cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1075249

As carbon dioxide continues to build up in the Earth’s atmosphere, research teams around the world have spent years seeking ways to remove the gas efficiently from the air. Meanwhile, the world’s number one “sink” for carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is the ocean, which soaks up some 30 to 40 percent of all of the gas produced by human activities.

Recently, the possibility of removing carbon dioxide directly from ocean water has emerged as another promising possibility for mitigating CO2 emissions, one that could potentially someday even lead to overall net negative emissions. But, like air capture systems, the idea has not yet led to any widespread use, though there are a few companies attempting to enter this area.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT says they may have found the key to a truly efficient and inexpensive removal mechanism. The findings were reported this week in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, in a paper by MIT professors T. Alan Hatton and Kripa Varanasi, postdoc Seoni Kim, and graduate students Michael Nitzsche, Simon Rufer, and Jack Lake.

The existing methods for removing carbon dioxide from seawater apply a voltage across a stack of membranes to acidify a feed stream by water splitting. This converts bicarbonates in the water to molecules of CO2, which can then be removed under vacuum. Hatton, who is the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering, notes that the membranes are expensive, and chemicals are required to drive the overall electrode reactions at either end of the stack, adding further to the expense and complexity of the processes. “We wanted to avoid the need for introducing chemicals to the anode and cathode half cells and to avoid the use of membranes if at all possible,” he says.

The team came up with a reversible process consisting of membrane-free electrochemical cells. Reactive electrodes are used to release protons to the seawater fed to the cells, driving the release of the dissolved carbon dioxide from the water. The process is cyclic: It first acidifies the water to convert dissolved inorganic bicarbonates to molecular carbon dioxide, which is collected as a gas under vacuum. Then, the water is fed to a second set of cells with a reversed voltage, to recover the protons and turn the acidic water back to alkaline before releasing it back to the sea. Periodically, the roles of the two cells are reversed once one set of electrodes is depleted of protons (during acidification) and the other has been regenerated during alkalization.

This removal of carbon dioxide and reinjection of alkaline water could slowly start to reverse, at least locally, the acidification of the oceans that has been caused by carbon dioxide buildup, which in turn has threatened coral reefs and shellfish, says Varanasi, a professor of mechanical engineering. The reinjection of alkaline water could be done through dispersed outlets or far offshore to avoid a local spike of alkalinity that could disrupt ecosystems, they say.

“We’re not going to be able to treat the entire planet’s emissions,” Varanasi says. But the reinjection might be done in some cases in places such as fish farms, which tend to acidify the water, so this could be a way of helping to counter that effect.

Once the carbon dioxide is removed from the water, it still needs to be disposed of, as with other carbon removal processes. For example, it can be buried in deep geologic formations under the sea floor, or it can be chemically converted into a compound like ethanol, which can be used as a transportation fuel, or into other specialty chemicals. “You can certainly consider using the captured CO2 as a feedstock for chemicals or materials production, but you’re not going to be able to use all of it as a feedstock,” says Hatton. “You’ll run out of markets for all the products you produce, so no matter what, a significant amount of the captured CO2 will need to be buried underground.”

Initially at least, the idea would be to couple such systems with existing or planned infrastructure that already processes seawater, such as desalination plants. “This system is scalable so that we could integrate it potentially into existing processes that are already processing ocean water or in contact with ocean water,” Varanasi says. There, the carbon dioxide removal could be a simple add-on to existing processes, which already return vast amounts of water to the sea, and it would not require consumables like chemical additives or membranes.

“With desalination plants, you’re already pumping all the water, so why not co-locate there?” Varanasi says. “A bunch of capital costs associated with the way you move the water, and the permitting, all that could already be taken care of.”

The system could also be implemented by ships that would process water as they travel, in order to help mitigate the significant contribution of ship traffic to overall emissions. There are already international mandates to lower shipping’s emissions, and “this could help shipping companies offset some of their emissions, and turn ships into ocean scrubbers,” Varanasi says.

The system could also be implemented at locations such as offshore drilling platforms, or at aquaculture farms. Eventually, it could lead to a deployment of free-standing carbon removal plants distributed globally.

The process could be more efficient than air-capture systems, Hatton says, because the concentration of carbon dioxide in seawater is more than 100 times greater than it is in air. In direct air-capture systems it is first necessary to capture and concentrate the gas before recovering it. “The oceans are large carbon sinks, however, so the capture step has already kind of been done for you,” he says. “There’s no capture step, only release.” That means the volumes of material that need to be handled are much smaller, potentially simplifying the whole process and reducing the footprint requirements.

