According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a national LGBTQ advocacy group, at least 28 transgender people have been fatally shot or killed by other violent means in 2017. This number is up from 23 in 2016, HRC noted.
“While the details of these cases differ, it is clear that fatal violence disproportionately affects transgender women of color, and that the intersections of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia conspire to deprive them of employment, housing, healthcare and other necessities, barriers that make them vulnerable,” HRC stated in its report.
INTERNATIONAL CRACKDOWNS
On the global front, we saw an “assault on human rights” in 2017, according to Jessica Stern, executive director of international LGBTQ advocacy group OutRight Action International. “For every step forward, we struggled not to take a step back,” Stern told NBC News.
Violent crackdowns on LGBTQ people in Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Egypt and the Russian region of Chechnya have harrowed the international community.
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Kidnapping, torture and murder of suspected gay men are among the allegations levied against the semi-autonomous region of Chechnya. As many as 20 men are believed to be dead as a result of the anti-gay police sweeps, though only three deaths have been verified by human rights groups. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has denied the allegations, claiming, “We don’t have any gays” in Chechnya.
Fifty to 100 LGBTQ people were reportedly arrested in the ex-Soviet country of Azerbaijan in September after raids on bars and private homes, according to activists and local media reports. Azerbaijani officials denied allegations of an anti-gay crackdown and said the raids were part of a campaign to stop prostitution, but activists charge that police specifically targeted gay men and transgender women in Baku, the Eurasian nation’s capital.
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The Central Asian country of Tajikistan announced in October it has compiled a list naming 367 suspected gay citizens to test them for sexually transmitted diseases. An official journal published by the country’s Prosecutor-General’s Office said prosecutors and police identified the 319 men and 48 women through operations called “Purge” and “Morality.”
From the public caning of two men for having gay sex in the conservative province of Aceh to the detention of 51 men at a “gay spa” in the capital city of Jakarta, anti-gay sentiment has been growing in Indonesia this year. A state university in the country even reportedly tried to weed out LGBTQ applicants.
“The road ahead is one of struggle,” Stern said. “But the LGBTIQ community is resilient, and we will prevail.”
THE COURTS
President Donald Trump has made considerable progress in reshaping the federal courts. After inheriting 120 federal judicial vacancies, Trump has made 59 appointments to fill the seats, and the Senate has so far approved of 18 of them.
LGBTQ advocates have raised concerns over his appointees. Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ civil rights group, said roughly one third of Trump’s judicial picks have anti-LGBTQ records.
“This burden will be hitting the people who need the protection of the courts the most,” Sharon McGowan, director of strategy at Lambda Legal told NBC News. “As unpopular as this president is, he has the opportunity to install over 100 federal judges who will serve the rest of their lives.”
Trump’s highest judicial appointee, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, will be helping to decide a landmark case involving gay rights in 2018: Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In December, the high court heard oral arguments in the case, which involves a Christian baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The case will be decided by late June and, according to legal experts, could have “tremendous implications” for the LGBTQ community.
The U.S. Department of Justice, led by Trump appointee Jeff Sessions, submitted an amicus brief in support of the baker, arguing, “Forcing Phillips to create expression for and participate in a ceremony that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs invades his First Amendment rights.”