人兽性交

There were at least 95 separate incidents in which LGBT people experienced hate like this in just the first 10 days after the election. In West Virginia, LGBT people were the targets in one of every six bias-related incidents reported to us during the period.

But LGBT advocates in that state suffered a setback this week when the West Virginia Supreme Court Tuesday that the state鈥檚 hate crime law doesn鈥檛 cover assaults or crimes based on sexual orientation. The statute applies only to incidents committed on the basis of 鈥渟ex,鈥� whose 鈥渃ommon and ordinary meaning,鈥� Chief Justice Allen H. Loughry II for the majority, 鈥渋mparts being male or female, and does not include 鈥榮exual orientation.鈥欌��

Though the ruling simply keeps the status quo in West Virginia, it comes at a time when states across the country are actively rolling back LGBT rights.

Legislators in Virginia, Michigan, South Dakota, North Dakota and Alabama, for instance, all earlier this year giving foster and adoption agencies the ability to refuse to place children with qualified LGBT parents.

鈥淭hat amounts to taxpayer-funded discrimination,鈥� Alabama foster mom Angela Sherbine for the Montgomery Advertiser. As she explains:

In other words, a family could undergo the incredibly difficult and lengthy process of being vetted and deemed qualified by the state to care for children, only to be rejected by a state-licensed agency for no other reason than that agency鈥檚 supposed religious beliefs.

In a state [like Alabama] where there are simply not enough foster parents to give every child a home, the last thing Alabama鈥檚 state legislature should do is empower private agencies needlessly to turn away qualified foster parents.

Yet, Alabama legislators were happy to do exactly that ( 23-9 in the Senate and 60-14 in the House to pass the bill). Texas lawmakers proposed a similar, but even harsher bill. It the Texas House earlier this week.

Of course, in some states, LGBT rights can鈥檛 be rolled back because they never existed in the first place. In Mississippi, for example, there are no laws protecting LGBT people against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

That absence enabled Picayune Funeral Home to refuse to transport Jack Zawadaski鈥檚 husband, as promised, . The funeral home just doesn't "deal with their kind," its administrators told Jack. Without anti-discrimination laws, it doesn鈥檛 have to.

Yet Mississippi state lawmakers went out of their way last year to pass an entirely redundant law explicitly .

As West Virginia Chief Justice Loughry , in declining to extend hate crime protection to the LGBT community, 鈥渃ourts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says.鈥�

In states around the country, legislatures are certainly making their 鈥渕eaning鈥� very clear.

The Editors.

P.S. Here are a few other reads that we think are valuable:

• , by Will Tucker and Cassie Miller, 人兽性交
• , by Michael Grabell for ProPublica
• , by Jelani Cobb for聽The New Yorker
• , by Matthew Desmond for聽The New York Times Magazine

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