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Irish Daily Star
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Daily Star
Southern Baptists demand Supreme Court reverse gay marriage ruling and restore 'natural law'
Members of the Southern Baptist Church are reportedly calling on the Supreme Court to issue a ban on gay marriage . It was also reported that they also called for legislators to curtail sports betting and to support policies that promote childbearing. The votes on the petition came during the annual meeting of the nation's largest Protestant denomination , which gathered more than 10,000 church representatives. The proposed legislation calls on lawmakers to 'pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law — about marriage, sex, human life, and family.' According to the church, the new laws would oppose those contradicting 'what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.' The resolution calls f or the 'overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God's design for marriage and family.' Read More Related Articles Melania Trump signals her 'anger' at Trump in humiliating and very public way Read More Related Articles Donald Trump branded 'dumbest President ever' after stunning six-word geography blunder It was also reported that they also called for legislators to curtail sports betting and to support policies that promote childbearing. (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto) It should be noted that a reversal of Obergefell would institute a ban. Per the Associated Press, the resolution calls 'for laws that affirm marriage between one man and one woman.' The outlet reports that the Southern Baptist Convention's two-day meeting began on Tuesday morning with several praise sessions and optimistic reports about the growing number of baptisms in the US. According to the church, the new laws would oppose those contradicting 'what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.' (Image: Getty Images) The news of the possible challenge to the 10-year Supreme Court decision comes after several LGBTQ groups sued U.S. President Donald Trump after he signed an executive order that dismantled several DEI initiatives. San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the GLBT Historical Society are two groups among several that sued the president. Both groups argue that the orders, which they say deny the existence of trans people, infringe upon their rights. The resolution calls for the 'overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God's design for marriage and family.' (Image: AP) Civil rights groups, the Legal Defence Fund and Lambda Legal, filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Thursday, February 20. Pink News reports that the orders that they are challenging include "Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," and 'Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity." "The government is attempting to erase a very specific group of people," Tyler TerMeer, CEO of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and one of the plaintiffs, expressed to ABC News. "Transgender and non-binary folks in our country are being singled out as individuals who are being told that they don't exist. So this moment is us going to the courts and saying, 'We won't be silenced.'" The outlet reports that the Southern Baptist Convention's two-day meeting began on Tuesday morning with several praise sessions and optimistic reports about the growing number of baptisms in the US. (Image: AP) Despite receiving federal funding for their work, the organisations maintain that the orders breach their Fifth Amendment rights under the US Constitution, which guarantees that "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Attorney Jose Abrigo of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, remarked: "The orders are vague, use undefined terms and make compliance impossible and enforcement arbitrary. Our plaintiffs have no way of knowing which programs, policies or even word might result in penalties."
San Francisco Chronicle
10-06-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Judge blocks Trump order cutting federal funds to LGBTQ nonprofits
President Donald Trump's war on 'DEI' — programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion — suffered a setback Monday in a Bay Area federal court, where a judge blocked attempts to cut off federal funding to nine nonprofits serving the LGBTQ community unless they changed their practices and their vocabulary. 'These provisions seek to strip funding from programs that serve historically disenfranchised populations,' U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of Oakland said in a ruling requiring continued funding of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, San Francisco AIDS Foundation and other organizations across the country while the case continues. It does not apply to other groups affected by Trump's orders. Those orders require federally funded programs to halt any 'equity-related grants or contracts' and 'programs promoting DEI,' apparently barring any aid to racial, ethnic or gender minorities. Another provision orders them to cut off funding for programs that 'promote gender ideology.' That would mean denying 'the very existence of transgender people,' Joe Hollendoner, executive director of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, said in a filing with the court. 'While the Executive requires some degree of freedom to implement its political agenda, it is still bound by the Constitution,' Tigar, appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, said in his ruling. That means the administration 'cannot weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds to single out protected communities or suppress ideas that it does not like,' he said. A lawyer for the nonprofits, Jose Abrigo of Lambda Legal, said the ruling halts Trump administration orders 'that seek to erase transgender people from public life, dismantle DEI efforts, and silence nonprofits delivering life-saving services.' 'These policies threatened to erase access to lifesaving HIV and health services for transgender, nonbinary, and queer people across the country,' said Dr. Tyler TerMeer, chief executive officer of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. 'The Court's action gives us the fuel to keep fighting.' Trump's Justice Department argued that transgender advocacy groups, and not the administration, were the ones violating civil rights by allowing people who were born male to compete with female athletes, use women's restrooms and identify themselves as female. Trump is entitled to 'align government funding and enforcement strategies with (his) policy priorities,' Justice Department attorney Pardis Ghelbi said in a filing asking Tigar to dismiss the lawsuit. But the judge said Monday that the administration's explicit goals — including the denial of transgender people's existence — were 'facially discriminatory' and 'not a legitimate government interest.' Trump's orders require federally funded organizations 'who provide specialized services to transgender persons to remove references to those persons — as well as the characteristics that caused those persons to need the services in the first place,' Tigar said. 'It is as difficult to imagine how this would work as it is to imagine a pediatrician not acknowledging the existence of children, or a gerontologist denying the existence of the elderly.'
