Linkage

Q. It wasn’t just Trumpism. Some Democratic voices say it’s time to move beyond the issue of trans rights in areas like sports, which affect very few people.

A. You could say that about the Jews, Black people or Haitians, or any very vulnerable minority. Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, you’re operating within a fascist logic, because that means there might be a second one you’re willing to sacrifice, and a third, a fourth, and then what happens?

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We have a pernicious history of misogyny, which is being celebrated in the person of Trump. Guilty of sexual crimes, he has done more than any other American person to demean and degrade women as a class. The people who say, “Oh, I don’t like that part of his behavior, but I’m going to vote for him anyway because of the economy,” they’re admitting that they are willing to live with that misogyny and look away from his sexual violence. The more people who say that they can “live with” racism and misogyny in a candidate, even if they’re not enthusiastic racists, the more the enthusiastic racists and the fascists become stronger. I see a kind of restoration fantasy at play in many right-wing movements in the U.S. People want to go back to the idea of being a white country or the idea of the patriarchal family, the principle that marriages are for heterosexuals. I call it a nostalgic fury for an impossible past. Those in the grip of that fury are effectively saying: “I don’t like the complexity of this world, and all these people speaking all these languages. I’m fearful that my family will become destroyed by gender ideology.” As a consequence of that, they’re furiously turning against some of the most vulnerable people in this country, stripping of them of rights as they fear that the same will be done to them.

One of the principles upon which provision of puberty blockers to young trans people was made was Gillick competence – the law that says that young people over the age of 12 can be individually assessed by medical professionals to determine whether or not they’re competent to make medical decisions for themselves. This was hard fought for by feminist campaigners back in the 1980s and it led to the passing of the Age Of Legal Capacity Act in Scotland in 1991. It’s a principle of particular importance when it comes to reproductive healthcare, as it helps young people to access the services they need even if, for instance, they feel unsafe discussing them with their parents. As such, it helps to protect them from abuse and to get used to the idea that they have ownership of their bodies, which is important as they grow up and negotiate boundaries in romantic and social relationships.

By overriding Gillick competence where trans people are concerned, Streeting has created a risk that it will be ignored in other cases too. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. He seems shaky on the concept of medical consent more generally, as demonstrated by his suggestion that obese unemployed people should be given the weight loss drug Ozempic to improve their health and get them back into work. Although his initial comments on this, which provoked a public outcry, were quickly followed by assurances that it would not be compulsory, concern remains about the vulnerability of people who depend on the state for support, especially those who are disabled, who make up a significant part of the obese population. Like most drugs, Ozempic has side effects and is not appropriate for everyone.

In Austin, attorney Meghan Alexander used to receive maybe three calls a week about second-parent adoptions. The week after the election, she received 26. The calls and emails haven’t stopped.

“The advice is the same as it’s been for the last couple of decades, which is to do a second-parent adoption. Do not depend on the federal government or the gay right to marry to give you parental rights,” Alexander said.

Alexander recommends to her clients that parents get an adoption instead of a parentage order because in Texas, for example, parentage orders for LGBTQ+ families have not been thoroughly challenged in the court system, Alexander said, while adoptions have been upheld by the courts many times.

Adoptions are a popular option because they are also more commonly understood and “universally recognized” across states and countries, said Nancy Polikoff, professor emerita at American University Washington College of Law and an expert in LGBTQ+ family law. Still, it ultimately will depend on state laws and the parents’ preferences as to which avenue they pursue.

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“When we are looking at the possibility of cutting back on LGBT family recognition, states that are not inclined to recognize the legitimacy of parenting by LGBT people are going to be emboldened to deny that status whenever they can,” she said.

Polikoff said she does not believe that gay marriage will be overturned in the next four years, but what may be more likely to happen is that states and courts will try to cut back on some protections LGBTQ+ people have recently secured. Parenting relationships could become easy prey. 

For transgender Americans looking for help or protection from the Biden administration in its dying days, Raquel Willis has a stark assessment.

"Unfortunately, the signals coming from our government right now, under a Democratic president, are telling us that we’re essentially on our own," the 33-year-old activist tells The Independent.

[…]

What does Willis think of the standard Democrat line that the GOP’s war on trans is only a "distraction" from the "real issues"? Willis pauses and considers her words carefully before answering.

"In this moment, it is not enough to simply call anti-trans attacks from Republicans a distraction," she says. "Perhaps if this was 2015, 2016… there might be an argument.

"But lives have already been targeted and changed by these efforts. So we are beyond that point, and we can’t confront discrimination with inaction."

The Harris campaign, she adds, set a "horrible example" by declining to respond to the GOP’s late-election blitz of anti-trans TV ads, on which the party is estimated to have spent at least $215m.

"That was a loss before the election even happened," says Willis.

"If the Democratic Party wants to claim to be representative of progress and of the Left, it cannot leave communities on the chopping block, because it will continue to lose if it does so."

Drawing on more than a year of information gathering, this position paper presents a snapshot of the repression and criminalization of peaceful environmental protest and civil disobedience observed by the Special Rapporteur in European countries that are Parties to the Aarhus Convention. It explains why the Special Rapporteur considers this repression and criminalization to constitute a major threat to democracy, human rights, the civic space, and to the exercise of the rights guaranteed under the Aarhus Convention, and therefore why he has made this issue a priority topic under his mandate. It sets out why the Special Rapporteur considers a profound change in how States respond to environmental protest to be urgently required and features five calls for action to States on how to do so. It also urges the human rights community to coordinate their efforts to support this call for action.

