"Hope will never be silent."
Today…
is Harvey Milk Day, and would have been his 90th birthday. I have to imagine anyone reading this is familiar, but Milk became California’s first openly gay elected official when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
is World Paloma Day. Sounds delightful, and of course, I have exactly none of the ingredients on hand.
I hear tell we have Monday… “off?” I know, so funny. I’ll be back Tuesday.
“You can stand around and throw bricks at Silly Hall or you can take it over. Well, here we are.”
Nearly every picture you find of Harvey Milk, he is smiling, laughing, just radiating joy. I radiate joy with every notification of a new subscriber.
Abortion
“AKA Jane Roe” Shows How the Abortion Fight Steamrolled the Real Norma McCorvey
Becca Andrews | Mother Jones
Norma McCorvey served a purpose within a legal system, but this didn’t allow any room to consider her as a human being. She was a woman who simply wanted an abortion but was ultimately denied that right. “Jane Roe,” though, ignored everything else about her.
AP: Film: 'Roe' plaintiff says her anti-abortion switch was act
The Cut: No One Really Knew Jane Roe
New York Times: Jane Roe’s Pro-Life Conversion Was a Con
Americans Don't Want Politicians Using COVID-19 to Attack Abortion
Audrey Andrews | Ms.
Overall, 65% of Americans said politicians should not attack reproductive freedom during the pandemic.
Trump Administration To Planned Parenthood: Return Coronavirus Relief Funds
Sarah McCammon | NPR
The Trump administration is asking local Planned Parenthood affiliates around the U.S. to return millions of dollars in loans received through the federal government's coronavirus relief package.
Politico: McConnell calls on Barr to investigate Planned Parenthood loans
VICE: Planned Parenthood Is Furious Republicans Want to Claw Back Their Bailout Money
How coronavirus is changing access to abortion
Miriam Webber | POLITICO
As the coronavirus steamrolls the global order, reproductive health care practitioners and advocates are struggling to maintain access to contraception and abortions.
U.N. rejects U.S. claim it is using coronavirus to promote abortion
Michelle Nichols | Reuters
The UN rejected on Thursday an accusation by the United States that the world body was using the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to promote access to abortion through its humanitarian response to the deadly global outbreak.
Colorado
Campaign to Partially Ban Abortion in CO Attempts to Portray Abortion as Disability Discrimination
Madeleine Schmidt | Colorado Times Recorder
The campaign to place an initiative that would ban abortion at 22 weeks on Colorado’s November ballot is promoting a false statistic about the frequency of Down syndrome diagnoses in patients who terminate pregnancies in an apparent attempt to frame later abortion care as disability discrimination.
LGBTQ
SCOTUS, Incl. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, OK Trans Prisoner's Surgery
Trudy Ring | The Advocate
The Supreme Court Thursday refused Idaho’s request to block gender-confirmation surgery for an inmate in one of the state’s prisons while it considers whether to hear the state’s appeal of the case as a whole.
AP: Supreme Court won’t put transgender inmate surgery on hold
New York Times: Supreme Court Won’t Block Surgery for Transgender Inmate
Reuters: U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bid to halt Idaho transgender inmate's surgery
Washington Blade: Supreme Court refuses to block transgender surgery for Idaho inmate
Transmissions: All about Aimee
Gwendolyn Ann Smith | Bay Area Reporter
Justice can often come slow. When Stephens filed her case seven years ago, Obama was in his second term, and the country was a far, far different place. Today, it is unlikely that the EEOC under Trump would even take such a case. Further, while a lot of history would seem to make such a case an easy one to decide in Stephens' favor, Chief Justice John Roberts' court, with its conservative majority, is likely to go against decades of case law and common sense.
Lee Badgett on the economic case for LGBT equality
Karen Ocamb | Los Angeles Blade
The Economic Case for LGBT Equality is an attempt to explain “why it’s a good idea to have full inclusion for LGBT people in our societies—and the economic reasons are a big piece of that … We see that the countries that have better policies, nondiscrimination laws, recognition of families, decriminalization of homosexuality are also the countries that do better economically.”
