (I mean, it’s expensive, especially with the problems with insurance and the employment problems for trans people. But Ozbie gets everything wrong from start to finish in his rants.)

I’m going to drop this link to Leeja Miller’s YouTube channel, where she goes over the anti-trans rules and how they are actually worse than you think. (narrator: "And if you thought they were bad, you almost certainly underrating just how bad.")

As Leeja mentions, the FDA sent letters to companies selling chest binders stating that that have "misbranded" medical devices and need to register their products as medical devices for the 2026 fiscal year, a thing which has never happened before, ever. As Leeja notes, this would also make sports bras need to be registered. In response, the companies are calling it "clearly discrimination", with Xander Shepard, director of one of the companies, GenderBender, stating:

"Push-up bras, which can be a gender affirming garment and also temporarily shift breast tissue into one’s desired shape, would never get called a medical device — maybe because the people in power want to see more minors’ boobs, not less."

And just to put a special cherry on the shit-cake, a bill by Rep. Margerine Traitor Greene criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors has passed the House with the support of three Democrats, those being Texas Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, and North Carolina Rep. Don Davis. Republican Reps. Gabe Evans of Colorado, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Mike Kennedy of Utah, and Mike Lawler of New York voted against the measure. It now goes to the Senate.

Attorney General and car repair polymer Pam Bondi had a memo leaked where she directed the FBI to set up programs to offer cash bounties for "information leading to the arrest of the leaders of domestic terror organizations". These include, according to the memo, " opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government;" and "hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality". I wish I was making this shit up.

In Texas, Judge Diane Hensley has filed a lawsuit asking federal courts to overturn marriage equality. She stopped officiating weddings completely in 2015, stating that having to perform a same-sex marriage would be "incompatible" with her conservative Christian faith. (She started up again for opposite couples the next year.) From the story, "The State Commission on Judicial Conduct began an investigation of her actions in 2018, which concluded the next year with the commission reprimanding her and putting out a warning that she might not be impartial when it came to matters of sexual orientation." She filed a suit saying it violated her rights under the Texas religious freedom law, which was bounced out. This past October, the Texas Supreme Court rewrote the judicial ethics rules to add in, "It is not a violation of these canons for a judge to publicly refrain from performing a wedding ceremony based upon a sincerely held religious belief."

The Massachusetts DCF (Department of Children and Families) has removed a rule that requires foster parents to support LGBTQ+ youth, in the wake of lawsuits from families who refused to do so in documents they needed to sign to keep their certification as foster parents (and assisted by the Alliance Defining Fuckheads), as well as threats from The Regime. This also removes the explicit requirement to not bring LGBTQ+ youth to conversion therapy.

Over in the Oklahoma Hellmouth, Mel Curth, the University of Oklahoma graduate assistant who was put on administrative leave after she failed student Samantha Fulnecky’s Bible-citing psychology essay has been removed from her position following a discrimination investigation. If you’ve been under a rock for this, Curth assigned a paper on how people are percieved based on society expectations of gender; Fulnecky wrote the essay citing the Bible and no other empircal evidence; Curth gave her a zero on the essay; Fulnecky said it was because she "dared to be Christian" and it was due to Curth discriminating against her; the UO suspended Curth and has now removed her from any kind of instructional position. Oh, yes, and Curth is transgender. I don’t know about you, but I can put two and two together in a wide range of bases.

Let’s hop the pond, where we can laugh like the Joker, seized with madness, as Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said out loud, in public, that Labour’s trans policies are following the "highest standard of ethics" and that he was uncomfortable with the puberty blocking medication ban that he put in place. No, really, he said that. When discussing both the ban and the research panel on the safety of puberty blockers, he said:

"The reason I was uncomfortable with that, too, is because I had to look children and young people, and their parents, in the eye when they told me in no uncertain terms that the decision was harmful to them, as have many other clinicians who have opposed that decision."

"Whatever my discomfort in this extremely sensitive area, the reason that I have made this decision is that I am following clinical advice and, as health secretary, it is my responsibility to follow expert advice."

"I think we will be doing a service to medicine in this country as well as internationally if we have a high-quality trial with the highest standards of ethics, approvals, oversight, and research from some of our country’s leading universities and healthcare providers to ensure that, for this particular vulnerable group of children and young people, we are taking an evidence-based approach to health and care."

The ban came after a meeting he had with a group of organizations on this issue, the organizations including the LGB Alliance, Transgender Trend, Genspect, CAN-SG, the Integrated Psychology Clinic, and the Bayswater Support Group - all of them anti-transgender groups.

Ilford North, vote Anyone With A Brain And A Soul Who Isn’t Wes Streeting.

Oh, and the NHS has no record of the total number of trans people in the country. As Malcolm Tucker would say, some of these people are about as useful as a marzipan dildo.

Celebrity bad news: Barry Manilow has been diagnosed with lung cancer. The 82-year-old singer and former writer of jingles and pianist for Bette Midler hopes to make a full recovery.

The Good News

Let’s give a cheer for Mark Constantine, co-founder of LUSH cosmetics, who refuses to stop supporting the LGBTQ+ community, even in the face of the political world in both the US and UK.

Despite a very bad case of urosepsis, Billy Porter is alive.

The Cinnamon Roll Report

You know who I’m going to be talking about here... and it’s got some extra spice in it. Because Pedro Pascal is apparently a fan of the gay hockey TV show Heated Rivalry, if you can trust his Instagram activity about it.

Housekeeping

Brandon Blatcher and I were talking, and I will be making sure to tag these posts with the "LGBTQIAnews" tag, if you would like to keep an eye out for it. Much thanks for Brandon for coming up with it, and huge, huge thanks to people here for the support you gave me. My depression surged badly, and I had to fight with it. But I’m back to make the transphobes upset. :)

Be well, friends. If you have news I missed or you want to share your personal triumphs, bring them here! Let us know your joys, so that we can offset the sadness and horror.

We’re goin’ up, up, up It’s our moment You know together we’re glowing Gonna be, gonna be golden Oh, up, up, up With our voices Yeongwonhi kkaejil su eomneun (unbreakable forever) Gonna be, gonna be golden

Oh, I’m done hidin’, now I’m shinin’ Like I’m born to be Oh, our time, no fears, no lies That’s who we’re born to be