“I live in NSW, drink booze and occasionally take [drugs], but the most unhealthy thing is being a big ol’ queer I guess.”

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Who knew Ru could be this harsh?!

Even if you've never seen an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race (which, if you haven't, get on it), you probably know the show's iconic line for when contestants get eliminated.

Logo / Via giphy.com

It has everything: It's short, it rhymes, and it's a masterful directive.

Logo

Especially when paired what RuPaul says to contestants who get to stay another week.

Logo / Via w24.co.za

Anyway, Twitter user phil recently discovered that in the captions on the Portuguese Netflix version of the show, "sashay away" is a little...harsher.

Twitter: @phi_lipi

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“I had people at work even tell me I didn’t deserve to be tired because I wasn’t his ‘real’ mom.”

Taking leave from work to welcome a new child isn't easy for a lot of parents — and LGBT families often have to navigate policies that were designed with cisgender, straight couples in mind.

The US is one of a handful of nations that doesn't mandate any paid parental leave. When employers do provide paid time, it's frequently funded through short-term disability policies that only cover parents who give birth. Adoptive parents of any gender often get less time to bond with their new additions.

Under a federal law called the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), employers over a certain size have to provide 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave, though not all employees are eligible. The law states that someone who acts "in loco parentis" — i.e. takes on the responsibilities of parenting — is eligible for leave, even if they don't have a biological or legal relationship with the child.

Bananastock / Getty Images

"We are so, so fortunate to work for large companies that recognize both of us as parents and give us both leave."

We have a son who will be 2 in August and I am currently pregnant with our second child. Both were conceived with anonymous donors through intrauterine insemination (IUI) with the help of a reproductive endocrinologist.

I had a C-section with my son, so I got eight weeks of paid maternity leave and two weeks of paid parental leave. It will be the same with baby #2. My wife got two weeks of parental leave through her company and will get the same with baby #2. However, her company now offers unlimited paid vacation time so she may take more time off. We're obviously very lucky to have such generous options.

We all know leave in the US is abysmal. That being said, my 10 weeks for a C-section delivery and my wife's two weeks for non birth parent leave are quite generous. I know I should be grateful and I am. But taking a 10-week-old infant to daycare for eight-plus hours a day is so hard, not to mention still trying to get over major surgery. I wish my wife could have been there for more than two weeks, and I know she did too.

We are so, so fortunate to work for large companies that recognize both of us as parents and give us both leave. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to not have maternity leave available.

—Jamie, 31, lesbian, works in business sales, US (Florida)

Provided to BuzzFeed

My wife and I used a sperm donor, and we have a 7-month-old daughter. After giving birth I had six weeks of paid maternity leave, then another six weeks of unpaid leave. We then decided that it would be cheaper for me to stay home than to pay for child care.

My wife was not able to get paid leave through her job, despite working with the company for almost three years. She took one week of unpaid leave beginning the day before I had to be induced. It was very hard for me to care for a newborn baby by myself when she went back to work. It was completely unfair that she didn't get any paid maternity leave when it was her child too.

After trying for so long to conceive, our daughter was our little miracle. It's just ridiculous that one of her mothers got so much time with her and the other so little before returning to work.

—Alice, 25, bisexual, works in banking, US (Maine)

View Entire List ›

Evan Vucci / AP

Members of Congress are pleading with President Donald Trump to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin over violence against LGBT people in Chechnya, following reports of detentions, kidnappings and torture dating back to April.

"When the President speaks out against human rights atrocities, or chooses to stay silent, the world pays attention," says a letter to the White House signed by 53 members of Congress.

The effort, which includes fifty-two Democrats, is being led by Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island; one Republican, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, signed onto the letter.

While three people were reportedly killed in the recent violence, survivors have reported being abducted and subjected to torture, including electro-shocks and beatings by authorities.

"The lives of hundreds of Chechens are at stake," the lawmakers say, "and it is vital that the U.S. uses its full leverage to pressure Russian authorities to end these atrocities, conduct a fair and open investigation and prosecution of these crimes, and swiftly work to provide a safe haven for the marginalized."

Russian media outlets started reporting in April that Chechen officials were behind the disappearance of more than 100 gay men from the semi-autonomous, mostly Muslim, region of Russia.

A spokesman for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov denied the reports at the time, reportedly contending that there were no LGBT people in the region to be kidnapped: “You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic.”

Despite the purported nonexistence of LGBT people, the spokesman also suggested that an "honor killing" could rid relatives of LGBT people of their shame.

This month, the Russia LGBT Network, which is working to evacuate people from the area, told BuzzFeed News the organization has gotten around 10 calls reporting new detentions since Ramadan ended on June 24.

Members of Congress tell Trump in their letter that the Russian government's position conflicts with itself, "on the one hand denying that any atrocities are taking place, while also recommending that victims report grievances to the very local authorities accused of carrying out the attacks. Russia also prematurely ended an investigation with the claim that the multiple reports have little credence."

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 14 that he agreed the “Russian government must protect the lives and safety of all its citizens, including the LGBT community." But lawmakers say they're concerned the issue has not been raised by senior US officials directly with Putin or Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

"As Members of Congress dedicated to the promotion of fundamental human rights across the globe," the lawmakers tell Trump, "we urge you to immediately publicly condemn the ongoing abuses of LGBT and perceived to be LGBT individuals in Chechnya, and to raise this issue at the highest levels with members of the Russian government."

Read the letter to Trump

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at a May hearing on Capitol Hill.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

A top Democratic senator accused Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Wednesday of "outright neglecting" her department's civil rights duties, while another blasted DeVos for planning to meet with a fringe group that says false rape reports are part of a “war” being waged on men.

Two letters, one obtained exclusively by BuzzFeed News, were sent to DeVos on the eve of Thursday’s meetings between the Education Department and organizations representing victims of sexual violence, and those accused of it.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, criticized DeVos in her letter for steps the Department of Education has taken under the Trump administration, such as narrowing the scope of campus sexual assault investigations. Murray said she feared DeVos was moving toward changing the department’s approach to the gender equity law Title IX “in a way that will undermine the rights of sexual assault survivors."