The research is continuing, with one goal being to find an alternative to the present step that requires a vacuum to remove the separated carbon dioxide from the water. Another need is to identify operating strategies to prevent precipitation of minerals that can foul the electrodes in the alkalinization cell, an inherent issue that reduces the overall efficiency in all reported approaches. Hatton notes that significant progress has been made on these issues, but that it is still too early to report on them. The team expects that the system could be ready for a practical demonstration project within about two years.

“The carbon dioxide problem is the defining problem of our life, of our existence,” Varanasi says. “So clearly, we need all the help we can get.”

The work was supported by ARPA-E.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1073592

Researchers have found that one method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is available, affordable, and capable of being implemented right now. Nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance, could be readily abated with existing technology applied to industrial sources.

"The urgency of climate change requires that all greenhouse gas emissions be abated as quickly as is technologically and economically feasible," said lead author Eric Davidson, a professor with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "Limiting nitrous oxide in an agricultural context is complicated, but mitigating it in industry is affordable and available right now. Here is a low-hanging fruit that we can pluck quickly."

When greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, they trap the heat from the sun, leading to a warming planet. In terms of emissions, nitrous oxide is third among greenhouse gases, topped only by carbon dioxide and methane. Also known as laughing gas, it has a global warming potential nearly 300 times that of carbon dioxide and stays in the atmosphere for more than 100 years. It also destroys the protective ozone layer in the stratosphere, so reducing nitrous oxide emissions provides a double benefit for the environment and humanity.

Nitrous oxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased at an accelerating rate in recent decades, mostly from increasing agricultural emissions, which contribute about two-thirds of the global human-caused nitrous oxide. However, agricultural sources are challenging to reduce. In contrast, for the industry and energy sectors, low-cost technologies already exist to reduce nitrous oxide emissions to nearly zero.

Industrial nitrous oxide emissions from the chemical industry are primarily by-products from the production of adipic acid (used in the production of nylon) and nitric acid (used to make nitrogen fertilizers, adipic acid, and explosives). Emissions also come from fossil fuel combustion used in manufacturing and internal combustion engines used in cars and trucks.

"We know that abatement is feasible and affordable. The European Union's emissions trading system made it financially attractive to companies to remove nitrous oxide emissions in all adipic acid and nitric acid plants," said co-author Wilfried Winiwarter of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. "The German government is also helping to fund abatement of nitrous oxide emissions from nitric acid plants in several low-income and middle-income countries."

The private sector could also play a key role in nitrous oxide emissions reduction, encouraged by trends in consumer preferences for purchasing climate-friendly products. For example, 65% of the nitrous emissions embodied in nylon products globally are used in passenger cars and light vehicles. Automobile manufacturers could require supply chains to source nylon exclusively from plants that deploy efficient nitrous oxide abatement technology.

Marginal improvements to agricultural soils around the world would store enough carbon to keep the world within 1.5C of global heating, new research suggests.

Farming techniques that improve long-term fertility and yields can also help to store more carbon in soils but are often ignored in favour of intensive techniques using large amounts of artificial fertiliser, much of it wasted, that can increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Using better farming techniques to store 1% more carbon in about half of the world’s agricultural soils would be enough to absorb about 31 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to new data. That amount is not far off the 32 gigatonnes gap between current planned emissions reduction globally per year and the amount of carbon that must be cut by 2030 to stay within 1.5C.

The estimates were carried out by Jacqueline McGlade, the former chief scientist at the UN environment programme and former executive director of the European Environment Agency. She found that storing more carbon in the top 30cm of agricultural soils would be feasible in many regions where soils are currently degraded.

McGlade now leads a commercial organisation that sells soil data to farmers. Downforce Technologies uses publicly available global data, satellite images and lidar to assess in detail how much carbon is stored in soils, which can now be done down to the level of individual fields.

“Outside the farming sector, people do not understand how important soils are to the climate,” said McGlade. “Changing farming could make soils carbon negative, making them absorb carbon, and reducing the cost of farming.”

She said farmers could face a short-term cost while they changed their methods, away from the overuse of artificial fertiliser, but after a transition period of two to three years their yields would improve and their soils would be much healthier.

