Trans musician Bells Larsen recorded half his new album with his pre-transition voice and the other half with his voice after transition.

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION.

WORDS SHARLA STEINMAN

On “Blurring Time,” the title track to Bells Larsen’s latest album, listeners hear the song sway between a high, female-sounding voice, and a low, male-sounding voice. “It’s not as simple as either or. I am both and I’m more, most of all I’m unsure,” Larsen recites.

While the song may sound like it was recorded by two different artists, this isn’t a duet.

It’s entirely sung by Larsen, who uses his voice to tell the story of his sophomore album, released last month.

Larsen says the album serves as a farewell gift to his past self and a welcome home to his new life as a proud trans man. “I very much shaped my transition around this album,” the 27-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter told Uncloseted Media.

Larsen meticulously planned the album around his gender transition. He recorded half the album before going on testosterone and the other half after, hence the different-sounding voices throughout the nine songs.

He says marrying his two realities was important for him as a storyteller. “A lot of trans narratives focus on either the before or the after, and not a lot of holding the two together,” he says.

And a 2018 study in the Language and Linguistics Compass found that vocal cues are an important factor in categorising someone’s gender, “making the voice an enormously important aspect of gender presentation, particularly for those who are transitioning.”

“It was always something that was very important to me – having a voice that matches my body,” says Alaina Kupec, founder and President of GRACE, a trans-focused nonprofit. “As soon as I spoke, if the sound didn’t match the appearance, then the incongruence was very challenging,” she told Uncloseted Media.

Like Larsen, many trans men change their voice by taking testosterone, which causes a thickening of the vocal cords and creates a deeper-sounding voice.

But for transgender women, estrogen does not change their voice. That’s why there’s a growing industry of coaches who help people with this aspect of the transition.

Voice teacher Brittani Farrell compares relearning how to use your voice after a gender transition to “relearning how to walk with a prosthesis after having your leg amputated.”

Farrell, who has worked with many transgender clients, says gender-affirming voice lessons can be anywhere from a week-long to a lifelong commitment. She’s worked with clients who have a good ear, motor skills, and singing instincts and can make significant progress in a few sessions, while other clients may need upwards of 30 sessions.

“It has to do with somatic awareness,” Farrell told Uncloseted Media. “It can be helpful to have maintenance for years, just to have someone to check in with, but if you step away from it, you’ll lose some of the function.”

Farrell says gender-affirming voice lessons can be physically and mentally challenging for clients, adding that many trans people lack the needed connection to their bodies as they transition. She uses a variety of vocal exercises to help her clients with pitch, resonance and weight, which can all be used to modify the perceived gender of a voice.

“Sometimes it’s kind of trippy because I find that I can’t necessarily always use my voice in the way that I used to, or the way I want to.”

When going through her transition in 2013, Kupec worked with Colorado-based voice coach Kathe Perez to change the pitch of her voice. She took four, 60-minute private lessons. Outside of class, there was lots of homework, where she’d have to work on her pitch, frequency and intonation. She also had to learn how to emphasise certain words and phrases, and practise speaking from the top of her voice box instead of using her chest voice.

Kupec says the lessons were effective. “I’d say 90% of the time, nobody ever thinks of my voice as anything other than a female voice. … Occasionally, if I have a cold or if I’m just not focusing on it too much, it can get a little bit on the lower side,” she says, adding that she experiences the most difficulty keeping her pitch high.

Although Kupec is rarely misgendered, she worries about the physical safety of trans women when their voice doesn’t match their appearance.

“Especially in today’s horrible environment for the transgender community, I really worry for women who do get read because of their voices, and that it could put them at risk of physical danger.”

Transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.

Although Kupec’s insurance covered her initial diagnostic lesson, she ended up paying $1,000 for her four sessions with Perez. For people who cannot afford a vocal coach, there are various free and low-cost resources available, such as follow-along videos. Olivia Flanigan, a San Francisco-based gender-affirming voice teacher, offers free lessons on YouTube where she explains, for example, different ways to relieve tension in the throat which can help clients feminize their voice with less strain.

Beyond voice lessons, transgender women can also opt for vocal feminisation surgery. One of the most successful vocal procedures is called Wendler glottoplasty, which reduces the vibrational surface of vocal cords, resulting in a slightly higher pitch.

More trans people are opting for these surgeries. Between 2016 and 2019, the number of gender-affirming surgeries performed in the U.S. nearly tripled.

Despite this growth, it’s expensive: Most insurance providers do not cover vocal feminisation surgery and the procedure can cost between $5,000 and $9,000.