In her letter, Murray also took aim at comments made by Candice Jackson, the acting head of the department's Office for Civil Rights, which investigates how schools comply with Title IX. Jackson told the New York Times that 90% of campus rape accusations "fall into the category of 'we were both drunk,' 'we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right.'"

"I am deeply disturbed by this message coming from the person you have selected to lead OCR," Murray wrote. "At the least, this suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of campus sexual assault and suggests that OCR is not prepared to take accounts from survivors seriously."

Jackson, a rape survivor herself, later apologized in a statement Wednesday for her remarks to the Times: "What I said was flippant, and I am sorry. All sexual harassment and sexual assault must be taken seriously — which has always been my position and will always be the position of this department."

On Thursday, DeVos will hold a series of meetings with various groups on how schools handle sexual violence, broken up into three 90 minute sessions. One will feature groups representing rape victims, another will include groups that work with students accused of assault, and a third will involve educational groups, attorneys, and lobbyists.

Earlier Wednesday, Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, called DeVos's inclusion of a men's rights group, the National Coalition for Men Carolinas, in her meetings "a slap in the face to the victims of campus sexual assault."

"It is disturbing that the Department of Education would place these radical groups on the same level as those working tirelessly to confront the crisis of sexual assault on our campuses."

The coalition is a branch of the National Coalition for Men, which has referred to rape survivor advocates as "anti-male," and last week it called Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, a "misandrist" on Twitter. "We are dedicated to bringing attention to the very real and damaging war on men that is being waged in classrooms, in the media, in our courts, on college campuses, in the workplace, even in places of worship,” the group says on its website.

The Education Department said that the men's rights group will participate in a meeting for "Students who have been falsely accused and disciplined under Title IX," and is bringing two students and two parents. The group has also posted photos of women it believes made false rape accusations, and suggested half of all sexual assault reports are lies.

"It is disturbing that the Department of Education would place these radical groups on the same level as those working tirelessly to confront the crisis of sexual assault on our campuses," Casey wrote in his letter.

Murray also focused on an internal memo from Jackson telling OCR offices to narrow their Title IX investigations to focus on individual cases and shift away from class action reviews geared toward uncovering systemic issues. Jackson said the goal was to finish investigations more quickly and clear a backlog of cases, some of which have languished for years. Murray said this change, combined with plans to decrease OCR staff, shows DeVos "is outright neglecting ED’s civil rights responsibilities."

Sen. Patty Murray during a rally on Capitol Hill in March 2017.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Both Casey and Murray have been critical of the education secretary since she was nominated, and both voted against her confirmation in part because DeVos refused to commit to upholding the mandates outlined in a 2011 "Dear Colleague letter" from the Education Department on how schools must handle sexual violence. However, as the Education Department now actively reviews whether to retain that 2011 directive, members of Congress from both parties have pressed DeVos to keep it in place. Fifty-two members of the House signed onto a June letter to DeVos urging this.

Murray says in her letter she's concerned that DeVos has already made up her mind on changing federal Title IX mandates, but she urged the secretary to continue meeting with students and experts before making any final decisions.

Thursday will be the first time DeVos meets with sexual assault survivors, but the arrangement "feels more like a stunt more than a means of hearing important information," said Catherine Lhamon, chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights, and Jackson's predecessor.

When Lhamon ran OCR, she said she met with victims’ advocates and groups representing accused students, because it's good to hear from all sides. "But we didn't do it in a setting like this," Lhamon told BuzzFeed News. "We did them in closed-door confidential meetings that were not pitting groups against each other."

That's what Jackson has been doing since she was appointed in April to be acting assistant secretary. BuzzFeed News has learned that Jackson has held a number of private meetings recently to discuss Title IX issues, speaking to victims advocates like End Rape On Campus, SurvJustice, National Women's Law Center, and Girls Inc., and to groups critical of the 2011 directive, like Families Advocating for Campus Equality and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Sources told BuzzFeed News they got the feeling from those meetings with Jackson that the department is intent at this point on rescinding or overhauling the 2011 directive.

But Cynthia Garrett, an attorney and board member of Families Advocating for Campus Equality, said some people are acting like Jackson is planning to get rid of Title IX altogether.

"That's never going to happen," Garrett told BuzzFeed News. "Title IX is a good law. It has its place. She's not going to stop enforcing the sexual assault issue, her approach is just going to be more cooperative. She's trying very hard to understand both sides, and she's a smart woman."

Laura Dunn, founder of the victims advocacy group SurvJustice, said in her meeting with Jackson, Jackson seemed particularly interested in a recent task force report by the American Bar Association, which focused on what procedures should be used in campus tribunals on sexual assault cases. Dunn and Garrett both served on the committee that drew up the recommendations, and Jackson appeared interested in that collaborative model for potential replacements for the 2011 directive, Dunn said.

It’s getting hot in here.

Everyone loves a good movie.

UGC Fox Distribution

Maybe your favorite sex scene occurs in Black Swan because you love that Natalie Portman's character started to let loose from her normal prim and proper self.

Fox Searchlight Pictures

Perhaps you're more into threesomes, so something from Vicky Cristina Barcelona really gets you going.

MGM

View Entire List ›

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

The US House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly rejected an attempt to undermine rules allowing transgender people to serve in the US military. The measure, defeated in a 214 to 209 vote, would have denied transgender service members certain medical care required for gender transition, such as prescription drugs and surgeries.

The vote on the amendment, which appeared to have significant Republican support, came after a heated afternoon debate.

Republicans have argued the cost of gender-transition treatment is exorbitantly expensive, though the stance encompasses a larger effort by conservatives to resist transgender military integration by claiming it undermines troop readiness.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, said before the vote that military applicants need to "figure out if you're man or woman before you join." The congressman added that if people join the military and then transition to another gender while enlisted, "it will cost the government money, and taxpayers in the country are not going to foot the bill for it."

"Let's make America great again," he concluded.

Top Democrats and LGBT leaders say claims of financial frugality are a ruse designed to mask the right’s larger cultural effort to impede transgender people from serving and marginalize LGBT people in society.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland challenged the idea that the push was about spending or military readiness. "This amendment is not about defense,” he said. “It has one purpose and one purpose only: to politically denigrate some of our fellow citizens.”