She estimated it would cost about $1m (£790,000) to restore 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) of what is currently badly degraded farmland in Kenya, an area that is home to about 300,000 people.

Downforce data could also allow farmers to sell carbon credits based on how much additional carbon dioxide their fields are absorbing. Soil has long been known to be one of Earth’s biggest stores of carbon, but until now it has not been possible to examine in detail how much carbon soils in particular areas are locking up and how much they are emitting. About 40% of the world’s farmland is now degraded, according to UN estimates.

Carbon dioxide removal, the name given to a suite of technologies and techniques that increase the uptake of carbon dioxide from the air and sequester the carbon in some form, is an increasing area of interest, as the world slips closer to the critical threshold of 1.5C of global heating above pre-industrial levels.

Arable farmers could sequester more carbon within their soils by changing their crop rotation, planting cover crops such as clover, or using direct drilling, which allows crops to be planted without the need for ploughing. Livestock farmers could improve their soils by growing more native grasses.

Hedgerows also help to sequester carbon in the soil, because they have large underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi and microbes that can extend metres into the field. Farmers have spent decades removing hedgerows to make intensive farming easier, but restoring them, and maintaining existing hedgerows, would improve biodiversity, reduce the erosion of topsoil, and help to stop harmful agricultural runoff, which is a key polluter of rivers.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1072810

Marginal improvements to agricultural soils around the world would store enough carbon to keep the world within 1.5C of global heating, new research suggests.

Farming techniques that improve long-term fertility and yields can also help to store more carbon in soils but are often ignored in favour of intensive techniques using large amounts of artificial fertiliser, much of it wasted, that can increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Using better farming techniques to store 1% more carbon in about half of the world’s agricultural soils would be enough to absorb about 31 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to new data. That amount is not far off the 32 gigatonnes gap between current planned emissions reduction globally per year and the amount of carbon that must be cut by 2030 to stay within 1.5C.

The estimates were carried out by Jacqueline McGlade, the former chief scientist at the UN environment programme and former executive director of the European Environment Agency. She found that storing more carbon in the top 30cm of agricultural soils would be feasible in many regions where soils are currently degraded.

McGlade now leads a commercial organisation that sells soil data to farmers. Downforce Technologies uses publicly available global data, satellite images and lidar to assess in detail how much carbon is stored in soils, which can now be done down to the level of individual fields.

“Outside the farming sector, people do not understand how important soils are to the climate,” said McGlade. “Changing farming could make soils carbon negative, making them absorb carbon, and reducing the cost of farming.”

She said farmers could face a short-term cost while they changed their methods, away from the overuse of artificial fertiliser, but after a transition period of two to three years their yields would improve and their soils would be much healthier.

She estimated it would cost about $1m (£790,000) to restore 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) of what is currently badly degraded farmland in Kenya, an area that is home to about 300,000 people.

Downforce data could also allow farmers to sell carbon credits based on how much additional carbon dioxide their fields are absorbing. Soil has long been known to be one of Earth’s biggest stores of carbon, but until now it has not been possible to examine in detail how much carbon soils in particular areas are locking up and how much they are emitting. About 40% of the world’s farmland is now degraded, according to UN estimates.

Carbon dioxide removal, the name given to a suite of technologies and techniques that increase the uptake of carbon dioxide from the air and sequester the carbon in some form, is an increasing area of interest, as the world slips closer to the critical threshold of 1.5C of global heating above pre-industrial levels.

Arable farmers could sequester more carbon within their soils by changing their crop rotation, planting cover crops such as clover, or using direct drilling, which allows crops to be planted without the need for ploughing. Livestock farmers could improve their soils by growing more native grasses.

Hedgerows also help to sequester carbon in the soil, because they have large underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi and microbes that can extend metres into the field. Farmers have spent decades removing hedgerows to make intensive farming easier, but restoring them, and maintaining existing hedgerows, would improve biodiversity, reduce the erosion of topsoil, and help to stop harmful agricultural runoff, which is a key polluter of rivers.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1070394

Gay Republicans are abandoning Florida Gov. and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis (R) in droves after his rapid response team shared a bizarre video bragging about his reign of terror against the LGBTQ+ community.

The video opens with several clips of Donald Trump – DeSantis’s top primary opponent – expressing support for LGBTQ+ people and frames these comments as damning. Most of the comments are from before he was elected president in 2016. Then, the clip abruptly shifts to intense music and a photo of DeSantis shooting lasers out of his eyes, followed by snapshots of headlines about the anti-LGBTQ+ laws DeSantis has passed.