In addition to taking testosterone, Bells Larsen also worked with a Toronto-based voice coach. Over the course of a year, they worked on his breathing, differentiating his head and chest voice and his singing range.

“Sometimes it’s kind of trippy because I find that I can’t necessarily always use my voice in the way that I used to, or the way I want to,” says Larsen, adding that he went from an alto to a baritone singer and that his voice dropped about an octave.

Larsen says during his vocal transition process, he found solace in remembering Justin Bieber’s post-puberty journey, where the pop phenom had to lean on a vocal coach to relearn how to use his new adult voice.

“Having my voice change so rapidly in a way that was kind of beyond my control, but simultaneously within my control really forced me to regard my voice as an instrument for potentially the first time in my life”

“I’m a big belieber,” Larsen says. “Justin was a great singer before, and I think he’s a great singer now. Why shouldn’t I be able to do the same?”

Larsen says that when he started posting snippets of his album on TikTok and Instagram, viewers were taken aback when they realised both voices were his. “I was so lost for a second… this is amazing!!” one user commented on TikTok, where Larsen has nearly 20,000 followers and over 300,000 likes, just enough to call himself “lowercase v viral.”

While many facets of the voice have to do with biology, social factors are also at play. Lal Zimman, the author of the 2018 study and a linguistics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says the voice has many characteristics that can be perceived as feminine or masculine, much of which have “nothing to do with physiology.” He says many of the gendered voice stereotypes people make, such as gay men having a “lispy s,” are really just based on how people learn to speak and the voices they are surrounded by.

“It’s about how you learn to speak and how you continue to use what you’ve learned throughout your lifetime,” Zimman told Uncloseted Media. “When you look at the whole picture of a ‘female’ or ‘male’ voice, you’re really looking at a lot of different characteristics that can be combined in different ways.”

As for Larsen, he’s excited to start performing “Blurring Time” across Canada. He cancelled his U.S. tour last month after finding out he was no longer eligible to apply for a Visa because his changed passport matches his gender identity.

“The world in which I wrote and recorded this music, and the world in which I’m releasing it, are two completely different worlds,” Larsen told Uncloseted Media.

Despite the political turbulence, Larsen is ready to show off his new voice to the world. “Having my voice change so rapidly in a way that was kind of beyond my control, but simultaneously within my control really forced me to regard my voice as an instrument for potentially the first time in my life,” Larsen told Uncloseted Media.

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The post Why gender-affirming vocal care Is “enormously important” for many trans people appeared first on GAY TIMES.

The world’s richest man and Trump’s “First Buddy” is no ally to the LGBTQ community.

WORDS NICO DIALESANDRO

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION.

​Elon Musk, the richest person in the world and the entrepreneur behind PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and X, has become one of the most powerful – and polarising – figures in American politics. Since Trump took office, Musk has ascended to the (self-titled) position of “first buddy” and is now seen by many as the second person in charge of the nation.

While Musk still holds the title of senior advisor to Trump and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Trump has recently told his inner circle that Musk will leave soon.

Despite this, Musk’s power and influence remain massive. Here’s his complete track record on LGBTQIA+ issues.

CEO Elon Musk

Oct. 19, 2017

Jorge Ferro, a former assembly line worker at Tesla, sues the company for wrongful termination. He alleges that the Musk-owned company ignored his reports of homophobic harassment at work and that his firing was retaliatory. Ferro says a manager told him to “watch [his] back” after telling him his clothing was “gay tight.”

After Ferro files a second harassment report, he says an HR representative took his badge, saying that he had “an injury” that prevented him from working and that there’s “no place for handicapped people at Tesla.” In response, Ferro’s attorney describes the decision as “revolting” and says that “this is classic ‘blame the victim.’”

Tesla asserts that third-party companies hired both Ferro and the manager involved and that Tesla took appropriate action to separate the two individuals.

During the same month, Tesla is sued by three Black former employees for racial harassment and discrimination. The three men claim their time at Tesla was like a “scene straight from the Jim Crow era.”

July 24, 2020

Elon Musk posts various tweets that mock the use of pronouns, writing, “Pronouns suck.” He follows this up on Dec. 14, 2020 by posting a meme that suggests people who post their pronouns in their bios are oppressive.

After receiving backlash to his posts, Musk tweets: “I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic [sic] nightmare.” He later reposts a Tesla tweet from 2020 that says the company is “Very proud to have scored 100/100 for the fourth year in a row in LGBTQ equality,” in reference to the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.