The debate centered around an amendment titled “Prohibition of Department of Defense Medical Treatment Related to Gender Transition” to a military funding bill, the National Defense Authorization Act.

Republican Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri had previously attempted to amend the spending bill with a measure to fully repeal a policy enacted last year, under the Obama administration, that allows transgender people to serve openly and receive transition related care. Those rules also set a plan in motion to enlist new transgender troops.

Hartzler's first amendment would have terminated the policy entirely and, even more, required out trans service members to be discharged. But she withdrew that amendment after a heated meeting before the House Armed Services Committee on June 28.

The congresswoman came back with new amendment that passed in the House Rules Committee on Wednesday night, which says “funds available to the Department of Defense may not be used to provide medical treatment (other than mental health treatment) related to gender transition to a person entitled to medical care” under the transgender service rules.

The Rules Committee approved her amendment 10-2 along party lines, with Democratic Reps. Jared Polis of Colorado and Patrick McGovern of Massachusetts dissenting.

Twenty-four Republicans ultimately voted against the measure on the floor Thursday, and no Democrats voted in favor of it.

Democrats were ready to fight the measure on the House floor. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California called on the GOP to withdraw the amendment, which she said was “designed to attack the health and dignity of men and women who serve our country."

The ACLU sent a letter to Congress calling the amendment a "discriminatory, unconstitutional attack." LGBT military groups OutServe-SLDN and the American Military Partner Association called it a “vicious attack” designed to block transgender people from enlisting for service at all by denying them basic health care.

In June, the Defense Department said it would delay a policy to allow transgender people to newly enlist in the military. That plan may now be pushed back until 2018.

Hartzler has claimed allowing transgender people into the military saddles taxpayers with medical costs of up to $3.5 billion. She said that stems from $130,000 per transition surgery, plus the cost of hormone treatments, and that providing those treatment could lead troops to take time off and compromise the military's readiness.

Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, said that with the country trillions of dollar in debt, refusing to provide services to transgender people is "really just a priority issue."

But former Defense Sec. Ash Carter said last year, when he announced the policy to allow transgender service, that a study by the RAND Corporation found health care "costs would be minimal" and that "the medical treatment that service members who are currently transgender require is fairly straightforward, well understood.”

Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said before the vote Thursday there is no study showing a $3.5 billion cost.

Hartzler reached for props in her closing comments ahead of the vote. "This is about addressing Korea," she said, holding up a photo of North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. "This is about addressing Russia," she went on, as she flashed a photo of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. And finally, she said, "This is about addressing ISIS," while displaying a picture of masked people in the desert.

"We need every defense dollar to defend against those threats, and not anything else."

This is a developing story. Check back for updates and follow BuzzFeed News on Twitter.

“I am in a relationship, and the challenge is in other people not understanding that we aren’t having sex.”

One of the biggest misconceptions about asexuality is that if you identify somewhere on the ace spectrum, you probably won't ever be in a healthy, happy relationship.

Of course, that's simply not true. A lot of ace people date, get married, have kids, and all that other mushy relationship stuff. Meanwhile, some don't, and that's okay, too. Navigating relationships can be confusing and complicated for everyone — asexuals included.

BBC

Here are their confessions of love, heartbreak, and everything in between:

"I only ever had one boyfriend and we broke up due to my asexuality without me yet realizing I was ace. I just knew that I liked him and I tried to express that physically, but then I'd abruptly get uncomfortable, but not know how to express that. The mix of liking being with him but not always knowing what I wanted to do with him was extremely awkward and uncomfortable, and we finally decided to step back from the relationship for a while as I tried to figure myself out.

Now, I kind of have the opposite problem. I understand myself a lot better, and I want to have a closer relationship with someone, but I don't feel enough attraction to really know who to have that with. I'm pretty certain I only want emotional closeness, cuddles, and maybe kissing — but not sex."

—Anonymous/29/Asexual

—Kat/36/Queer

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Russell Vickery with his current partner, Matthew Parsons.

Robert Knapman

Russell Vickery has a lot of experience with closets. The 59-year-old came out as gay after leaving a 17-year heterosexual marriage, in which he became a dad to three kids.

Then he found himself in a different sort of closet – in a relationship where he says he was on the receiving end of physical and emotional abuse, and feeling like he couldn't tell anyone about what he was going through.

Now Vickery and his current partner of six years, Matthew Parsons, have created a one-man cabaret show about Vickery's experiences of domestic violence.

Vickery is the star and Parsons is the director of My Other Closet, The Cabaret, which opens in Melbourne on July 15.

Vickery and Parsons first started to conceive the show about six years ago, at the same time they met and fell in love.

As the concept started to take shape, they suspected it would be a niche venture.

"We looked at each other and laughed and said, 'Honestly, who is going to go and see a cabaret about domestic violence?" Vickery told BuzzFeed News. "How do you sell that?'"

But the show had a sell-out run in Sydney, and will open in Melbourne with significant support from community and government organisations.

Parsons, who also says he experienced emotional and psychological partner abuse, said the pair worked so well together because they understood each other's demons.

Ultimately, Vickery said, cabaret was the perfect vessel to display a relationship marred by domestic violence in all its complicated darkness – and open up a discussion, or even a chink of light, for others going through the same thing.

"People expect to come to something that is just doom and gloom," Vickery said. "My view on it is that you have to be prepared to go on a journey. You have to be prepared to be open enough to follow me through this journey."

"[My Other Closet] is a real story, it's a big hairy bear guy standing up and saying I was a victim and now I'm a survivor," Parsons said. "You can't deny it is real when that is happening."

Supplied

The first time Vickery says he was left bruised and bleeding by his ex-partner, he had just gone to pains to organise a birthday celebration for the man who said he'd never been fussed over before.

"He had been brought up in a fairly dysfunctional household, and he said to me that he'd never had a birthday cake, he's never been out to an upmarket restaurant," Vickery told BuzzFeed News.

"So I thought, what I'll do is that I'll organise that for you, for your birthday."

The two men had a nice dinner, and went to meet some friends at a local gay pub. But after a few drinks, Vickery started to see "an alcohol-fuelled change" in his partner.