The video proudly shares that DeSantis has been called “evil,” “dangerous,” “draconian,” and “public enemy no. 1” and even includes a clip accusing DeSantis of passing legislation “that literally threatens trans existence.” It also contains images of shirtless buff muscle men inter-spliced with these statements about how DeSantis is hurting LGBTQ+ people in his state.

And despite DeSantis’s years-long crusade against LGBTQ+ people, this video, for whatever reason, seems to be the last straw for gay conservatives who had formerly viewed the Florida governor as a palatable alternative to Trump.

“Not only did DeSantis show that he is as anti-LGBTQ+ as the mainstream media has alleged, he made a mockery of any GOP candidate that shows an interest in LGBTQ+ rights, setting the whole party back decades,” wrote Yvonne Dean-Bailey, former Republican state legislator in New Hampshire, in an op-ed for the Daily Beast.

Dean-Bailey called the video “the most anti-LGBTQ+ ad in recent history,” adding that his actions “tarnish the image of the conservative movement.”

“As a lifelong conservative, I believe in the principles of limited government, personal responsibility, and individual liberties. Yet, DeSantis’ approach to LGBTQ+ issues goes against these very principles.”

Well-known conservative activist David Leatherwood also shared his disappointment over the ad on Twitter.

“I spent the last 7 years of my life working with Trump to make the GOP a more welcoming place for gays WHILE ALSO being anti-groomer, anti-woke and pro religious liberty. I’ve even worked WITH DeSantis on this agenda. This ad is a slap in the face, and makes any LGBT person supporting DeSantis look like an absolute idiot.”

Even disgraced gay Rep. George Santos (R-NY) got in on the anti-DeSantis action. Santos – who is currently facing 13 criminal charges – told The Hill he “used to think DeSantis was a great governor” but is now “starting to think differently.”

Santos has long been on team Trump but spoke out in favor of DeSantis’s Don’t Say Gay law. “I still stand by the bill in its nature,” he said, “but now it seems that it had a more perverse agenda behind it.”

“I’m starting to see [DeSantis] for what he is,” Santos added. “His rhetoric is to diminish and remove rights away from people like myself, and I can’t support that.”

The LGBTQ+ conservative group Log Cabin Republicans criticized the ad as “divisive and desperate.”

“Conservatives understand that we need to protect our kids, preserve women’s sports, safeguard women’s spaces and strengthen parental rights,” the group said in a statement, “but Ron DeSantis’ extreme rhetoric has just ventured into homophobic territory.”

“Ron DeSantis and his team can’t tell the difference between commonsense gays and the radical Left gays. He, sadly, sees them all the same. His naive policy positions are dangerous and politically stupid.”

And it isn’t just gay Republicans speaking out against the ad. DeSantis has been slammed and mocked from all angles.

The New Republic published a piece positing it could be “the weirdest ad in American political history.”

And out Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg pointed out the “strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders” before blasting DeSantis for focusing on bullying marginalized groups rather than helping Americans.

Christina Pushaw, the DeSantis campaign’s Rapid Response director, defended the video on Twitter after former Trump official Richard Grenell called it “undeniably homophobic.”

“Opposing the federal recognition of ‘Pride Month’ isn’t ‘homophobic.’ We wouldn’t support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation, either… It’s unnecessary, divisive, pandering. In a country as vast and diverse as the USA, identity politics is poison.”

DeSantis is currently in a distant second place in 2024 Republican primary polling, getting an average of 21.5% support in recent polls, according to RealClearPolitics. Trump is first with an average of 52.4%.

Gay Republicans are abandoning Florida Gov. and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis (R) in droves after his rapid response team shared a bizarre video bragging about his reign of terror against the LGBTQ+ community.

The video opens with several clips of Donald Trump – DeSantis’s top primary opponent – expressing support for LGBTQ+ people and frames these comments as damning. Most of the comments are from before he was elected president in 2016. Then, the clip abruptly shifts to intense music and a photo of DeSantis shooting lasers out of his eyes, followed by snapshots of headlines about the anti-LGBTQ+ laws DeSantis has passed.