June 21, 2022

At 18 years old, Musk’s daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, files a petition with the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Santa Monica to change her name and receive a new birth certificate so that she may legally transition. At this time, she begins publicly distancing herself from Musk, saying she no longer wants to “be related to [her] biological father in any way, shape or form.”

Oct. 11, 2022

Musk blames his estrangement from Wilson on “neo-Marxist” influences from his daughter’s university. In an interview with the Financial Times, he says, “It’s full-on communism …  and a general sentiment that if you’re rich, you’re evil. … [The relationship] may change, but I have very good relationships with all the other [children]. Can’t win them all.”

Musk Buys Twitter

Nov. 1, 2022

Montclair State University publishes a study that compares hate speech on Twitter before and after Elon Musk buys it. In the week leading up to Musk’s acquisition of the company, tweets using hateful terms including insults on race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation never rise above 84 instances an hour. But in the first twelve hours after Musk acquires the company, these terms are posted nearly 400 times an hour.

Oct. 30, 2022

When Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, suffers a fractured skull after being attacked in his San Francisco home by a hammer-wielding man, Musk tweets unfounded allegations about the incident to his 112 million followers. “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” he tweets, implying that Pelosi and the perpetrator are gay lovers. In the post, Musk cites the Santa Monica Observer, a far-right news outlet that regularly publishes false and misleading information. Musk has since deleted the post.

In an interview with CNN, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticises Musk’s rhetoric, saying, “It’s really sad for the country that people of [such] high visibility would separate themselves from the facts and the truth in such a blatant way. It is traumatising to those affected by it. They don’t care about that, obviously, but it’s destructive to the unity that we want to have in our country.”

Nov. 21, 2022

Musk reinstates X accounts previously banned for engaging in antisemitic, homophobic, transphobic and racist harassment campaigns. This includes Andrew Tate, a manfluencer who has compared gay people to invasive, poisonous aliens and said the only way to avoid the normalisation of trans people is a draft for WWIII. It also includes Alex Jones, who, in a now-deleted post from 2015, said that the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling “opens the door for pedo [sic] politicians.”

December 2022

Musk falsely suggests that Yoel Roth, a gay Jewish man who was Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, promoted pedophilia in his academic research.

These claims trigger a wave of homophobic harassment and threats against Roth. Fox News’s Laura Ingraham claims Roth stood “with the deviancy,” while Ben Shapiro falsely alleges Roth encouraged Grindr access for teens.

The harassment escalates to the point where Roth and his family flee and sell their home after the Daily Mail publishes that they live in San Francisco.

June 21, 2023

In a post on X, Musk labels “cis” and “cisgender” as slurs. He adds that “repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions.”

Shortly after Musk’s post, X begins restricting accounts attempting to post the terms and notifies them of the following: “This post contains language that may be considered a slur by X and could be used in a harmful manner in violation of our rules.”

July 22, 2024

In an interview with Jordan Peterson for the right-wing media outlet The Daily Wire, Musk deadnames and misgenders his transgender daughter, claiming he was “tricked” into letting her get gender-affirming medical care as a teenager and referring to her as “dead.”

He says this is why he “vows to destroy the woke mind virus.” In response, Wilson tells NBC News that Musk is lying about her upbringing and says he was an absent father who harassed her for being too feminine. “He was cold. He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic. … I was in fourth grade. We went on this road trip … and he was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high. It was cruel.”

Special Government Employee and Trump’s “First Buddy”

Dec. 28, 2024

Musk writes an op-ed for the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, where he expresses support for the country’s far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD). The party is deeply anti-LGBTQIA+: opposing same-sex marriage and gender-affirming care for trans people; supporting abolishing the position of a federal government commissioner on queer rights; and voting for bans on the use of gender-neutral language in schools. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk writes.

March 6, 2025

The Department of Government Efficiency, run by Musk, announces the termination of a handful of research grants by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), many of which fund scientific research related to gender-affirming healthcare, HIV prevention and studies focused on AIDS. One researcher is notified in an email from NIH that says the agency no longer supports “research based on gender identity.”

March 2025

In an interview with Teen Vogue, Wilson criticises her father for mischaracterising her in Walter Isaacson’s biography as being an angry, rebellious child influenced by Marxism.

She clarifies that she is not a Marxist, reveals she has not spoken to her father since 2020, and describes him as “a pathetic man-child.”

Musk indirectly responds to the Teen Vogue interview by baselessly and repeatedly claiming transgender people are violent due to hormone replacement therapy.

In direct response to Musk deadnaming her on X, Vivian uses a popular quote from RuPaul’s Drag Race, stating, “I look pretty good for a dead bitch.”