Vickery left first, telling his partner to stay and have a great time with his friends. But a few hours later, the partner came home and all hell broke loose.

"He came home, jumped on the bed, and I woke up with shock," Vickery recounted. "He started ranting and raving. The whole neighbourhood could hear what was going on. I walked into the kitchen to try and calm him down and he punched me in the mouth and broke my nose.

"I tried to get away from him, to the bathroom, to have a look and see what was going on, and noticed that my nose was right across my face. He was all very apologetic. I couldn't straighten it myself, I didn't have the oomph to do it myself. I let him in to come and straighten it up, and by the morning, I was black and blue.

"That was the first 'car accident' I had."

A picture from the promotional shoot for My Other Closet, The Cabaret.

Supplied

There was emotional and psychological abuse, too.

"He spent a lot of time attacking my self esteem so that I was not only somebody who was experiencing some pretty violent reactions from him, but also feeling lesser all the time," he said. "The whole time I was in that relationship, I was pretty much [thinking], 'this is the best I deserve'."

Vickery told BuzzFeed News that he hadn't reported the abuse to the police because he was manipulated into feeling like he'd be responsible if his partner was jailed.

"The emotional manipulation that occurs in these relationships was what led me to not report it because he made me feel that I would be responsible for sending him to jail," he said. "I wanted it to stop, not send him to jail."

Supplied

Vickery felt he had "no real guidelines" for what was an acceptable level of conflict and violence in a relation between two men.

"I kept being told that we're two blokes who are in a relationship, things get physical," he said. "I would go and see other couples and I never noticed bruising on them. I never noticed any of those things, and I thought, 'Perhaps they just don't work the same way that we do'.

"There were moments during all of that where I would think to myself, 'God I wish I wasn't gay. God I wish I hadn't done this'. Because the only gauge I had of a relationship was this one."

Matthew Parsons, who works at the Australian Research Centre for Sex, Health and Society and specialises in LGBTI domestic violence, told BuzzFeed News that an inability to properly gauge abuse in a relationship is common among LGBTI people.

"Because the dominant discourse around DV is men's violence against women, it is very common for queer people to not have a barometer when they go into their first relationships about what is normal and what is abusive," he said.

Supplied

There is also an intense pressure on LGBTI people to be in a "perfect relationship", Parsons said – particularly in the context of an ongoing fight for equal rights in areas like marriage.

Recently, Parsons sent the My Other Closet press release to some friends active in the marriage equality movement. They replied saying they would prefer not to send it out as "it's a little bit off message for us".

"I went, 'Well, that's actually really problematic!'," Parsons said. "We don't have to have this perfect standard of relationships. No one is looking at the extremely high rates of DV in heterosexual relationships and going, you guys shouldn't be allowed to get married."

Anti-marriage equality groups have also taken Vickery's story, without his permission, and used it to argue against recognising same-sex relationships.

"We've found our promotional material on anti-marriage equality sites," Parsons said.

"Even though we've said [in previous interviews that] there's a fear of it being used against us. And they've copied and pasted that and put it up there."

If you or someone you know needs help, you can contact the The National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line on 1800 RESPECT or 1800 737 732.

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

Students shouldn’t expect radical changes on campus sexual assault policies, attorneys say, despite Education Secretary Betsy DeVos signaling that she wants to amend federal policies that critics say are unfair to accused rapists.

Attorneys who represent accused students and colleges say the policies put in place under the Obama administration have been there too long to simply erase, despite DeVos’s vow that change needs to come "quickly." DeVos made her comments after meetings Thursday with groups often at odds with one another over how colleges should handle sexual violence. DeVos’s remarks have stoked fears among rape survivors and their advocates, who fear losing the gains they achieved under President Obama.

A key issue discussed in the meetings was a 2011 directive from the Obama administration detailing what schools must do when a student reports a sexual assault. Survivors' advocates fear that DeVos will rescind the directive, just as her department earlier this year pulled a similar Obama-era mandate guaranteeing protections for transgender students.

Several attorneys told BuzzFeed News, though, that it’s doubtful most schools would alter their approach even if the directive were lifted.

"I don't see things on the ground changing very much, because schools have packaged these sexual misconduct policies and procedures, implemented them, and then presented those to the students," said John Graff, an attorney who advises schools on campus safety regulations.

“This has sort of become the way of doing business."

Advocates for accused students also are pressing DeVos to allow campus tribunals to use a higher standard of proof in determining guilt in sexual assault cases. The 2011 directive allows schools to use the preponderance-of-evidence standard, which means there must be at least a 51% certainty that allegations are true before someone is found culpable. That's a lower standard of proof than in criminal cases in US courts, which require that guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Even before the directive, Graff said many schools already used the lower standard in deciding sexual assault cases, meaning they’re unlikely to change the approach even if DeVos did away with the 2011 guidelines.

Indeed, both a 2002 study and a 2011 survey found that 4 out of 5 universities used the preponderance standard.

Attorney Naomi Shatz, who was present in one of the meetings on Thursday, said there was widespread support among university officials to keep the 2011 federal directive in place.

"A common refrain was, 'Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, let's try to work together to improve the situation,'" said Shatz, who has represented both victims and accused students in campus rape cases. What was clear from the meeting, Shatz said, is that universities have spent the past several years putting those Obama-era mandates in place and don't intend to scrap them all quickly.

There are other concerns accused students' advocates have about campus tribunals, but policy tweaks will have little impact on how tribunals are conducted as long as the people overseeing them remain in place, said attorney Andrew Miltenberg, who frequently represents college students accused of sexual assault.

"The greater issue is that most universities now are staffed with people who have a very definitive view of these cases and how these matters should unfold," said Miltenberg. "Most of the people in the positions of power and decision-making spots, like Title IX coordinators or investigators, or policymakers, are people who have a victims' rights background or victim-centric experiences."

Michelle Owens, a Nashville-based attorney who assists students accused of sexual misconduct, said she hasn’t seen any marked change in schools’ attitudes toward upholding Title IX since DeVos’s confirmation, despite some advocacy groups’ concerns that victims of assault could suffer.

Defenders of accused students, like Families Advocating for Campus Equality, do not think it's realistic that colleges would ever stop handling sexual assault cases altogether.