The video proudly shares that DeSantis has been called “evil,” “dangerous,” “draconian,” and “public enemy no. 1” and even includes a clip accusing DeSantis of passing legislation “that literally threatens trans existence.” It also contains images of shirtless buff muscle men inter-spliced with these statements about how DeSantis is hurting LGBTQ+ people in his state.

And despite DeSantis’s years-long crusade against LGBTQ+ people, this video, for whatever reason, seems to be the last straw for gay conservatives who had formerly viewed the Florida governor as a palatable alternative to Trump.

“Not only did DeSantis show that he is as anti-LGBTQ+ as the mainstream media has alleged, he made a mockery of any GOP candidate that shows an interest in LGBTQ+ rights, setting the whole party back decades,” wrote Yvonne Dean-Bailey, former Republican state legislator in New Hampshire, in an op-ed for the Daily Beast.

Dean-Bailey called the video “the most anti-LGBTQ+ ad in recent history,” adding that his actions “tarnish the image of the conservative movement.”

“As a lifelong conservative, I believe in the principles of limited government, personal responsibility, and individual liberties. Yet, DeSantis’ approach to LGBTQ+ issues goes against these very principles.”

Well-known conservative activist David Leatherwood also shared his disappointment over the ad on Twitter.

“I spent the last 7 years of my life working with Trump to make the GOP a more welcoming place for gays WHILE ALSO being anti-groomer, anti-woke and pro religious liberty. I’ve even worked WITH DeSantis on this agenda. This ad is a slap in the face, and makes any LGBT person supporting DeSantis look like an absolute idiot.”

Even disgraced gay Rep. George Santos (R-NY) got in on the anti-DeSantis action. Santos – who is currently facing 13 criminal charges – told The Hill he “used to think DeSantis was a great governor” but is now “starting to think differently.”

Santos has long been on team Trump but spoke out in favor of DeSantis’s Don’t Say Gay law. “I still stand by the bill in its nature,” he said, “but now it seems that it had a more perverse agenda behind it.”

“I’m starting to see [DeSantis] for what he is,” Santos added. “His rhetoric is to diminish and remove rights away from people like myself, and I can’t support that.”

The LGBTQ+ conservative group Log Cabin Republicans criticized the ad as “divisive and desperate.”

“Conservatives understand that we need to protect our kids, preserve women’s sports, safeguard women’s spaces and strengthen parental rights,” the group said in a statement, “but Ron DeSantis’ extreme rhetoric has just ventured into homophobic territory.”

“Ron DeSantis and his team can’t tell the difference between commonsense gays and the radical Left gays. He, sadly, sees them all the same. His naive policy positions are dangerous and politically stupid.”

And it isn’t just gay Republicans speaking out against the ad. DeSantis has been slammed and mocked from all angles.

The New Republic published a piece positing it could be “the weirdest ad in American political history.”

And out Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg pointed out the “strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders” before blasting DeSantis for focusing on bullying marginalized groups rather than helping Americans.

Christina Pushaw, the DeSantis campaign’s Rapid Response director, defended the video on Twitter after former Trump official Richard Grenell called it “undeniably homophobic.”

“Opposing the federal recognition of ‘Pride Month’ isn’t ‘homophobic.’ We wouldn’t support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation, either… It’s unnecessary, divisive, pandering. In a country as vast and diverse as the USA, identity politics is poison.”

DeSantis is currently in a distant second place in 2024 Republican primary polling, getting an average of 21.5% support in recent polls, according to RealClearPolitics. Trump is first with an average of 52.4%.

In state after state, conservative lawmakers this year have banned medical treatment designed for transgender youth dealing with changes in their gender identity. Now, a growing number of federal judges are blocking those laws from taking effect.

US district court judges have halted such laws in six states so far – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee – finding that they infringe on the constitutional guarantee to equal protection under the 14th amendment to the US constitution. John Wieners.

Two lawsuits challenging laws in Montana and Georgia have yet to be ruled on, and in Oklahoma the opposing sides in May agreed to set aside the law until the court case is heard.

The court rulings offer temporary relief from the recent rush of bills banning transgender youth from receiving treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy. Twenty states have passed such bans, with the bulk of them signed into law this year.

“It’s quite noteworthy that the results in these cases have so far been so consistent,” said Tobias Wolff, a University of Pennsylvania law professor specializing in constitutional law and LGBTQ rights. “And it’s not because the law in this area was such a slam-dunk. It’s because the facts are so clearly against these laws.”