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In January, Idaho introduced a resolution that is now one of at least 9 measures trying to chip away at same-sex marriage across the US. A notoriously anti-LGBTQIA+ group says they’re behind the push.

WORDS HOPE PISONI, IAN MAX STEVENSON AND SPENCER MACNAUGHTON
ADDITIONAL REPORTING SAM DONNDELINGER

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION.

THIS STORY WAS PRODUCED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE IDAHO STATESMAN, A BOISE, IDAHO NEWSPAPER THAT HAS BEEN AROUND SINCE 1864.

Idaho lawmakers were met in late January by a House committee hearing room full of constituents stating their beliefs about the institution of marriage – and who it should extend to. After testimonies from nearly two dozen people, the last to speak joined the hearing remotely and thanked Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, for bringing forward a resolution to challenge the legality of same-sex marriages and ask the US Supreme Court to overturn the decade-old landmark ruling that granted it.

Arthur Schaper, field director for a group called MassResistance, told the committee that activists at his international organisation had brought forward similar resolutions in North Dakota, Montana, Michigan and Wyoming and that state lawmakers had been “taking it up.” As of this week, at least nine states have proposed measures to roll back same-sex marriage.

Schaper defended the resolution with discredited claims about homosexuality, which the country’s major medical organisations agree is a normal part of human sexuality.

“People are born Black, Hispanic, or otherwise,” Schaper said. “They are not born homosexual.”

Schaper declined Uncloseted Media’s request for an interview and did not respond to a list of questions sent via email.

A Three-Decade History of Fighting Against LGBTQIA+ Rights

The Idaho resolution was drafted by MassResistance, a far-right Christian organisation that has been fighting against LGBTQIA+ rights since it formed 30 years ago. The group is one of the most openly extreme anti-LGBTQIA+ groups among the far right, advertising itself as “engag[ing] in issues and events that most other conservative groups are afraid to touch” and boasting about writing resolutions like the one passed in the Idaho House.

“MassResistance has drafted text for state legislature resolutions that call on the US Supreme Court to reverse its infamous and illegitimate Obergefell ruling,” the group shared on its website in January, referencing Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark decision by the Supreme Court to legalise same-sex marriage.

It also has criticised Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQIA+ hate groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Family Research Council for their “polite opposition to the latest left-wing lunacy” and stated that “rather than being truthful and confrontational, too many pro-family groups want to be seen as ‘reasonable’ and ‘not extreme.’” In addition to its anti-LGBTQIA+ activism on home turf, MassResistance works to roll back queer rights globally, with chapters in Africa, South America, the Caribbean and beyond.

Justin R. Ellis, a criminologist at the University of Newcastle in Australia who has written about anti-LGBTQIA+ movements and groups, including MassResistance, said that the successes of groups like ADF in rolling back some LGBTQIA+ rights is exactly what allows MassResistance to take the spotlight.

“Them coming out with their framing and their litigation and their hostility toward queer issues emboldens other groups like MassResistance to go, ‘Hang on, we’re gonna go bolder,’” Ellis said in a video interview.

MassResistance’s effort to overturn same-sex marriage is the latest in a long list of campaigns in which the group has worked to pass anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation, from book bans to gender-marker restrictions, in state and local governments across the country and even abroad.

How MassResistance Grew Beyond its Massachusetts Roots

MassResistance was founded in 1995 in Massachusetts under the name “Parents’ Rights Coalition” by local activist Brian Camenker. After getting his start in activism as an outspoken opponent of LGBTQIA+ inclusive sex education in schools, Camenker quickly led the group’s first major campaign: drafting and lobbying for state legislation that required schools to notify parents and allow them to opt out of sex education for their children. The group emphasised that doing so would allow parents to ensure their children don’t learn about “homosexuality” or so-called “transgenderism.” The campaign was successful, and the bill passed into state law in 1996.

After the Massachusetts Supreme Court made the state the first in the US to legalise same-sex marriage in 2004, the group shifted its focus to fighting that decision. The group temporarily changed its name to the Article 8 Alliance, referencing part of the Massachusetts Constitution that outlines the impeachment of judges. Under this new identity, the group filed state legislation to impeach all of the justices who supported Massachusetts’ pro-same-sex-marriage ruling and to outlaw the unions under state law. None of the bills the group wrote were successful.

Despite this, after rebranding back to MassResistance in 2006, the group continued to write legislation opposed to LGBTQIA+ inclusion until at least 2017. In one bill from 2011, the group sought to repeal an anti-bullying law because of its protections for LGBTQIA+ students.