Arkansas
Arkansas LGBTQ shelter closes abruptly, leaving former residents struggling
Gwen Aviles | NBC News
An Arkansas LGBTQ shelter for young adults abruptly closed this month following a series of incidents, leaving its former residents in the lurch during a global pandemic and sparking questions about the future of Lucie's Place, one of the state's most prominent LGBTQ organizations.
California
The Stud, San Francisco's Oldest Gay Bar, Shutters But 'Is Not Dead'
Daniel Reynolds | The Advocate
The co-owners announced the closing of the physical location, but they hope to reestablish the business once the crisis is over.
Pregnancy & Parenting
With Couples Rethinking Children, We Might See the Opposite of a COVID-19 Baby Boom
EJ Dickson | Rolling Stone
Demographers are concerned that the pandemic could lead to an even sharper drop in the already-declining birthrate, due to fears about job loss or health concerns related to the virus itself.
Reproductive Health & Justice
Racial Justice: The Key to Truthful COVID-19 Reporting
Alicia Bell, Collette Watson | Free Press
How do journalists tell the story of this time? By digging into one of the core tenets of journalism: speaking full truth to power. And the story of COVID-19 is dangerously incomplete without an analysis of racial justice.
How Black Men Have Helped Erase Black Women’s Pain
Jimmie Briggs | The Daily Beast
A core part of me needed a chorus of black voices to bear witness and in doing so, acknowledge that black Americans—black men—have largely erased the pain of black women from our community narrative, especially when we are the direct cause of it. Now is the time for us to share the journeys of survivorship and for black men, as well all Americans, to listen. From slavery to the present, black women’s bodies have been systemically violated and exploited by white Americans, and kept out of the spotlight by black men.
Work & Money
Let’s Not Lose Ground During COVID-19 In The Fight For Gender Equality In Law Firms
Susan Dunlap | Above the Law
The more time I spend with the hundreds of Biglaw women lawyers I work with as a leadership coach, the more I worry about the regressive effect this pandemic is having on gender equality in Biglaw.
Coronavirus Almost Doubles the Housework for Working Parents
Lucy Meakin | Bloomberg News
Working parents are taking on an additional 28 hours a week of household chores and child care during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a recent survey, with women taking on a disproportionate share.
‘I had to choose being a mother’: With no child care or summer camps, women are being edged out of the workforce
Caroline Kitchener | The Lily
Women’s jobs – concentrated in service industries – are particularly vulnerable in the coronavirus economy; there’s evidence that women are being laid off or furloughed at a significantly higher rate than men. But there is another threat to women’s paid labor that can be harder to see: With kids at home, and families forced to take on significantly more domestic labor, women are opting out of the workforce.
Say Hello to That New Spin Studio and Goodbye to Your Child Care
Lauren Birchfield Kennedy, Katie Mayshak | New York Times
As Covid-19 continues to wreak havoc on businesses, among the hardest hit are industries that rely on the ability of their customers to safely show up day after day — and to pay for the privilege. These businesses range from the $32.3 billion fitness industry to the $47.2 billion child care sector. Hopefully, your neighborhood spin studio will survive. Unfortunately, your day care probably won’t. Why?
The choices working parents make now will shape the future for women
Cassie Werber | Quartz
Since we’re still in the thick of the Covid-19 crisis, it’s not clear what will be the long-term consequences of going through it. Changes for the better—to make society fairer—are still possible. But the pandemic has been far from a leveler. Among other areas, this is becoming clear in gender roles.
Jesus. No pressure, working parents…
A new report lays out how the gender pay gap becomes a retirement wealth gap
Ben Werschkul, Christian E. Weller | Yahoo Finance
New research outlines a range of factors that help explain why women face such an uphill climb in funding their retirement. The report from the National Institute on Retirement Security found that median household income for women aged 65+ was just 83% of median household income for men in 2016.
More, More, More
Pandemic Makes Evident 'Grotesque' Gender Inequality In Household Work
Terry Gross | NPR
Author Brigid Schulte says that with more people staying home due to COVID-19, it's hard to ignore "the fact that women bear so much more of the burden of childcare and housework."
Coronavirus response: Are female leaders handling the pandemic better?
Anna North | Vox
What the pandemic says — and doesn’t say — about gender and power around the world.
What I say:
Enjoy the long weekend, indulge in a lovely Paloma, don’t forget to recommend my newsletter to all your people. You are amazing and your hair looks especially good today.