By Ann Rostow–
Where to Start?
There’s much to consider this week. The Pope has died, the High Court is considering a GLBT case, Trump has sued the state of Maine over transgender athletes, several states are banning transgender men and women from using bathrooms, the U.K. has ruled that women who are transgender are legally not women, and the list goes on.
I’ve been digesting this grist while keeping an eye open for amusing tangents. Surely we can’t spend our entire column in a grim progression from one sober discussion to the next. I did notice that Kristen Stewart got married to her longtime partner, Dylan Meyer, so I’m happy for her. I’m very fond of the lesbian actress; she would have been just my type if she’d been around back in the day, but since she wasn’t, my admiration is merely materteral.
“Materteral? What the hell, Ann!”
Hey, I hear you! I was going to write that I have an “avuncular” affection for Stewart, but, of course, the adjective describes a male. I checked and it turns out the female version of “avuncular” is “materteral,” an ungainly piece of vocabulary that borders on sexist when you consider how neatly “avuncular” rolls off the tongue. I recoil at the word and only used it in order to tell you about it. (Even spell check refuses to recognize this cumbersome locution!)
For Shame!
Before we dive into the serious side of things, I did notice an odd account by a former Senate staffer who had sex in a Senate hearing room and let his partner video the tryst for reasons unclear. That happened back in 2023 and was picked up and publicized online by The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson’s “news” site. (Readers, I just dropped into The Daily Caller for the first time in my life to witness the action. That’s the sort of sacrifice you can expect from me.)
The man, once tagged the “Senate Twink,” has reemerged in Sydney, where he recently mused about the scandal with The Sydney Gay News. “Everyone in D.C. knew me, and it was kind of gross and horrifying because I’m not someone who likes to be in the public spotlight at all,” he said.
Aidan Maese-Czeropski said his therapist diagnosed him with PTSD, which I associate with the trauma of warfare or violence, not with one’s own bad judgment. He further speculated that his status as a bottom rather than a top contributed to his disgrace. “I got all these death threats, hatred. And the guy who was the top didn’t.”
No one condones death threats, but this guy was a Senate aide and there’s no evidence that Mr. Top had any such connection. At the time, Maese-Czeropski, who was 24, claimed he would never disrespect his job and was being “attacked for who I love to pursue a political agenda.” He also made a pompous statement about “exploring what legal options are available to me in these matters.”
Twinkie, you were “attacked” for having sex in a Senate chamber, and allowing it to be recorded and find its way onto the internet! You had no legal options available, you were not targeted due to your sexual orientation, and you don’t have PTSD according to any definition I’ve encountered. That said, since it’s been two years and since you’ve moved to Sydney, we will agree to speak of it no more.
I’m sorry to add that our miscreant was a Democrat, working for Ben Cardin of Maryland until his sexcapade hit the screen.
A Loss for Us All
The death of Pope Francis is momentous for the Catholic world, but when one of the world’s most public and powerful leaders dies, it has an impact on everyone. From the perspective of our GLBT news coverage, I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to cover some vaguely pro-gay statement or action from Pope Francis that’s been heralded as a remarkable step forward. Yet the Catholic Church continued to condemn those who live gay and lesbian lives, even as Pope Francis seemed, well, like an incredibly nice guy who was constrained by the Church from making any significant changes for gays or women or celibate priests.
The best commentary I’ve seen from the perspective of our community came from Frank Bruni in The New York Times who called Pope Francis a paradox who made a “muddle” of the Church’s position on gays and lesbians. Bruni pointed out the irony of the Pope’s reported use of a gay slur (“frociaggine”) during a closed-door meeting about gay men in seminary, followed quickly by his honest acknowledgement that, indeed, he did make the comment, and his gracious apology for doing so.
“For every advance, there was an asterisk,” Bruni wrote, “and for every proclamation of love, a delineation of limits, so that Francis … personified the indelible tension in the church’s official teaching about homosexuality, which he never squarely renounced. That teaching holds that being gay isn’t a sin but that acting on those feelings is ‘intrinsically disordered.’”
That said, the man’s humility and pure goodness shined throughout what felt like a short papacy. And the remarks from leaders around the world reflected the extraordinary example he set of Christian love and generosity. I was struck by the eloquence of various kings and presidents and prime ministers, until it came to Trump, who moronically texted: “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!”
Really? He sounds like a teenaged influencer.
Supremes Poised to Mess with GLBT Kids Books
On Tuesday, April 22, the High Court heard arguments in a case that pits a Maryland school district against a bunch of religious parents. At issue is whether or not the school should be obliged to give these parents a way to opt out of exposing their elementary school kids to a handful of age-appropriate GLBT storybooks.