During this period, the Southern Poverty Law Center designated MassResistance a hate group, in part because it labeled Boston Pride a “depraved” display that featured “a great deal of obviously disturbed, dysfunctional, and extremely self-centered people.”

In the mid-2010s, MassResistance expanded its focus to the national stage. Its first out-of-state chapter opened in 2014 in Virginia. In 2016, Schaper launched a chapter in California. And in 2020, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who MassResistance has said worked closely with members of its Georgia chapter, was elected to the US House of Representatives.

By 2022, the free speech advocacy group PEN America identified at least 16 MassResistance chapters in the US, with several more international chapters. PEN America also identified MassResistance as one of the most active groups in the national push to ban books with LGBTQIA+ content from schools and libraries.

The book ban efforts followed MassResistance publishing in 2017 its own book, The Health Hazards of Homosexuality, which claimed to compile scientific evidence that supported a ban on homosexuality. The 600-page book touts endorsements from various anti-LGBTQIA+ activists, including Michelle Cretella, former executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group known for publishing and spreading specious science about LGBTQIA+ people.

The book rails against “the coarsening of our culture that has accompanied the normalisation of homosexuality” and makes numerous false or misleading scientific claims. For example, it cites statistics indicating higher rates of mental or physical illness among LGBTQIA+ people as evidence of innate risks despite many experts agreeing that discrimination and lack of resources are more accurate explanatory factors.

Where Does the Funding Come From?

According to IRS filings, MassResistance has received thousands of dollars from several donor-advised funds. They include the National Christian Foundation and Arthur G. Jaros Sr. and Dawn L. Jaros Charitable Trust – both of which financially support other far-right groups, including the ADF and the Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025.

Uncloseted Media and the Idaho Statesman also identified IRS forms for the Parents Education Foundation, a group run by Camenker and listed as “related” to MassResistance. Despite little to no public presence, on its most recent IRS filing from 2023, the organisation reported revenue of $211,123, much of which was sourced via donations from large conservative donors and other mainstream donor-advised funds.

The Parents Education Foundation lists Dr. Paul Church as a director. Church is a urologist who was fired from a Boston hospital in 2015 for likening a Pride event to a chosen social agenda, Fox News reported. MassResistance supported Church in his fight against the hospital, and, in 2017, he provided an expert endorsement in The Health Hazards of Homosexuality.

MassResistance Makes Inroads Into Idaho

The current Idaho resolution is not the first instance where MassResistance has worked with the state’s legislators. In a collection of emails leaked by former conservative activist Elisa Rae Shupe, who died by suicide earlier this year, Uncloseted Media found correspondence from 2020 between Schaper and former Idaho state Rep. Julianne Young, R-Blackfoot, who testified in favour of the anti-Obergefell resolution. Young discussed developing an anti-trans bill that would forbid changing gender markers on state birth certificates. The bill became law in Idaho in 2020.

“We are still going after the governor, though, to make sure that he signs or at least allow[s] the bills to become law,” Schaper told Young in one email.

“MassResistance does send emails. They were looking for people to testify, but I did not make those arrangements with them deliberately. I let them know I would contact the bill’s sponsor,” Young told Uncloseted Media in reference to the 2025 anti-Obergefell resolution, which she says she supports. “It’s a correct principle to allow those decisions to be made by the states and not by a single unelected panel of judges.”

When asked if she takes issue with any of MassResistance’s stances on gay issues, Young said, “It’s probably not an issue that I have a relevant opinion on.”

Idaho has been home to some of MassResistance’s government targets. In 2023, activists from its state chapter and other anti-LGBTQA+ groups successfully campaigned to elect a majority of far-right candidates onto Kootenai County’s Community Library Network board. The board has since enacted multiple policies restricting minors’ access to LGBTQIA+ content and libraries in general.

At the 2023 Rexburg Pride Event in East Idaho, counter-protestors from Idaho MassResistance, led at the time by former Rep. Ron Nate, R-Rexburg, had physical confrontations with attendees. The spectacle caused police to heighten security and some organisations to pull out of the event the following year. MassResistance made a less conspicuous appearance in 2024. Nate did not respond to Uncloseted Media’s request for comment.

Ellis, the professor who writes about anti-LGBTQIA+ movements including MassResistance, said that coordinating these kinds of local attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community and other marginalised groups has become much easier with social media.

“One of the things that groups such as MassResistance can do is, through their online networks, coordinate protests against Drag Queen Story Time childhood literacy events, for example, and now same-sex marriage, and what they do is get people in other jurisdictions to go to those locations and protest in person,” he said. “Through social media, you can coordinate ideologically aligned individuals quickly and cheaply.”