"Most schools are now definitely on notice that they need to take action on these cases," said Cynthia Garrett, copresident of FACE, who met with DeVos on Thursday. "I think the victims' advocates will find [the department] is not going to take everything away."

#FamGoals.

The Faris-Pratt family

Fun fact: Anna almost cried when she first saw a framed African stick bug on the wall in Chris's apartment--not because she was freaked out, but because she was so excited to find someone else who collected dead bugs.

Silverhub / REX / Shutterstock

Alex Livesey / Getty Images

The Obama family

Fun fact: Barack was previously engaged to another woman before meeting Michelle.

Handout / Getty Images

The Smith family

Fun fact: Will and Jada first met in 1995 when she auditioned to be his girlfriend on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. She didn't end up getting the role because she was considered to be too short.

Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

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Don’t invite your best friend to sleep with you and your partner. Just don’t.

Here's what they had to say about what to do before, during, and after to make it as pleasurable and not-awkward as possible.

Disclaimer: When it comes to threesomes, there are a lot of variables. You might be part of a couple inviting a third person, or maybe you are that third. Or it could just be three single, polyamorous, or otherwise open people having a good time. Not to mention all the possible gender and sexuality combinations. SO, not every item on this list will apply to every person. Just take what you like and leave the rest.

Make sure everyone involved actually wants to have a threesome, and that it's not just to make their partner happy.

"All I want to say is if you're going to have one, make sure you're comfortable with it. I was pressured into a threesome and after it was over none of us were happy or comfortable."

—jasmines4f834770c

FOX / Via klaine.tumblr.com

Also, make sure you have the right intentions and your relationship is solid, because a threesome isn't going to fix anything.

"Do not have a threesome to spice things up with your partner if your relationship is on the rocks – this can cause a lot of tension, jealousy, and hurt feelings."

—alicevonk

FOX / Via society19.com

Set some boundaries ahead of time.

"Some questions to consider: Will everyone be participating evenly or will one partner be mainly a spectator? Is kissing okay? Will it be kept to oral, or is full penetration with the third acceptable? Figuring that kind of thing out before getting into bed helps with a lot of awkward moments."

—Sharon Brown, via email

instagram.com

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The walls were made of sandstone. There was no window, just bars on the door through which a landing stretched out to row upon row of cells. Aged 20, and a thousand miles from home, Keith Biddlecombe was locked up alone – all the queers were.

He was in a military prison in Malta, after being arrested and interrogated while serving in the Royal Navy. It was 1956. But a month after arriving, a guard would unlock his door and deliver news that would ricochet through his life for the next 60 years.

The news concerned an officer that Biddlecombe had had sex with and, under extreme duress, told the authorities about. What the prison warden told him that morning about the officer had immediate, as well as long-term, consequences.

Biddlecombe would have travel back to England, to another prison, to serve out the rest of his sentence.

“I was trying not to think of what he’d said by packing my bags, to do something to take my mind off it,” he says.

He did not know then that he would spend the rest of his life trying to block it out.

Today, Biddlecombe sits in an armchair in his two up, two down house in Brighton, removing his glasses and apologising for the tears he rubs away. He is old now – 81 – but the events of his youth, when Britain hated gay men, still intrude.

It is 50 years this month since the laws forbidding sex between men ­were overturned in England and Wales – laws that led to the conviction of World War II codebreaker Alan Turing, the incarceration of Oscar Wilde, and thousands more jailed like Biddlecombe. “I was imprisoned for what I am,” he says.

He talks slowly, carefully selecting words. His breathing is laboured following a heart bypass, but in almost three hours he does not take a single sip of water. He wants people to know what he – what all of them – endured.

Keith Biddlecombe

Laura Gallant / BuzzFeed

There were four brothers. Biddlecombe, born in 1936, was the youngest; a happy, friendly boy who grew up in the Isle of Wight with a Roman Catholic mother and a father away at war.

Along with six or seven other local children, he would spend endless days on the beach or in the woods playing Robin Hood with bows and arrows.

Later, finding himself to be an average student at the nearby secondary modern school, and with his father and an elder brother in the Royal Navy, Biddlecombe decided to enlist too. It was 1952.

“I could get away from home,” he says, flatly, the youthful excitement of possibilities now heavy with what lay ahead.

“At that time I had never heard the word ‘homosexual’,” he says – nor “queer”. It would be another decade before people used the word “gay” to mean anything other than happy, and another 15 before sex between men became legal.

The law against “buggery” – as the offence was known – dated back to 1533, but in 1885, the related offence of “gross indecency” was added, outlawing any sexual contact between men.

As such, the law did not only mean jail; its impact cascaded out, controlling and suffocating: an all-pervasive prison. It meant silence, ruinous shame for anyone exposed and innumerable sham marriages. Generations of gay men (there was no law against lesbianism) died with the lie. Many killed themselves. None enjoyed the oxygen of liberated love.

There were other words, too: invert, pervert, fairy, abomination. Biddlecombe had never heard those either, growing up in rural postwar Isle of Wight. “Although I’d been a practising homosexual since I was 9 or 10!” he says.

There was a boy in his school called Martin Smith. “He introduced me to what was going on, and I thought, This is great. It’s what I wanted.” But somehow Biddlecombe knew that it “must be wrong”. He told no one.

Ten days before his 17th birthday, Biddlecombe joined the navy; the move whisked him around the world and set him on a path that would lead to prison, and worse.

At first, however, it led mostly to a much-needed education, and much-wanted sex.

“During our training we had a lecture by a doctor and he told us about ‘social diseases’. He said, ‘Don’t play with another fellow because one of you will stay like it.’” The doctor also used the word “homosexual”.

“I came out of that room thinking, My god, I’ve been one of those for years and didn’t know it.” He did not realise, however, that gay men exist everywhere. “I thought homosexuals were only in the navy.”

After training first in barracks in Portsmouth and then on HMS Indefatigable, Biddlecombe was assigned a ship, the Mauritius, and sent out to sea. But despite now knowing he was gay, he had no idea how to act upon it onboard ship. “I was thinking, How do you recognise somebody [as gay]? How do I make it happen?” The question would soon be answered.