Many conservative lawmakers have endorsed the laws as part of an effort to defend traditional conservative values and portray progressives as out of touch on issues of sex and religion.

Democrats, LGBTQ advocacy groups and health providers say the bans unjustly target a community for whom gender-affirming care can be life-saving and which is under attack.

“The courts are starting to find very consistently that these laws are ridiculous,” said Kevin Jennings, chief executive of Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization focused on LGBTQ issues. “They violate the equal protection clause, they’re motivated by animus not science and they serve no state interest.”

Judges, including three appointed by Republican former US president Donald Trump, have found that gender-affirming care is medically necessary for transgender youth suffering from gender dysphoria – the stress caused by the divergence between one’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth.

The judges also have said laws banning such care violate a parent’s right to make healthcare decisions for their children.

“Courts are really taking time to understand and recognize the humanity of the families and children impacted by these bans,” said Cynthia Cheng-Wun Weaver, litigation director for the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy in the United States.

Supporters of the laws are undeterred, saying courts have erred and that the prevailing medical consensus will change.

DENVER — A Colorado web designer who the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday could refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples cited a request from a man who says he never asked to work with her.

The request in dispute, from a person identified as "Stewart," wasn't the basis for the federal lawsuit filed preemptively seven years ago by web designer Lorie Smith, before she started making wedding websites. But as the case advanced, it was referenced by her attorneys when lawyers for the state of Colorado pressed Smith on whether she had sufficient grounds to sue.

The revelation distracts from Smith's victory at a time when she might have been basking in her win, which is widely considered a setback for gay rights.

Smith named Stewart — and included a website service request from him, listing his phone number and email address in 2017 court documents. But Stewart told The Associated Press he never submitted the request and didn't know his name was invoked in the lawsuit until he was contacted this week by a reporter from The New Republic, which first reported his denial.

"I was incredibly surprised given the fact that I've been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years," said Stewart, who declined to give his last name for fear of harassment and threats. His contact information, but not his last name, were listed in court documents.

He added that he was a designer and "could design my own website if I need to" — and was concerned no one had checked into the validity of the request cited by Smith until recently.

Smith's lawyer, Kristen Waggoner, said at a Friday news conference that the wedding request naming Stewart was submitted through Smith's website and denied it was fabricated.

She suggested it could have been a troll making the request, something that's happened with other clients she has represented. In 2018 her client Colorado baker Jack Phillips won a partial U.S. Supreme Court victory after refusing to make a gay couple's wedding cake, citing his Christian faith.

"It's undisputed that the request was received," Waggoner said. "Whether that was a troll and not a genuine request, or it was someone who was looking for that, is really irrelevant to the case."

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Friday called the lawsuit a "made up case" because Smith wasn't offering wedding website services when the suit was filed.

Weiser didn't know the specifics of Stewart's denial, but said the nation's high court should not have addressed the lawsuit's merits "without any basis in reality."

About a month after the case was filed in federal court challenging an anti-discrimination law in Colorado, lawyers for the state said Smith had not been harmed by the law as they moved to dismiss the case.

Her lawyers maintained Smith did not have to be punished for violating the law before challenging it. In February 2017 they said even though she did not need a request in order to pursue the case, she had received one.

"Any claim that Lorie will never receive a request to create a custom website celebrating a same-sex ceremony is no longer legitimate because Lorie has received such a request," they said.

Smith's Supreme Court filings briefly mentioned she received at least one request to create a website celebrating the wedding of a same-sex couple. There did not appear to be any reference to the issue in the court's decision.

In 2018, the lesbian activist Urvashi Vaid embarked on what would become her final project before her death in 2022.

From 1989 to 1992 Vaid served as the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force — now the National LGBTQ Task Force — and was the first woman of color to lead the organization.

She was a fierce activist during the HIV/AIDS crisis and went on to start the first lesbian political action committee, served on the boards of ACLU and Planned Parenthood, and even co-founded the American LGBTQ+ Museum of History and Culture.

Vaid had realized there wasn't robust research about the discrimination and violence LGBTQ+ women were facing, says Jaime Grant, a sex educator and activist who collaborated with Vaid.

So Grant and Vaid, along with 22 other scholars and activists, got together and developed a nationwide survey of LGBTQ+ women's lives and experiences with disability, discrimination, harassment and intimate partner violence.

Over the course of two years, they surveyed more than 8,000 people who either currently identify or previously identified as a woman about what life looks like for LGBTQ+ women who partner with women in the U.S.