MassResistance has taken credit on its website for the Idaho resolution carried by Rep. Scott. The group noted that an Idaho House member “offered to spearhead” the resolution this year but did not name the lawmaker.

In response to a public records request, Scott reported she had no communications with MassResistance, and she declined to respond to a question from a Statesman reporter about whether she worked with the group.

In an interview on The Ranch Podcast in early February, Scott said she was first approached about opposing same-sex marriage in the Legislature eight years ago. She said she was looking through a list of ideas for legislation over the summer and decided to “push [same-sex marriage] up to the top this year.”

Scott’s resolution states that the Obergefell decision is an “overreach” from the US Supreme Court, which should leave marriage laws to the states. However, it also asks the Supreme Court to “restore the natural definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman.”

On the podcast, she underscored her perspective on gay marriage. “Don’t force me to say that that’s a marriage, because in my eyes that’s an abomination to God,” she said, noting that she would support creating a legal relationship between LGBTQIA+ couples that would provide them with the legal rights of marriage.

MassResistance’s International Footprint

MassResistance also advocates against LGBTQIA+ rights around the world. On its website, the group claims to have worked with activists from at least 24 countries and territories, including Mexico, Brazil, Croatia, Nigeria, Taiwan and Australia. Last year, the group started a new chapter in Kenya, where it reported on its website that it was holding trainings for youth to “resist the LGBT agenda” in schools.

In many of these countries, the group circulates a video by Camenker titled “What ‘gay marriage’ did to Massachusetts.” The video has been converted into booklets, which have been translated and circulated in Mexico, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and more.

“Once same-sex marriage gets a foothold, society becomes more oppressive, hammering citizens with the force of law. The judicial system becomes more radical and arrogant, and politicians become more cowardly. And once that concept is institutionalised, other boundaries on sexual behaviours continue to fall,” Camenker says in the video. “The push for gay marriage is really about putting the legal stamp of approval on homosexuality and forcing its acceptance on otherwise unwilling citizens and on our social, commercial, and political institutions. To those of you where this is being threatened, do not wait – it is absolutely necessary for you to call, write, and even visit your elected officials. They must feel your outrage.”

Camenker did not respond to Uncloseted Media’s request for comment.

Some of MassResistence’s more noteworthy interventions abroad include helping keep anti-sodomy laws on the books in Sri Lanka and supporting propaganda campaigns against the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Taiwan. In the latter case, the group said that Schaper spoke directly with a representative of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party and was invited to a party event in the US over the course of the campaign.

In Ghana, meanwhile, MassResistance has collaborated with Freedom International, an organisation that congratulated Uganda for its anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation that threatens life in prison for consensual same-sex relations, to start anti-LGBTQIA+ youth clubs in secondary schools.

“[Africa] is the land of opportunity when it comes to restricting LGBTQ rights,” Wendy Via, president and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told Uncloseted Media. “There are a lot of huge worldwide groups with lots of money who are working on the same thing, and they also come at it from a Christian point of view.”

MassResistance’s Plans Span Far Beyond Idaho

The future of Scott’s resolution in Idaho is uncertain. It passed the Idaho House in a 46-24 vote in late January. Before a vote on the Senate floor, the legislation must advance out of a Senate committee. But the committee’s chairman, Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McCammon, told the Statesman he is not sure whether he will allow a hearing.

“The public has weighed in, and it’s been pretty one-sided in terms of, ‘Why are we doing this?’” he said.

Guthrie said he expects to meet with Scott to discuss her resolution before deciding whether to hold a hearing, but he acknowledged his own concerns.

“The effect of it could be pretty harmful to a lot of people, making them feel for whatever reason that they don’t belong. … I just don’t see the benefit being greater than the hurt,” Guthrie added, noting that it could “tear people’s lives apart.”

Via said MassResistance’s goal is to overturn Obergefell and starting in deep-red pockets of the country is a trial run.

“The little, tiny resolution in Idaho, it’s like the butterfly wings,” she said.

Editor’s note: Dr. Paul Church could not be reached for comment.

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Republicans in Idaho have challenged marriage equality. Should we be concerned?

The post The push to overturn equal marriage, courtesy of MassResistance appeared first on GAY TIMES.

Black women make up 50% of new HIV diagnoses among women and are 10 times more likely to have an HIV diagnosis than their white counterparts. Why?

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION.

WORDS SHARLA STEINMAN
COVER PHOTO TANZU TOPUZOGLU
COVER PHOTO DESIGN SAM DONNDELINGER

Kennedi Lowman thought it was another routine blood donation day. But in a single moment, her life was forever altered – shocked by an HIV-positive diagnosis she never saw coming.