HMS Mauritius in the 1950s

Henry Bush / Associated Newspapers /REX/Shutterstock

As a “messman” – a junior seaman who serves food and clears plates – Biddlecombe had to carry trays of food from the galley to the men.

“I was going up these stairs and couldn’t do anything with my hands,” he says. “There was a fellow there and when he came level he kissed me and held the kiss until I got up onto the floor. I spoke to him and he told me what was going on, that there were gays on the ship. I thought, Fantastic! I don’t have to look for them – I’ve found one!”

From then, he started learning who else there was like him.

“Life sort of blossomed,” he says, smiling and looking out the window for a moment. Figurines perch behind him, a patterned carpet beneath, and above, in the attic, hangs a multitude of colourful costumes ­– a clue to the life that eventually awaited.

As well as clandestine meetings with other sailors onboard, Biddlecombe found further dalliances ashore.

“There was a navy hostel where you could go, you paid 5 or 10 bob to stay the night – these were just chalets and doors were open. If the door was open, you looked in, and if you fancied it, you carried on.” Such trysts were rife, he says, even among heterosexual navy men.

“Those married men went ashore and got drunk and screwed whatever came to hand. They accepted it [sex between men] quite happily. There were very, very few people that I ever came across that didn’t understand it. It was all part of their life as well as ours.”

Assured of his feelings for men and certain he did not want to marry a woman, the navy offered Biddlecombe the prospect of an alternative life, for a while at least. “I was happy, thinking it’s going to give me a living for 12 years,” he says.

But then in 1956, after a trip to Singapore, he was sent to Malta on the Reggio, part of the Amphibious Warfare Squadron. Life – and sex – continued as normal for a while until a man, who to this day Biddlecombe will not name, propositioned him.

“He had just got a ‘dear John’ letter from his girlfriend and he came to me because he wanted sex. Against my better judgment we got together. He wasn’t gay. All he wanted was a port in a storm.”

One night they went up onto one of the mess decks that were empty. “We went in there, closed the door,” he says. “I was lying on one bunk, he was lying on the other. We had shorts on.” They did not have sex.

Keith Biddlecombe aged 20 on the Reggio

Keith Biddlecombe

“We were just lying there thinking of going to sleep,” he says. But then the officer of the watch came round, with the petty officer, to do inspections ­– the former of whom Biddlecombe had previously had sex with. “He saw us and tried to shove the [petty] officer back out but [the petty officer] also had a torch and said ‘there’s something there’. On came the lights.”

In an instant, Biddlecombe knew what this meant. “I got up and said, 'Right, that’s it, we’re caught, get on with it.'”

But he did not know what the procedure was; that first they would be questioned separately by their superiors, or that it would not only be an interrogation. “They said, ‘We want the names of the people you’ve slept with.’”

Without supplying these names, Biddlecombe was told, he would be given five years in prison. But if he gave the names, the sentence would be reduced to 12 months. Initially, Biddlecombe refused, uncomfortable about incriminating anyone. But then, he says, “My divisional officer said, ‘It’s OK because all they’ve got to do is to deny anything happened.’”

There was an army officer who Biddlecombe had been with ashore, so, trusting the advice from his officer, he told them about this, although he did not know the officer’s name.

He also did not know that as part of the investigating procedure he and the man he was caught with would then be taken to the sick bay, and that the ship’s doctor, with officers present, would perform an examination on the 20-year-old so intrusive that he would begin to mentally disassociate from what was happening.

“It was a metal cone,” he says, blankly, as if trying to reject the memory, “which they put in." He looks away. “Then they pulled the handles apart.”

Biddlecombe does not elaborate at first. He starts to change the subject, reverting back to when they were caught, before eventually returning to what happened in the sick bay.

“I had to grit my teeth and close my mind down,” he says. “It was as painful as you can imagine. A gross violation of me.” After looking inside him, they took the metal cone out.

“They said there was bruising which could not have been caused by anything other than sex.”

He begins to describe the experience as humiliating but is frustrated at the inadequacy of the word and, unable to conjure a better one, gives up. With a look of detachment he adds, “I tried to cope.”

The other man, he says, came out screaming. He was shouting, too: “I’m not a fucking queer.”

The law did not care. The government, the judicial system, the navy, and society generally did not recognise sexual orientations or identities, only behaviour that transgressed the sexual norm.

Next was the court martial: Military law mirrored criminal law in this matter and so the following day, the two men stood trial in Fort St. Angelo, Malta.

Biddlecombe thinks he pleaded not guilty to the charges – gross indecency and buggery – but he cannot remember. He describes the process with such disconnection, in part because they were barely questioned at all (“you stand there, you’re charged”), it is as if he wasn’t even there.

“The lawyers were doing all the chatting,” he says. “It was very strange – I’d never been to court before.”

The charge of buggery was reduced in court to attempted buggery, through lack of evidence, but both men were found guilty of this and of gross indecency. As expected, they were given 12 months. Biddlecombe’s papers were docked, the corners cut, removing any references and in turn little hope of rehabilitating himself on the outside world.

The other man was immediately sent back to England to serve his sentence. But Biddlecombe was kept in a military prison in Malta – the jail with the sandstone walls. He was held there to await the trial of the army officer he had told his superior about. Even without a name supplied, the military authorities had deciphered who it was and captured him.

During that month, in a cell measuring 8 feet by 6, all Biddlecombe could hear at night were the guards – a tranquillity that was later not afforded him. In daytime he and the other inmates were set to work, making football nets. Sometimes they could stretch their legs in the courtyard.

But it was here in his cell in Malta, that after that first month, the warden unlocked his door one morning to deliver the news about the army officer that would stay with him forever.

“He said, ‘Pack your bags, you’re going home.’ And I said, ‘Well, what about the trial?’ And he said, ‘No trial. The man shot himself. Blew his brains out.’”

The news itself hit like a bullet.

“I sat down on my bunk in my cell and cried my eyes out,” he says. Although he tried to distract himself with packing, it could not stop the torrent of taunting thoughts.

“I thought, If I hadn’t said anything he would still be alive. It’s my fault. I never thought in my wildest dreams that someone would do that because of me, that a man would kill himself because he slept with me for one night.”