The executive summary of the survey report, entitled "We Never Give Up the Fight: A Report of the National LGBTQ+ Women's Community Survey," was released this week. It found that while LGBTQ+ women experience high rates of violence in multiple areas of their lives, they regularly rely on their friends, not institutions – such as the education system, law enforcement, or religious organizations – for support.

Specifically, 76% of respondents reported experiencing harassment, discrimination, or violence in educational settings, and 43% said their childhood faith traditions became a source of conflict because of their identity as an LGBTQ+ woman.

"Across the board, institutions that are critical to our well-being are failing us," says Grant.

According to the survey, LGBTQ+ women experience intimate partner violence at higher rates than women in the general population, with 47% of respondents reporting experiences with emotional violence – defined as gaslighting, control over social life, or isolation from family – as well as physical, or sexual violence from their partner.

One of the rich pieces of data the survey provides is more information about who is doing the abusing and how. "We actually know very little about the people who are being abusive," says anti-violence advocate Shannon Perez-Darby, who helped the team of researchers make sense of the survey data for the intimate partner violence section. Having a better understanding of both the abused and the abuser will help advocates against domestic violence and healthcare providers offer better support to survivors of intimate partner violence.

In the intimate partner violence section, respondents gave details about their abusers, no matter the gender or sexuality. "Many lesbian identified people in the study had children with cisgender, heterosexual men and left marriages," explains Grant.

The results showed that cisgender, heterosexual men use more lethal forms of violence that have a bigger impact on someone's ability to stay alive. In contrast, women and gender-diverse people use more social control as a form of violence, the survey found.

"We did see differences from the survey data that was telling us that the kinds of harms that cisgendered men were causing to their queer female partners was different than the kinds of harms that queer women who were being abusive were enacting on their partners," says Perez-Darby.

Perez-Darby warns against making simple conclusions about patterns of abuse across gender simply based on the findings of the survey. "The impact of domestic violence was equally crushing to their lives," says Perez-Darby, "No matter the gender or sexual orientation of the partner who was abusing them."

Grant hopes that this data can serve as the grounds for education campaigns in healthcare settings where doctors may come in contact with different types of domestic violence survivors, as well as in the broader LGBTQ+ community.

The report also shows that only 20% of domestic violence survivors sought support from institutions – such as hospitals, domestic violence shelters or the police – whereas more than half of survivors did not look for help in these spaces and instead relied on their friends.

Therein lies the potential solution for this problem. "The most consistent aspect of domestic violence is isolation," says Perez-Darby. "If there was one thing we could all do, it would be to stay better connected to our people, to our friends, and to our family." The strong value that LGBTQ+ people place on their queer and trans communities is what Perez-Darby calls a "resiliency that can help us prevent domestic violence."

The survey also gives insight into the joy and resilience that exist in the LGBTQ+ community.

One of the surprising results from the survey for Grant was that gender and sexuality remain fluid and changing for LGBTQ+ women. 24% of respondents reported their gender as "fluid or changing" and 32% described their sexuality as "fluid or changing." "LGBTQ+ women's identities across the board are very expansive," says Grant.

This fluidity "reflects how things are changing in our society in terms of understanding nuances in gender and sexuality," says Amanda Pollitt, an assistant professor at the Center for Health Equity Research at Northern Arizona University. "I wasn't really expecting to see quite so much diversity and especially gender identities."

One of the last questions of the survey asked: "What are your favorite things about being an LGBTQ+ woman?"

Of the 21,000 answers from 7,000 respondents, Grant says what people love is self-determination, community and the freedom to choose who they want to be with. For Perez-Darby, the survey underscores "the resiliency of queer and trans communities, how we have held each other, and all the different ways we figure out how to be in relationship with each other to survive and thrive."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/913836

Ron DeSantis’s flailing campaign team couldn’t let Pride month pass without stepping on their own dick.

Tallahassee, Florida – Today, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights organization, condemns Gov. DeSantis for signing SB 1580, a “​​License to Discriminate in Healthcare” bill that will allow healthcare providers and insurers to deny a patient care on the basis of religious, moral, or ethical beliefs. It creates a license to discriminate by allowing healthcare employers to discriminate in hiring, and it bars medical Boards from disciplining doctors for spreading misinformation.