“It was scary, heartbreaking, and shameful. Working in medicine and having my degrees, knowing what I knew about STIs. ‘Why me? How me?’” Lowman told Uncloseted Media.

Lowman, a 38-year-old Black woman in Atlanta, Georgia, was a medical technologist at the time of her 2016 diagnosis, which came as a total shock. “I was just crying day and night, I was crying driving to work, I cried in the shower,” she says, adding that the diagnosis pushed her into a “deep, dark depression” for two years.

Once she pushed past her depression, Lowman – who believes she contracted HIV from her friends-with-benefits partner – turned her pain into purpose and became an advocate in Georgia’s HIV community. She co-founded LOTUS, an Atlanta-based organisation that assists women living with HIV across the U.S.

Black women like Lowman make up 50% of new HIV diagnoses among women. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women are 10 times more likely to have an HIV diagnosis than their White counterparts and three times more likely to contract the virus than Latina women.

“What we have not seen is a significant financial investment into creating infrastructure and strategy that addresses the issues that position black women to be disproportionately impacted,” Leisha McKinley-Beach, founder and CEO of the Black Public Health Academy, told Uncloseted Media. “[These issues] include lack of education and awareness, as well the age-old foundation for poor health outcomes in Black communities as a whole [that’s fueled by] institutional racism within our public health infrastructure.”

One factor that may contribute to higher rates of HIV among Black women is that Black men are less likely than men of other racial groups to disclose their same-sex behaviours, which may contribute to a higher risk of contracting HIV.

“A woman may have one partner, and that’s one of her ways of staying safe, but if she doesn’t know the partner’s status, that places her at risk,” says Oni Blackstock, a primary care and HIV physician and founder of Health Justice, a consulting firm that teaches health organisations how to prioritise anti-racism.

Research from 2008 found that down-low (DL) culture, where men who identify as heterosexual hook up with guys in secret, may contribute to why Black women are disproportionately affected by HIV. However, Blackstock says this narrative is stigmatising and doesn’t tell the whole story.

“What it ends up doing is further othering and stigmatising Black, same-gender-loving men,” says Blackstock.

Mia Allison, a 58-year-old Black woman from Demopolis, Alabama, found out that she had HIV in 2017 after being hospitalized for a mild stroke.

“[The team at the hospital] came back in the room and told me that I was a smidgen from full-blown AIDS, but I was HIV positive, and that really changed my life,” Allison told Uncloseted Media.

After learning of her diagnosis, Allison later found out that a past hookup partner, who passed away in 2019, had been rumoured to be dating both men and women.

She remembers calling him before his passing after hearing he wasn’t doing well. He asked her if she was still experiencing headaches and suggested she see a doctor. “I do believe that he was trying to tell me [that I possibly had HIV], but just didn’t know how to say it,” says Allison.

Allison, who is a pastor at a non-denominational church in Atlanta, had already been helping HIV-positive people find care before her diagnosis. She says that her sermons focus on accepting everyone regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV status. “When I speak at different conferences and when I say that I’m a pastor … I can see the expression on people’s faces change because [HIV] is not talked about [in the church],” she says.

“I thought God was mad with me and cast a spell on me, because I’m preaching, I’m teaching, I’m helping the sick, I’m feeding the poor, and now this happened to me. ‘Why me?’” says Allison.

Christianity and the Black Church have been found to play a significant role in the stigma surrounding HIV and homosexuality.

“DL culture is very strong in the church,” says Natalie Farrior, a 29-year-old Black woman with HIV from North Carolina. “[Many people believe that] you’re possessed by the devil if you’re gay.”

Farrior says that DL guys she’s hooked up with have told her that they aren’t out of the closet because of religion, gang activity, having a child, having a female partner or not wanting to be deemed as “not masculine.”

“That poses a risk for the health of not only Black men, but Black women as well, because now you have someone that has to hide their identity and their preferences, so they’re going to find it in whatever they can and practice a lot of unsafe activity,” Farrior says.

Marnina Miller, a 35-year-old Black woman with HIV from Benton Harbor, Michigan, says anti-LGBTQIA+ hate is a driving factor behind the high rates of HIV among Black women. “The harmful thing is the homophobia and transphobia in Black and Brown communities,” she says, adding that this hate is fueled by church leaders and policymakers that have prevented access to HIV prevention care and medicine.

In addition to stigma, Miller, who is also the co-executive director of the Positive Women’s Network, a national organization of women living with HIV, points to a lack of education about HIV in religious circles. She says that while growing up in the church, she was educated about some STIs and taught not to get pregnant, but she learned nothing about HIV.