“It was all mixed up: I thought, Why would he do that? Life being gay is not that bad, you can cope – at least, I can cope, why couldn’t he?”

Biddlecombe tries to conjure an explanation.

“Being a military man, a military family, 60 odd years ago, if his family found out he was gay… It would be shame. He couldn’t hack it.”

He looks around the room, scanning back and forth as if still looking for reasons.

“I have tried hard not to think about it,” he says. “A lot of it is blocked out. It was my only way of coping.” But then he stops and looks straight ahead again.

“That man’s death I have carried with me for the last 61 years.”

Back in England, he was sent to Shepton Mallet prison in Somerset. Built in the 17th century, it was originally for civilian use, but from 1945 it became a military jail, housing nearly 300 inmates, some court-martialled for murder. It also contained an execution block.

There was a similar-sized cell for Biddlecombe here, but with a small window high up. Again he was locked up alone, in keeping with five other men who were also serving sentences for the same offences. Everyone else shared, ensuring they knew why those six men were there.

Biddlecombe was still 20. Court-martialled, disgraced, and imprisoned, he had to write to his parents in the Isle of Wight. He was only allowed to send one letter per week, with a pencil, on a small sheet of paper.

“I explained that I’d been dismissed of Her Majesty’s service, and imprisoned for 12 months for gross indecency and buggery,” he says. “I said, ‘If you want to see me I will come home. If not, I will make my own way in the world.’”

His mother wrote back.

“She said, ‘We all love you. We want you to come home.’”

This wasn’t the only letter he received. A woman he had known most of his life, a family friend who had looked after him as a young boy when he became a chorister, who would give him lunch after church, wrote a letter. One line he has remembered his whole life: “She said. ‘We are not ashamed of you, we are ashamed for you.’”

Like her, not everyone in England agreed with the buggery and indecency laws. Following the second world war, it was being implemented with such increasing frequency that by the mid-1950s more than 1,000 men a year were being imprisoned. Some, like Alan Turing, who had helped secure Britain’s victory against the Nazis, chose chemical castration over jail. Turing subsequently killed himself.

While Biddlecombe served his sentence, a report was being prepared that would begin the process of overturning four centuries of legal oppression against gay men.

The Wolfenden report, as it became known, was commissioned by the Conservative government, and comprised a committee of experts, led by Lord Wolfenden, who conducted interviews with people affected by the laws. The report concluded that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence”. But the government, at the time, ignored the advice.

Biddlecombe, like more than a thousand others, remained in jail. The relative peace of the Maltese prison was not replicated in Shepton Mallet.

“There was one evening where a chap I’d worked with in the workshop started shouting, which went on to screaming,” he says. “He screamed all night. I thought, For goodness' sake, shut up, not realising that the man was going insane.”

The man was taken away in a straitjacket.

For Biddlecombe, the immediate fight was to keep his sanity. He starts to explain how he compartmentalised his thinking into three areas: focusing on what he had to do, which in his case was working in the prison mending boots and exercising when he could; dreaming and hoping for things in an attempt to cheer himself up; and ignoring thoughts of the outside world and what might lie ahead.

“I’m a sensible sort,” he says. “That’s how I survived.”

He also had sex. Every single week. On Thursdays only, inmates could do three things: play games, change their underwear, and shower. The warden would send the prisoners down landing by landing.

“Then we six [the ones serving sentences for buggery or gross indecency] were sent to shower together,” he says. “The screw who was a naval chief petty officer – and gay – took us down, we had a shower, he then turned off the water, turned on the steam and said, ‘Right fellows, you’ve got 10 minutes.’” It wasn’t long enough for anything too involved, says Biddlecombe, smiling, “but enough”.

His 21st birthday also happened to fall on a Thursday, a coincidence that led to an event upon which the rest of his life would pivot.

Laura Gallant / BuzzFeed

We’ve got you covered.

Wearing a binder can be a real pain, physically and logistically. But finding and buying a binder shouldn't be.

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But, it's not like you can just pop into your local convenience store to snag one.

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And as tempting as it is to do so, you should never DIY a binder for yourself.

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So where do you get one if you're short on cash or trying to be discreet? Maybe you're not being supported by your family, or you're unable to be open about your identity.

Here are a few places to check out and get you started.

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From movies to books to sage advice.

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The building blocks for your kit:

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V. Advice & Resources

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The US Justice Department rolled out a new policy Wednesday that allows the government to seize more possessions and money under federal authority, in some cases circumventing state or local laws, even when a person has not been charged or convicted of a crime.

Officials argue this will allow police to seize money, weapons, and valuable property from criminal enterprises that have amassed the goods illegally, thereby weakening underworld networks that contribute to violence. The new policy also includes several provisions intended to limit abuse, which had led the Obama administration to limit the practice.

Backed by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the new policy largely reverses a decision by the Obama administration in 2015 to halt most so-called adoptive forfeitures. In adoptive forfeitures, local law enforcement agencies ask the Justice Department to use federal law to seize property of people suspected of committing a crime — and then return most of the proceeds to the local police.

The practice has been assailed for incentivizing wanton looting of low-level, nonviolent criminals — particularly drug offenders — or people who were innocent, while allowing officials to sidestep state limits on seizing property. Former Attorney General Eric Holder said in early 2015 that curbing the seizures was a means of "safeguarding civil liberties.”

It reverses an Obama-era rule designed to protect civil liberties.

During a briefing on the policy at the Justice Department Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein denied that the program provided “perverse” profit incentives to state and local law enforcement to seek out cash and property to seize.

He said that the underlying motivation of the program was to reduce crime, and if some resource were funneled back into law enforcement for legitimate purposes, that was appropriate.

“There is going to be scrutiny to make sure that every forfeiture that is adopted by the federal government complies with the Constitution, and particularly with the Fourth Amendment,” Rosenstein told reporters.

Rosenstein acknowledged that there had been "instances" in the past when money from forfeitures had been improperly used by some law enforcement agencies.

“I think that’s true, if you look at any federal program, some proportion of it is going to be used improperly, some proportion of it is going to be lost to fraud," he said. "I don’t think that’s the right way to measure the effectiveness of the program. You need to look at the overall impact of the program.”

