President Obama has condemned anti-LGBT laws recently passed in two Southern states in an attempt to reassure British tourists, reports USA Today.
“I want everybody here in the United Kingdom to know that the people of North Carolina and Mississippi are wonderful people,” Obama said during a Friday news conference. “They are beautiful states and you are welcome and you should come and enjoy yourselves. And I think you’ll be treated with extraordinary hospitality.”
But at the same time, the president also went on record as opposing recently passed “religious freedom” laws, which could have a negative effect on LGBT people. Obama called the new laws “wrong” and said they “should be overturned.”
Obama’s comments came in response to the British Foreign Office issuing an advisory warning travelers to North Carolina and Mississippi of those new laws. That guidance, issued earlier this week, noted that the United States is an “extremely diverse society,” and, as such, attitudes toward LGBT people vary from place to place. It also suggested that LGBT travelers refer to the Human Rights Campaign and other sources to see if those laws might adversely impact them.
In North Carolina, lawmakers removed protections against discrimination in public accommodations by repealing local pro-LGBT ordinances and required that transgender people be forced to use only the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex. In Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant (R) signed into effect a law that grants individuals and business owners significant leeway to discriminate against LGBT people or others, such as single mothers, of whose lifestyle they disapprove based on “sincerely held” personal beliefs.
Obama also said that the move to pass the laws was motivated not solely by animus, but by political considerations and some lawmakers’ sincerely held convictions.
“Although I respect their different viewpoints, it’s important for us not to send signals that anyone is treated differently,” Obama added.
Cameron defended the Foreign Office’s advice to travelers, noting that the office tries to give advice “dispassionately” and “impartially” about laws that could affect British citizens abroad.
“Our view on any of these kinds of things is that we should use law to end discrimination, rather than embed it or enhance it,” Cameron said. “And that’s something we’re comfortable saying to countries and friends anywhere in the world.”
A man who was kicked out of the Boy Scouts of America as a teenager for being gay -- and became the first to sue the organization over its ban on gay youth and adult leaders -- has returned 45 years later as an assistant scoutmaster.
Tim Curran, a 64-year-old assistant scoutmaster with Manhattan’s Troop 662, told People magazine he always wanted to return to scouting after his expulsion. But his four-decade career as a journalist and documentary filmmaker kept him from committing to a leadership role -- even after BSA, now rebranded as "Scouting America," lifted its ban on openly gay adult leaders in 2015.
A Kentucky bill that sought to bar transgender people from teaching has failed.
State Sen. Gex ("Jay") Williams (R-Verona) introduced SB 351 in early March to prevent transgender people from obtaining or keeping teaching certifications.
Under the bill, anyone reported to state education officials as potentially transgender would have been required to undergo medical exams and submit the results to obtain or renew a teaching license.
The bill also would have barred teaching certificates for anyone "who has been treated for or diagnosed with any disorder that is excluded from the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 by a licensed medical professional, as these disorders were defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders at the time."
The U.S. Department of Education has terminated agreements with five school districts and a college that required schools to follow an interpretation embraced by the Biden and Obama administrations extending sex-discrimination protections to transgender students.
The move marks the first known instance of the Trump administration terminating civil rights settlements previously negotiated with schools or school districts.
The five school districts -- Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware, which serves Rehoboth Beach; Fife School District in Washington State; Delaware Valley School District in Pennsylvania; La Mesa-Spring Valley School District in California; and Sacramento City Unified School District -- along with Taft College in California's Central Valley, reached those agreements with past administrations following alleged incidents of discrimination involving transgender or nonbinary students.
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