I’ve gone back and forth on this case. At first, I just had a knee-jerk reaction against narrow-minded parents. The books are just a few of many, many kids books that are read or, I don’t know, left around the classroom. There’s one about a kid’s uncle marrying a man, and another about a girl who makes a valentine for her friend, and so forth. I guess parents in the past have bitched and moaned about non-Biblical science books or wizards and witches, but courts have ruled that presenting different topics does not violate the religious freedom of those who disagree. If that’s the case, I figured, then the gay books should stay.
I was swayed the other way thanks to a really good essay by New York Times contributor Megan Stack, a Maryland parent who is not involved in the lawsuit. Why, she asked, was it necessary for both sides of the conflict to be so entrenched that they wind up facing the Supreme Court and possibly triggering an anti-gay precedent that could damage the community far beyond the Montgomery County School District? Parents opt out of sex education all the time for religious reasons and schools have no problem with this. Why not let a few super conservatives opt out of the books and move on?
“I can’t decide which conceit is more delusional,” she wrote, “the school district grandstanding about social tolerance while forcing a minority of religious families to engage with books they consider immoral or the religious parents claiming that they can’t properly rear their children in faith if the kids get exposed to a few picture books. Both positions, it seems to me, rest on a cartoonishly inflated sense of school’s influence on children. And both seek an ideologically purified classroom while underestimating the sweep of ideas and information kids absorb simply by existing in our world.” (Emphasis mine.)
Few of us can argue with Stack’s dismay at the rigid posturing we so often see on both sides of some of these cases. The failure “to resolve a thoroughly predictable tension with the time-tested tools of straight talk, compromise and extending one another a little grace has made for a demoralizing spectacle,” she concludes.
But I came back around for a pragmatic reason. Unlike sex education, which is confined to a class or a segment, the books are like drops in a glass of water. They are part of a collection that consists almost entirely of heterosexual families and cisgender boys and girls with a tiny soupçon of gay or trans characters or stories. The district maintains that it tried to let parents opt out but it was too difficult to administer the exceptions, too hard to figure out where and when these particular books might appear. And again, like the wizards or the books on evolution, the mere fact that a parent might disapprove of the subject does not mean the parent’s faith is somehow violated, nor should public schools have to twist themselves into knots in order to placate everyone’s personal sensibilities.
It’s not clear that our conservative Supreme Court will agree with the lower courts that ruled for the school district. A Washington Post article said the justices seemed poised to back the parents after oral arguments, so we’ll see.
Jailed for Hitting the Ladies Room
I confess I’ve only skimmed the news out of the United Kingdom, where the Supreme Court has ruled that transgender women are not covered by the “sex discrimination” part of the Equality Act 2010, a civil rights law that bans discrimination based on all sorts of characteristics. The Court ruled that “sex” is defined as your sex at birth, an ironic contrast from our Supreme Court, which ruled 6–3 in 2020 that “sex” includes sexual orientation and gender identity in the context of our Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination in the workplace. Confusingly, it seems that the British Equality Act also bans discrimination based on “gender reassignment,” which sounds as if transgender men and women are protected elsewhere in the statute.
There are so many anti-trans cases and incidents throughout the U.S. that I can’t be bothered with figuring out U.K. law. I think I mentioned that Maine is now obliged to defend the state law that protects transgender athletes. Maine’s steely governor, Janet Mills, is one of the nation’s toughest constitutional champions, telling Trump that she’ll see him in court. “Let today serve as warning to all states: Maine might be among the first to draw the ire of the Federal government in this way, but we will not be the last.”
I have other news, including a story about a deranged Indiana woman who attacked a teacher for assigning a project about flags that included the rainbow banner. Carrie Rivers was arrested after confronting the teacher at school while wearing a gun. She also sent a number of emails, including one that read: “U messed with the wrong family. I’ll tell you that so please say ur prayers and kiss ur kids goodbye and goodnight u never know when god says its our time so always be prepared.” Jeeze Louise, Carrie! Take a pill or something. I love these people who are outraged by gay people, but apparently think cold-blooded murder is just fine.
Finally, many of my other items involve bathroom laws, which are the latest cool thing in Red State legislatures. I’ll focus on one incident, in particular: a woman who deliberately used the ladies’ room in defiance of a Florida state law that bans transgender men and women from public bathrooms. I guess this happened in March, but I only found out about it now.
According to The New York Times, Marcy Rheintgen, 20, sent 160 letters to state lawmakers and officials, announcing her intention to use the ladies’ room in the State Capitol building on March 19. There, she was met by police officers who said she would be given a trespass warning if she entered. Rheintgen went in for about thirty seconds, and was arrested when she came out.
Here’s the astonishing aspect of the story. This 20-year-old young woman was then imprisoned for 24 hours; put behind bars. Rheintgen was charged with “trespass on property after warning,” whatever that means, not for violating the “Safety in Private Spaces Act.” She will be arraigned in May. Brave girl.
arostow@aol.com
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on April 24, 2025
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