Due to a history of systemic racism in America, Black people in the U.S. continue to be disproportionately affected by poverty. Data shows that the typical White household had 9.2 times as much wealth as a Black household in 2021.

A lack of access to economic and educational resources is linked to the practice of riskier health behaviors, such as substance abuse, which reduce the likelihood that someone will use a condom during sex. Homelessness and food insecurity can also lead to the exchange of sex for money, safety or housing.

In addition to all of this, Miller says there are high levels of medical distrust among Black and Brown women.

“After the Tuskegee family, a lot of people still don’t trust providers,” Lowman says.

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in Black Men was an ethically unjustified study that was conducted from 1932 to 1972 and was supposed to look at the natural progression of untreated syphilis. However, researchers failed to collect informed consent from patients and did not offer treatment even after antibiotics were readily available.

The study is just one example of race-based malpractice over the last century. Black women were forcibly sterilised throughout the 1900s, and their cervical cells were harvested and studied without consent. Today, 55% of Black Americans believe non-consensual experiments are being conducted on Black people.

In addition, a 2024 Pew Research Center study found that a majority of Black Americans have had negative experiences with healthcare providers, including feeling like their pain was not taken seriously. One in five Black women say they’ve been treated unfairly by a healthcare provider because of their background.

“A lot of time we also have providers who are being gatekeepers and they’re bringing their biases and their racism and their sexism to these encounters,” says Blackstock.

A 2021 study found that providers who scored high on a racism measure were less willing to discuss and prescribe pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) – a medicine that reduces the risk of getting HIV by roughly 99% and is considered integral to ending the epidemic – to Black patients.

Allison remembers experiencing bad migraines before her diagnosis. Her doctor prescribed her narcotics and Percocets for the pain, but she was later hospitalized due to a stroke and didn’t find out she had HIV until after she had spent five months in the hospital.

Michael Fordham, program manager of the leading HIV clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says symptoms related to HIV can mimic the flu or hide under other illnesses, such as cancer or pneumonia. Because of this, testing is essential. “[Patients] could be going in because they’ve got a really high fever, chills, and they’re like, ‘I think I have the flu.’ Well, ironically, those are the same symptoms of what we call acute HIV infection,” says Fordham, adding that his hospital automatically tests patients for HIV unless they opt-out.

McKinley-Beach says that many clinicians are not bringing up PrEP to women. Instead, she says they recommend avoiding “high-risk” behaviours.

She says this is compounded by a lack of Black women featured in PrEP marketing campaigns. “Many of us are making medical decisions based on what we see on television,” she says. “Think about people who are flocking into their doctor’s office asking about Ozempic. Where did they first hear about it? They saw a commercial about it. And they saw women dancing and living their best lives. This [representation] is a key tool necessary for helping to raise awareness and scale up PrEP use among Black women.”

Despite the alarmingly high HIV rates among Black women in the US, prevention medication is more accessible than ever. Medicare, Medicaid and most private insurance companies cover some sort of HIV prevention medication. But for the many Black women in the US who don’t have free health insurance, it may be more difficult to access, Fordham says. He adds that pharmaceutical companies may cover the medication in full, but clinics may struggle to cover the cost of the regular blood work and visits needed to remain on the medication.

A new form of PrEP, Lenacapiver, has shown to be 100% effective for HIV prevention for cisgender women.

“It’s not yet commercially approved … But it’s got the potential to be a real game changer,” says Fordham, adding that a nurse-administered injectable may garner more interest from women because there isn’t a pill bottle that a husband or child may question.

In addition to prevention medication like PrEP, McKinley-Beach, a founding member of PrEP in Black America, says testing is essential. She says her home church, the Dream Center Church of Atlanta, conducts HIV testing on Mother’s Day.

“Having those discussions and hearing from our leaders is significant in how many of us choose to navigate things such as HIV testing,” says McKinley-Beach.

Fordham suggests implementing HIV testing into regular appointments, such as OBGYN visits for women, to avoid having to deal with the stigma around HIV. “[Women] don’t want to be seen in the HIV clinic because people might associate them with having [the virus],” he says.

Overall, new HIV diagnoses have largely declined worldwide as of 2023, with a 39% decrease since 2010 and a 60% decrease since HIV’s peak in 1995.

“Can it be scary? Yes. Can it be tiresome? Yes,” says Mia Allison, the pastor from rural Alabama who has been living with HIV since 2017. “But again, I tell anybody, you can live a vibrant and productive life.”

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