GLBT Fortnight in Review

Small Favors

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of a transgender migrant woman from Guatemala who is seeking asylum in a 9–0 decision, reversing a panel from the highly conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. “Wow!” I hear you saying. “A decision in favor of a transwoman! A would-be immigrant! And it was unanimous?”

Yes, yes, and yes, but before you get too excited, the opinion concerned one of those arcane matters of federal procedure and had nothing whatsoever to do with transgender rights, immigrant rights, religion, or any of the knotty constitutional issues we so love to untangle. It could have been about a rich cis-gender white supremacist from Switzerland and we would still have wound up with the same consensus—to wit, the asylum seeker was not obliged to seek review of her rejection by the Board of Immigration Appeals before turning to the Fifth Circuit for help.

Meanwhile, we are nearing the final weeks of the current High Court session, which means the opinion in the case of the Colorado web designer is drawing closer. This is Lorie Smith, the woman who is asking whether or not she can skirt Colorado’s LGBTinclusive civil rights law by offering her wedding website services to heterosexual couples only. After releasing a muddled decision in the infamous Masterpiece Cakeshop case several years ago, the justices will have another chance to tell us that our civil rights laws are not worth the paper they’re printed on in the face of a religious challenge.

Or not. Who knows? All opinions are due by the end of June. (Oh, we all know.)

One Step Forward…

Speaking of the Fifth Circuit, be ready for the appellate court we love to hate to issue a ruling on the merits of the dispute over mifepristone. Oral arguments are scheduled May 17, as we go to press, and the eventual outcome won’t be pretty. The three-judge panel scheduled to hear this abortion pill case is a trio of right-wingers, and you recall that this is the court that drastically restricted the drug before the Supreme Court put all lower court rulings on hold for the duration of the litigation.

Presumably, whatever the Fifth Circuit comes up with will go back up to the High Court, where one hopes legal sanity will prevail. The notion that a court can reach back decades, second-guess the scientific experts who advise the Food and Drug Administration, and reverse approval of a safe and critical drug is beyond bizarre. I know we have six conservatives on the Court, but we only have two complete lunatics.

And no, it’s not a gay thing. But the attack on birth control and women’s reproductive health is a function of the same sanctimonious pandering to a narrow Christian viewpoint that is similarly applied to our community.

Finally, before we move on from legal news, there’s another technical ruling in our favor in a transgender rights case out of Iowa. Back in 2019, the Iowa legislature passed a measure designed to opt out of paying for gender transition care under the state Medicaid system. Two transwomen

By Ann Rostow

sued, and in 2021, a state court ruled that the measure violated the state constitution. The women were treated, but the state appealed this lower court ruling on principle. On Friday, May 12, the state supreme court ruled that the underlying case was moot, since the treatment had already been provided.

So that’s nice, sort of. On the other hand, the previous Wednesday, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed two anti-trans bills into law, one that ends transition care for minors, and another that forces public school students to use birth-gender bathrooms.

The whole school bathroom issue is a live debate in the federal appellate courts and likely headed to the High Court sooner rather than later. Two appellate courts have ruled in favor of trans students, while a third has ruled against our side. Usually, when any of the 12 federal appellate courts have a difference of opinion, the Supreme Court steps in to resolve the matter. Keep in mind as well that the federal appellate courts are also battling over the question of whether trans women and girls can play high school sports. That’s also on the High Court’s horizon.

All Hail The Laundry Lesbian

Oh my God, you guys! I just discovered the greatest lesbian ever, a Canadian woman with a wry sense of humor named Melissa Dilkes Pateras who lives in Massachusetts. Pateras, also known as “The Laundry Lesbian” offers household tips and accomplishes intricate do it yourself projects on Instagram and TikTok that you have to check out at once. She has some kids, including at least one 20-some- thing daughter who is just as funny as her mother, judging from the quiz she took on laundry symbols.

I was drawn to a particular link where she taught viewers how to fold a fitted bottom sheet, and a hooded sweatshirt, and I don’t mind telling you she is a genius in the area of laundry folding. I gather she has over a million TikTok followers, a well-deserved audience.

She’s also so adept at fixing and patching and painting, she makes my own personal handywoman look like a Victorian-era aristocrat, and I’m speaking of my wife who recently fixed our overflowing kitchen sink, painted our entire house, and grew a massive vegetable garden from little seeds. Part of my admiration for both these women stems from my own inadequacies in these departments, sometimes mistaken for laziness. While we’re on the subject of TikTok, I also encountered a lesbian of a different stripe, 52-year-old Carol Hatch, who is also described as a TikTok-er. Hatch is up in arms over the description of lesbians as “non-men who love non-men,” an awkward definition, I admit, but one that I’ve never heard of.

“I feel like we’re experiencing an entire new form of domestic abuse, not just against lesbians, but against women in general,” Hatch told Fox News. “We’ve been told that transwomen, which are biological men, are better than women, that we are now cisgender.” (Note: no one has “told” us any such thing.)

“And now we have young ladies who dislike themselves so much that they can’t even say the word ‘woman.’ They have to call themselves ‘non-men.’”

Really, Carol? This is news to the rest of us, and even if there are such individuals, I would hesitate to project their motives, let alone assume that self-loathing is among them. Nor is anyone insisting that trans women are “better than women.” As for tossing around terms like “domestic abuse” in this context, it makes you look a little ridiculous.

The Carol Hatch example reminds me of one of my favorite jokes, which I may have told you a few times already:

“How many lesbians does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“That’s not funny.”

Are you laughing? If not, you might personify the old stereotype that Melissa Pateras and I live to defy.

Oh, and why was Hatch speaking to Fox News? Wasn’t Rachel Maddow interested in her observations?

The Beat Goes On

Perhaps you’re thinking that the flood of anti-trans state legislative bills has abated, since I guess I’ve only mentioned the ones in Iowa so far in this column. Well, it hasn’t. It’s just that I am exhausted by the prospect of name-checking every red state on the list.

For example, I just read an article about my beloved Kansas, where lawmakers have overridden the Democratic governor’s veto to enact a law against transgender women and girls in sports, bathrooms, and domestic violence centers. Happily, they lacked the votes to override Governor Kelly’s veto of a ban on transgender

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