LGBTQ+ blessings from Pope Francis, AIA’s first black female leader, and Iowa’s relatively small LGBTQ+ population
Pope Francis’ record of LGBTQ+ outreach goes beyond “blessings” for same-sex couples: The world’s top Catholic pope has also welcomed transgender people to be baptized and to become godfathers and godmothers, and criticized countries that declare homosexuality a crime, writes David Crary of the Associated Press.
First black female leader of American Institute of Architects inaugurated: Kimberly Dowdell, of Chicago and formerly of Detroit, is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and aims to focus on “climate change and equity.” (Archinect)
Iowa among states with smallest percentage of LGBTQ+ people: With just over 113,000 LGBTQ+ people estimated to live in Iowa, totalling 4.7 percent of its population, the Midwestern state joins North Dakota and five southern states on the Williams Institute’s list of states with the smallest queer populations. (Advocate)
(photo courtesy Mata Amritanandamayi through Wikimedia Commons and shows Pope Francis with 10 other world leaders signing a resolution against human trafficking in 2014.)
State ID, Trump in Iowa, anti-LGBTQ+ laws in 2023
- Illinois to provide state ID to newly-released Cook County Jail inmates: The card, already provided to newly-released state prisoners, is being tried at the county level for the first time and is considered pivotal in helping former detainees in re-entry find jobs, take out rental leases, access basic services, and more. (Capitol News Illinois)
- Taking a look back at 2023’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws: Nationwide, state legislatures proposed 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in 2023. Altogether, 15 percent of them (75 laws total) became law. (NBC News).
- Iowa poll shows extremist Trump rhetoric increases support: Iowa Republican caucus-goers are responding favorably to former President Donald Trump’s recent extremist rhetoric promising to use “sweeping raids, giant camps and mass deportations” to change the country’s immigration policy, reports USA Today.
Pregnancy center fraud, “giantess” dominates, and defamation ruling in Georgia
- Illinois’ pregnancy center fraud law stopped: A federal judge stopped the law’s enforcement this week, and Attorney General Kwame Raoul has agreed to rely on the state’s existing consumer fraud law to stop anti-abortion activists from presenting themselves as volunteers at abortion clinics (WTTW).
- “Giantess” revealed as top fetish of 2023: The term is the most searched in more than half the country, reports The Pink News, and replaces “pegging” from 2022 as the top fetish based on internet searches.
- Georgia election workers win defamation ruling against Giuliani: Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman are to receive $148 million from Rudy Giuliani for defamatory statements he made about the mother and daughter in 2021 after the presidential election (Reuters).
(photo credit: White House, through Wikimedia Commons)
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Conversion therapy ban challenge, Trump’s Iowa lead, horseshoe crab blood
Trump celebrates 19-point Iowa lead in Coralville: Trump chose a stop in Coralville to talk about the latest poll showing that 51 percent of Iowa Republicans support him as their party’s presidential nominee, a month before the state’s caucuses. (News From the States).
Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal of city conversion therapy ban: A psychologist’s assertion that bans on conversion therapy infringe on the rights of private therapists will not be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which turned down the appeal by a 6-3 vote. Read Central Illinois Proud’s story on the decision.
Synthetic alternatives may lessen toll on horseshoe crabs for vital medication research: After decades of the world’s horseshoe crab population suffering as the species’ blood is drawn for research on pivotal medications, new synthetic alternatives are finally being adopted by the corporations conducting the research and generating the medications, reports The Conversation.
(photo credit: Daniel Tobias, Wikimedia Commons)