The criminalisation and repression of climate and environmental protest is problematic for at least two main reasons. First, it focuses state policy on punishing dissent against inaction on climate and environmental change instead of taking adequate action on these issues. In criminalising and repressing climate and environmental activists, states depoliticise them. Second, they represent authoritarian moves that are not consistent with the ideals of vibrant civil societies in liberal democracies.

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Governments, legislatures, courts and police forces should operate with a general presumption against criminalising climate and environmental protests. Instead, climate and environmental protest should be regarded as a reasonable response to the urgent and existential nature of the climate crisis, and activists engaged as stakeholders in a process of just transition.

A new study was released in recent days that should have been newsworthy, but it escaped the media's attention in Australia.

It showed Australian police are world leaders at arresting climate and environmental protesters.

According to the study, more than 20 per cent of all climate and environment protests in Australia involve arrests, which is more than three times the global average (6.3 per cent).

Australia's arrest rate was the highest of 14 countries in the global study.

It's higher than policing efforts in the United Kingdom (17.2 per cent), Norway (14.5 per cent), and the United States (10 per cent).

The research makes it clear that Australia's political leaders have joined the "rapid escalation" of efforts to criminalise and repress climate and environmental protest, while sovereign states globally fail to meet their international agreements and emissions targets.

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When you read the Bristol University study alongside the special rapporteur's position paper and the EDO paper, you get a pretty good sense of how the clampdown on climate and environmental activism actually works, and why it's occurring.

Collectively, the reports discuss an issue that links political donations and pressure from fossil fuel companies, governments writing new laws and harsher penalties for climate and environmental activists, federal and state policing agencies being put to work to enforce the new laws, and legal systems and courts being used to bed them down.

And hanging over the entire political problem is the question of the "pricing mechanism" and the role it plays in a society like ours.

When you look at this issue dispassionately, you'll see that we're witnessing a nasty global battle over the attempt to have the negative externalities of fossil fuels properly reflected in the market prices of the products of fossil fuel companies.

Trump sees the accreditation process as his “secret weapon” in his war on universities. In the USA, states have varying control of education, and universities have enjoyed a lot of autonomy. The practice of accreditation involves a “non-governmental, peer evaluation of educational institutions and programmes”.

However, eligibility for federal aid, grants, student loans and other funds that universities depend on is contingent on accreditation. And while the government does not control the process of accreditation itself, the Department of Education has the power to “recognise” accreditors, or withdraw this recognition.

With the new Republican Congress behind him, Trump wants to empower new accreditors with ideological standards such as “defending the American tradition and western civilisation, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs incredibly, [and] removing all Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats”.

Incoming Vice President JD Vance once proclaimed that “professors are the enemy”. This year, Vance introduced The Encampments or Endowments Bill in the US Senate which, if passed, would punish “campus disorder” by making federal funding contingent on universities removing campus protest encampments. Efforts to introduce what Pen America has called “educational gag orders” – laws, policies and bills that restrict teaching and training on certain topics such as racism, gender and American history – in colleges and universities are also “likely to disproportionately affect the free speech rights of students, educators, and trainers who are women, people of color, and LGBTQ+.” 

The MAGA-Tech alliance is rooted in a shared hierarchical worldview. This worldview concentrates power in the hands of wealthy and predominantly white men. Their job is to impose a strict social order based on their continuing supremacy.

Trump Republicans and tech authoritarians may frame their beliefs differently, but their actions reveal an alignment: maintaining hierarchy, resisting egalitarianism, and elevating profit, power, and their own desires above all else.

What the tech authoritarians describe as “gray” politics is a 21st century version of Strict Father Morality. It is a moral system that replaces God with technology and money – and with the moral supremacy of those who control both.

For the last few years, the GOP has coalesced around an idea that would short-circuit essentially all trans health care in America: banning federal funds from going to businesses that provide health care specific to changing one’s sex or gender identity, including hormones and surgeries. It would essentially signal to the private sector that if it wants federal dollars, it needs to stay away from sex- or gender-affirming care, and bow down to right-wing pundits who aim to, in their own words, “eradicate” and “erase” this form of health care. 

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Bans like these can lead to the private sector discontinuing behaviors altogether — and once they are in place, they are hard to get rid of: The Hyde Amendment, enacted in the 1970s, led to most abortions no longer being performed in hospitals, and is continually renewed each year. 

Medical groups and civil rights advocates in D.C. tell Rolling Stone they believe that if a Hyde-level ban on federal funding were enacted, many hospitals will simply prioritize federal dollars over continuing this highly specialized form of medical care. So much medicine is performed through hospital systems and universities that this could mean ending access for many.  

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“I think if they had to make the choice of, ‘Do we provide this care and potentially have to close our doors to everybody,’ they probably won’t do it,” says Asa Radix, head of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. “It’s very disturbing. Legislation like this — even if it hasn’t passed — creates an environment where people are incredibly afraid. This is the type of issue where people actually feel suicidal. Are we going to see folks dying by suicide because potentially of laws like this being passed?”

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Right now many in the LGBTQ+ advocacy community, as well as some Democratic lawmakers and staff, are quietly terrified the party might let Republicans enact it anyway, should they be forced to choose between funding the government or allowing the medical system to continue to provide this care unabated. 

At a minimum, anxious Democrats and advocates believe that party leaders will capitulate on trans health care coverage in federal funding negotiations on the margins, allowing language that bans government-backed insurance plans from covering these services. 

This conflict is actually playing out before Trump has taken office or the GOP controls the Senate. Democrats just this week compromised on a military authorization bill that will ban TRICARE and other Defense Department health plans from covering care for servicemembers’ trans children.