Queering the News for the Week of 8/9
Trump admin attacking hospitals of gender-affirming care, Air Force service members losing retirement, UK-bathroom ban, and more
Another roundup, a day late again. The news isn’t the best today, so I hope everyone is taking care of themselves. Even in challenging times, our mental and physical health still matters.
Anyway, here’s the news.
Battle for gender-affirming care for trans youth
Positing that the Trump administration is using backdoor strategies to limit access to gender affirming care, a group of state attorneys general, led by New York, filed a suit on August 1, challenging actions taken by the Justice Department.
They argue that the Trump administration is avoiding laws meant to protect transgender individuals’ access to healthcare by using threats of criminal and civil penalties.
This can be seen across the country, where hospitals are already shutting down their gender-affirming care programs for minors, even in places where that care is protected by law, like Colorado, California, Washington, D.C., among others.
“The administration’s actions put providers in an impossible position: either comply with unlawful federal threats or violate state laws that require nondiscriminatory access to medical care,” New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office said in a statement.
The lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration is using intimidation tactics to push its agenda, even where the law prevents them from doing so.
A week later, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will soon announce a proposal to ban Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to trans minors, a senior Trump administration official told the conservative magazine National Review.
This ban would, in short, massively limit access to gender-affirming care to minors across the country. The ban, titled “Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Hospital Condition of Participation: Prohibiting Sex Trait Modifications for Children,” will “effectively end sex-trait modifications for minors nationally,” the official said.
“The federal government is running a cruel and targeted harassment campaign against providers who offer lawful, lifesaving care to children,” said Attorney General James. “This administration is ruthlessly targeting young people who already face immense barriers just to be seen and heard, and are putting countless lives at risk in the process.”
The GOP already attempted to ban Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements for gender-affirming care earlier this year through Trump’s so-called “On Big Beautiful Bill,” but the ban was stripped under the “Byrd Rule,” which doesn’t allow “extraneous” material from inclusion in budget reconciliation bills.
The Trump administration continues to push the disproven claim that gender-affirming care is equivalent to female genital mutilation. While announcing subpoenas to “nearly 20” healthcare providers, Attorney General Pam Bondi similarly accused doctors of having “mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology” by offering gender-affirming care. But gender-affirming care has consistently been shown to improve the quality of life for transgender individuals with minute regret rates.
“Transgender and nonbinary youth deserve the freedom to access the health care they need without fear, shame, or government interference,” said Dr. Carla Smith, CEO of The NYC LGBT Community Center, in a statement.
While the conversation on trans youth is starkly divided, the people in the middle sit in limbo.
“The Trump administration’s actions endanger the lives of young people who already face disproportionate rates of depression and suicide,” Dr. Carla Smith said.
US Air Force denying early retirement to transgender service members
According to a memo, as reported by Reuters, the Air Force is denying early retirement to transgender service members with between 15 and 18 years of military service. Instead, following Trump’s transgender military ban, these service members will be forced out with no retirement benefits.
The service members, like junior ones, will be given a choice: to quit or be forced out, with a lump-sum payment corresponding to years of service.
“After careful consideration of the individual applications, I am disapproving all Temporary Early Retirement Authority (TERA) exception to policy requests in Tabs 1 and 2 for members with 15-18 years of service,” the memo said.
An Air Force spokesperson told CBS News that “although service members with 15 to 18 years of honorable service were permitted to apply for an exception to policy, none of the exceptions to policy were approved.”
Other service members were already approved for retirement but those proposals were rescinded, with an Air Force spokesperson saying that they were “prematurely approved.” This puts the future of many service members in question, destabilizing access to things like housing and healthcare.
“It's devastating,” said Shannon Minter of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights. “This is just betrayal of a direct commitment made to these service members.”
There are 4,240 U.S. active-duty and National Guard transgender troops, officials have said, though the figure is disputed.
The US State Dept. removes LGBTQ+ references from foreign human rights reports
According to reporting from the Washington Post, reports on El Salvador, Israel, and Russia “strike all references to LGBTQ+ individuals or crimes against them, and the descriptions of government abuses that do remain have been softened.”
The yearly reports are normally released to the public in March or April, but 2024’s are delayed after reportedly being nearly finished by the time the Biden administration ended in January, current and former officials told the Post.
The drafts seen by the Post don’t mention anti-LGBTQ+ or gender-based violence. For Russia in particular, this is a “glaring omission,” former State Department official Keifer Buckingham said.
In criticising Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Buckingham said, “Secretary Rubio has repeatedly asserted that his State Department has not abandoned human rights, but it is clear by this and other actions that this administration only cares about the human rights of some people … in some countries, when it’s convenient to them.”
The UK to implement nationwide trans-bathroom ban
The United Kingdom's leading human rights agency, The Equality and Human Rights Commission, is set to issue guidance banning transgender people from single-sex facilities, even ones that match their assigned sex at birth.
The ban is slated to limit trans people’s access to bathrooms or changing rooms in organizations providing public services, including schools, hospital wards, sports clubs, domestic violence shelters, prisons, charities, and some shops.
The draft also said that a trans person could be banned from spaces that match their assigned sex at birth, claiming, “a legitimate aim for excluding a trans person from a separate or single-sex service for their own biological sex might be to prevent alarm or distress for other service users.”
“A trans man might be excluded from the women-only service if the service provider decides that, because he presents as a man, other service users could reasonably object to his presence, and it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim to exclude him,” the guidance states.
This follows a recent UK Supreme Court ruling that, in the case of the Equality Act, trans women aren't legally considered women.
Stonewall Scotland denounced the EHRC's guidance in a statement, saying that it “risks encouraging organisations to implement blanket exclusionary policies, which will impact on trans people’s rights to non-discrimination in enjoyment of their human rights and may open up litigation risks."
“As an organisation that has long campaigned for equal rights for all LGBTQ+ people, we are incredibly concerned about the impact this guidance will have on the ability of trans people, as well as gender non-conforming LGB people, to live their lives free from harassment and discrimination,” it wrote.