In response, HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow released the following statement:

“Religious beliefs are fundamental rights in our country. These core values have shaped our nation and strengthened our union. Unfortunately, bills like SB 1580 distort our foundational freedoms into tools to limit the rights of others, including the LGBTQ+ community and other vulnerable people. Personal beliefs should not be wielded as a sword to deny critical medical care. The Human Rights Campaign strongly condemns Gov. DeSantis for signing this dangerous bill.”

Last month, the President of HRC Kelley Robinson held a roundtable discussion with Equality Florida – the largest civil rights organization dedicated to securing full equality for Florida's LGBTQ+ community – teachers, parents, and students to slam Gov. DeSantis and Florida legislators for advancing a slate of hateful anti-LGBTQ+ bills and proposals. HRC also deployed mobile billboards at the State Capitol, the Governor’s mansion, the Pride Festival in Tallahassee, and South Beach and took out a full page ad in the Miami Herald slamming DeSantis for his attacks on the LGBTQ+ community.

Acting at the behest of the administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the Florida Board of Medicine and the Board of Osteopathic Medicine also adopted a politically motivated and discriminatory rule that denies age-appropriate gender-affirming care to Florida's transgender youth. The rule (64B8-9.019) was filed with the Florida Department of State on February 24, 2023 and became effective on March 16, 2023. HRC is one of several organizations representing Florida families challenging the state’s ban on medically necessary healthcare for their transgender children and filed a motion asking the court to halt the ban while their case proceeds. Parents told the federal district court in their motion for a preliminary injunction that the ban is causing their children significant harm through canceled doctors appointments and denials of treatment.

So far in 2023, HRC is opposing more than 520 anti-LGBTQ+ bills that have been introduced in statehouses across the country. More than 220 of those bills would specifically restrict the rights of transgender people, the highest number of bills targeting transgender people in a single year to date. This year, HRC is tracking:

• More than 125 gender-affirming care bans — bills that would prevent transgender youth from being able to access age-appropriate, medically-necessary, best-practice health care; this year, 14 have already become law in Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Dakota, Utah, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Georgia, Kentucky, West Virginia, North Dakota, Montana, and Oklahoma;

• More than 30 anti-transgender bathroom bills filed;

• More than 100 anti-LGBTQ+ curriculum censorship bills, and;

• 45 anti-LGBTQ+ drag performance ban bills.

Americans believe the amount of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is excessive, agreeing it is “political theater.” Likely voters across all political parties look at GOP efforts to flood state legislatures with anti-LGBTQ+ legislation as political theater. Recent polling indicates that 64% of all likely voters, including 72% of Democrats, 65% of Independents, and 55% of Republicans think that there is “too much legislation” aimed at “limiting the rights of transgender and gay people in America” (Data For Progress survey of 1,220 likely voters, 3/24-26, 2023).

By comparison, last year in 2022 politicians in statehouses across the country introduced 315 anti-LGBTQ+ bills, 29 of which were enacted into law. These efforts — the result of a coordinated push led by national anti-LGBTQ+ groups, which deployed vintage discriminatory tropes seeking to slander, malign, and stigmatize LGBTQ+ people — only yielded a less than 10% success rate, as more than 90% of anti-LGBTQ+ bills were defeated. The majority of the discriminatory bills – 149 bills – targeted the transgender and non-binary community, with the majority targeting children. By the end of the 2022 state legislative season, a record 17 bills attacking transgender and non-binary children were enacted into law.

More than 300 major U.S. corporations have stood up and spoken out to oppose anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being proposed in states across the country. Major employers in tech, manufacturing, hospitality, health care, retail, and other sectors are joining with a unified voice to say discrimination is bad for business and to call on lawmakers to abandon these efforts. Four of the largest U.S. food companies also condemned “dangerous, discriminatory legislation that serves as an attack on LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly transgender and nonbinary people,” and the Walton Family Foundation issued a statement expressing “alarm” at the trend of anti-transgender legislation that recently became law in Arkansas.

According to the latest data this year from PRRI, support for LGBTQ+ rights is on the rise in Florida and nationwide: 80% of Florida residents support nondiscrimination protections, and 66% of Florida residents oppose refusal of service on religious grounds. About eight in ten Americans (80%) favor laws that would protect LGBTQ+ people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations, and housing. This reflects a dramatic increase in the proportion of Americans who support nondiscrimination protections since 2015, when it was 71%.

The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. HRC envisions a world where LGBTQ+ people are embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community.