The top national and world news since last issue you should know

BY CRAIG OGAN

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will expand enforcement of the Fair Housing Act to provide protections to LGBT persons. This amplification comes after an executive order directing all federal agencies to assess their policies and make changes according to a Supreme Court ruling that civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination includes gender identity and sexual orientation. The decision also applies to organizations and agencies that receive grants through HUD’s Fair Housing Initiative Program.

Ayatollah Abbas Tabrizian, a “regime cleric” in the Iranian holy city of Qom, issued a warning the COVID-19 vaccine is turning people gay. On the Twitter alternative, Telegram, where he has 210,000 followers, he wrote the Pfizer vaccine is a Jewish plot to make men gay. He warned, “Don’t go near those who have had the COVID vaccine. They have become homosexuals.”

The administration of Rejoice Christian School in Owasso, Okla., expelled an 8-year-old girl after allegedly telling another girl she had a crush on her. The girl was told by the vice-principal, “The Bible says you can only marry a man and have children with a man.” The girl’s mother said her daughter stumped the vice-principal by asking whether God still loves her. Also, the mother told a TV interviewer, “The vice-principal asked me how I feel about girls liking girls and I said if we’re being honest, I think it’s okay for girls to like girls and she looked shocked and appalled.”

The FDA has approved the use of once-a-month injectable drug therapy for people living with HIV. The injection will be available to those who “are virologically suppressed on a stable antiretroviral regimen with no history of treatment failure and with no known or suspected resistance to other daily therapies,” the FDA explained in a news release.

A firefighter in San Francisco is suing the city, saying he faced decades of anti-gay and racist discrimination at work and that the city did little to fix. An African-American and avowedly gay member of the SFFD since 1997, said he was harassed, called slurs, denied fair pay and promotions, and watched as his colleagues poorly treated the LGBT residents they served.

He was the first gay person to work in the station near San Francisco’s historic Castro gayborhood. After 11 years, he transferred to another station where he said he felt “valued and respected” because the new station had “a different culture.” He said that he filed six discrimination complaints with the San Francisco Department of Human Resources during his time at the department.

In an age of mask-wearing and a health-code mandate of maintaining at least six feet of social distance, San Francisco health officials feel comfortable lifting the 1980s ban on bathhouses. Once famous for multiple bathhouses, currently only one is operating in the Bay Area — Steamworks in Berkeley.

There is also a sex club, Eros, in the Castro gayborhood, which complies with COVID-19 rules. The new guidelines make it possible for operators to submit permits requesting the establishment of traditional bathhouses, which includes locked private rooms. With all the anti-STI regulations, alcohol restrictions, and pandemic strictures, S&M (standing and modeling) will be the only permissible act if a bathhouse soon reopens in SF.

Secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg has selected native-American Arlando Teller to serve as deputy assistant secretary for tribal affairs. Teller was a member of the Arizona legislature’s LGBTQ Caucus and represented the Northern and Eastern areas of the state, which is composed mostly of the Navajo Nation. He is the second native-American to join the new administration.

Wahleah Johns, also a member of the Navajo Nation, was made director of the Office of Indian Energy at the Department of Energy. Teller’s paternal grandfather was one of the famous code talkers, Indigenous Americans who facilitated secret communications for the U.S. armed forces in World War II.

Presidential media spokesperson, Jen Psaki, is being criticized for a tweet about Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. As a CNN commentator, before she was in the White House, she parried criticism from Graham against a former Justice Department official, “Only in 2020 does #LadyG gets to push a bunch of debunked conspiracy theories while questioning @ SallyQYates (aka an American hero).” Apparently “Lady G” is an insider-joke reference to the bachelor Senator, Graham. It’s not the first time Graham has been referred that way.

Everyone was being nice on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, including guest Anderson Cooper. He revealed he and his former paramour, though broken up since 2018, still live together amicably. His boyfriend “wasn’t really sure he wanted to have a kid, which was one of the reasons we probably broke up,” explained Cooper. Apparently, the boyfriend, a so-called nightlife entrepreneur, decided to stick around, live in Cooper’s apartment, and help raise the child. “We get along really well,” Cooper said. “It’s weird, but it works out. Now he is just such a great parent.”

Longtime Republican operative and Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver has resigned from the political group he helped launch after admitting to having sent sexual messages to numerous men. The veteran strategist also came out as gay at the time. “The truth is that I’m gay. And that I have a wife and two kids who I love. My inability to reconcile those two truths has led to this agonizing place.”