NBC News
09-06-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
Judge blocks administration from enforcing anti-diversity and anti-transgender executive orders
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing anti-diversity and anti-transgender executive orders in grant funding requirements that LGBTQ+ organizations say are unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar said Monday that the federal government cannot force recipients to halt programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion or acknowledge the existence of transgender people in order to receive grant funding. The order will remain in effect while the legal case continues, although government lawyers will likely appeal. The funding provisions "reflect an effort to censor constitutionally protected speech and services promoting DEI and recognizing the existence of transgender individuals," Tigar wrote. He went on to say that the executive branch must still be bound by the Constitution in shaping its agenda and that even in the context of federal subsidies, "it cannot weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds to single out protected communities for disfavored treatment or suppress ideas that it does not like or has deemed dangerous." The plaintiffs include health centers, LGBTQ+ services groups and the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society. All receive federal funding and say they cannot complete their missions by following the president's executive orders. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation, one of the plaintiffs, said in 2023 it received a five-year grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to expand and enhance sexual health services, including the prevention of sexually transmitted infections. The $1.3 million project specifically targets communities disproportionately affected by sexual health disparities. But in April, the CDC informed the nonprofit that it must "immediately terminate all programs, personnel, activities, or contracts" that promote DEI or gender ideology. President Donald Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders since taking office in January, including ones to roll back transgender protections and stop DEI programs. Lawyers for the government say that the president is permitted to "align government funding and enforcement strategies" with his policies. Plaintiffs say that Congress — and not the president — has the power to condition how federal funds are used, and that the executive orders restrict free speech rights.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Federal Judge Blocks Trump From Enforcing DEI and Anti-Trans Executive Orders
A federal judge on Monday blocked several of President Donald Trump's executive orders that have threatened federal funding to nonprofits that primarily service LGBTQ+ communities. District Judge Jon Tigar in Oakland, California, issued a preliminary injunction halting three of Trump's anti-DEI and anti-transgender executive orders. Nine nonprofits around the country, including the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, had sued the Trump administration, calling its actions unconstitutional. 'While the Executive requires some degree of freedom to implement its political agenda, it is still bound by the Constitution. And even in the context of federal subsidies, it cannot weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds to single out protected communities for disfavored treatment or suppress ideas that it does not like or has deemed dangerous,' Tigar wrote in the order. Hard-won queer rights are under attack. HuffPost remains committed to standing with the LGBTQ+ community. Support our work by The federal government therefore cannot withhold funding from grant recipients if they continue programs that promote diversity or service transgender people. The order will remain in effect nationwide while the case continues, and Trump administration's lawyers are likely to appeal. On Jan. 20, Trump's first day in office, he signed an executive order announcing the federal government would only recognize 'two sexes, male and female,' and barred the promotion of 'gender ideology,' a right-wing term used to refer to the existence of transgender people and their rights. Shortly after he also signed two orders directing agencies to terminate federal funding for all diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Almost immediately, nonprofit organizations saw that their contracts, totaling hundreds of thousands and, in some cases, millions of dollars in federal funding, were being canceled. On April 22, the Department of Justice informed FORGE, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit that provides training and support to crime victims, that it was terminating a $749,000 grant to update its toolkit to support transgender survivors of sexual assault. The very next day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified the Los Angeles LGBT Center, another plaintiff in the suit, that it was terminating a $1 million grant to study new strategies to mitigate the spread of sexually transmitted infections among all populations, but specifically including gay and bisexual men and transgender women, court documents show. 'All of [these organizations] have lost funding because they serve trans people and BIPOC people … For some of these groups, the amount of the budget they are losing is almost 50% of their budget. These are people who do things like give people their HIV meds, feed people, house people,' Kevin Jennings, the chief executive officer of Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ legal advocacy group, told HuffPost ahead of the order. 'So let's be really clear about what the bottom line of these cuts is. People will die. People don't have any place to live, don't have a place to live, adequate nutrition. We consider this a life and death lawsuit,' he added. Over the last six months, advocacy groups have sounded the alarms as Trump has leveraged executive orders to withhold federal funding from universities, nonprofits and medical institutions that specifically service people of color and transgender communities and to scrub federal websites that include data, research, history on those groups. Already, HIV advocates worry that the Trump administration's cuts to the CDC and termination of hundreds of federal research grants on treatment and prevention has reversed the momentum of the decadeslong fight to end the epidemic.
Los Angeles Times
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Judge blocks administration from enforcing anti-diversity and anti-transgender executive orders
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing anti-diversity and anti-transgender executive orders in grant funding requirements that LGBTQ+ organizations say are unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar said Monday that the federal government cannot force recipients to halt programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion or acknowledge the existence of transgender people in order to receive grant funding. The order will remain in effect while the legal case continues, although government lawyers will likely appeal. The funding provisions 'reflect an effort to censor constitutionally protected speech and services promoting DEI and recognizing the existence of transgender individuals,' Tigar wrote. He went on to say that the executive branch must still be bound by the Constitution in shaping its agenda and that even in the context of federal subsidies, 'it cannot weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds to single out protected communities for disfavored treatment or suppress ideas that it does not like or has deemed dangerous.' The plaintiffs include health centers, LGBTQ+ services groups and the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society. All receive federal funding and say they cannot complete their missions by following the president's executive orders. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation, one of the plaintiffs, said in 2023 it received a five-year grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to expand and enhance sexual health services, including the prevention of sexually transmitted infections. The $1.3 million project specifically targets communities disproportionately affected by sexual health disparities. But in April, the CDC informed the nonprofit that it must 'immediately terminate all programs, personnel, activities, or contracts' that promote DEI or gender ideology. President Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders since taking office in January, including ones to roll back transgender protections and stop DEI programs. Lawyers for the government say that the president is permitted to 'align government funding and enforcement strategies' with his policies. Plaintiffs say that Congress — and not the president — has the power to condition how federal funds are used, and that the executive orders restrict free speech rights. Har writes for the Associated Press.