He added that if local governments use the money from forfeitures to buy "margarita machines," that would be inappropriate. "But I think that if you look at the volume of forfeitures and the amount of money and property that is seized, a very small portion of those cases are cases that implicate those kind of concerns,” he said.

Sessions foreshadowed his policy in a speech in Minneapolis on Monday. "We plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures," he told an association of local prosecutors. "Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate as is sharing with our partners."

Conservative and progressive critics have long taken umbrage with the civil administrative process behind forfeitures that can rely on little or no evidence to strip innocent people — or people with tangential links to crime — of money and property and leave them with limited recourse to get their property back.

Rosenstein said seizures weren't always accompanied by criminal prosecutions because, for instance, drug dealers will transport cash and drugs separately to evade prosecution. But he said that seizing cash and property can nevertheless accomplish public safety goals because it means those assets are no longer available to criminals.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah cautioned the Justice Department on Monday not to overstep its bounds as it sets new policy, noting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wanted the court to hear a case challenging asset forfeiture's constitutionality.

"Instead of revising forfeiture practices in a manner to better protect Americans’ due process rights, the DOJ seems determined to lose in court before it changes its policies for the better,” Lee said in a statement sent Wednesday after the new policy was announced.


The new policy, which was codified in a memo from Deborah Connor to various wings of the Justice Department and US Attorneys on Wednesday, says federal adoptions of seized assets "is authorized whenever the conduct giving rise to the seizure violates federal law."

Connor then lays out a series of safeguards that may limit the potential for overreach. Local officials must provide information about why they believe there is probable cause of a crime that justifies the seizure, the policy says. There are also limits on seizing cash or property worth less than $10,000, such as by requiring a warrant, an arrest, presence of contraband, an admissions of guilt, or approval from a US Attorney's Office.

The policy does not require a person be indicted or convicted of a crime for the Justice Department to adopt the seizure under a civil proceeding.

However, the Justice Department says it will also expedite decisions on adoptions "in order to give individual property owners an opportunity to challenge the seizure," according to Connor's letter.

Asked if there was data that supported the idea that the Obama administration's 2015 policy hadn’t worked, Rosenstein said there wasn’t, but he noted that there weren’t any long-term studies that supported the adoption of the 2015 rules either. Pointing to a rise in drug overdose deaths in recent years, the deputy attorney general denied that the new policy was just political pandering to law enforcement.

“No, this is not an effort to appease any particular constituency. It’s an effort to empower law enforcement to use a tool that we think can have an impact.”

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A motion set for debate at the New South Wales Labor conference later this month could see the party adopt unprecedented measures to crack down on gay conversion therapy in the state.

The motion was devised by Rainbow Labor – a group of Labor members dedicated to promoting LGBTI rights within the party – and is being put forward by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU).

If passed at the conference on July 29 and 30, NSW Labor would adopt four clear measures aimed at eradicating gay conversion therapy, including making it a criminal offence to conduct such therapy and deregistering medical professionals involved in the practice.

But a dispute is brewing on how the motion should be dealt with, with Labor's left faction vowing to support it and the right faction saying it should instead be referred to the shadow attorney general for further consideration.

"Happily, the NSW Labor Platform already condemns 'ex-gay therapy' and has taken steps to investigate punishing those who practice it," the motion reads.

"However, set against the backdrop of an increasingly and enduringly queerphobic political climate, it is time to take a stronger – and clearer – stance on an issue that has loitered in the shadows for too long."

The text of the proposed platform amendment is as follows:

NSW Labor will:

• Legislate to criminalise gay conversion therapy by introducing a criminal offence for people conducting ex-gay therapy, with an aggravated offence where it involves people under the age of 18;

• Remove all government and departmental funding to organisations that provide such therapy;

• Remove legislative exemptions for Christian clinical organisations that allow them to practice gay conversion therapy; and

• Deregister any counsellors, psychologists or other registered medical professionals involved in the practice of ex-gay therapy.

The NSW Labor Health Committee, a policy committee which considered the health motions to be heard and voted on at the conference, has recommended the motion be referred to the shadow attorney general, Paul Lynch.

But George Simon, who leads the NSW Left faction as its general secretary, told BuzzFeed News the referral was a delaying move.

"It’s a tactic to fob it off, and not commit to it either way," he said.

Georgia Kriz, an executive member of Rainbow Labor, said the hesitation around the motion was "a hangover from our more conservative days".

"Although the Labor party has come a really long way on a lot of issues and made a lot of change, there are still some dinosaurs hanging around who don’t represent the majority of what Labor members think," she said. "But despite that they still have a lot of power."

BuzzFeed News contacted shadow health minister Walt Secord, a member of the Right faction, to ask why the Health Committee had recommended the motion be referred to the shadow attorney general. He declined to comment, instead referring questions to Lynch.

But the shadow attorney general, who is part of the Left faction, told BuzzFeed News: "I haven’t been advised, consulted or approached about the proposal by either the Health Committee or the AMWU."

"Accordingly as shadow attorney general it is inappropriate to comment on a Health Committee recommendation that hasn’t been considered or determined by Annual Conference," Lynch added.

NSW Labor general secretary Kaila Murnain, who leads the Right faction, did not respond to a request for comment.

Ehrlif / Getty Images

Kriz told BuzzFeed News that Rainbow Labor had proposed the motion because many people think gay conversion therapy is no longer an issue.

"There’s not a lot of interest in it – not because people don’t care, but because people don’t think it's a thing," she said.

"Once we dug around a little bit and reached out to a few groups, we realised that it’s not that its ended, it's just taken on a different form and shifted underground. Really the reason we're focusing on it is to bring a little bit of it back into the light, and trying to take steps to eradicate it."

Due to its underground nature and the various forms it takes, conversion therapy is notoriously difficult to legislate against. Earlier this year, Victoria introduced a new health complaints commissioner, with expanded powers to crack down on dodgy health practitioners, including gay conversion therapy.

Conversion therapy is opposed by the Australian Psychological Association, the Australian Medical Association, and the United Nations, among numerous other professional health and human rights bodies.

A Columbia Law School project collating conversion therapy research found that among people who had undergone such treatment, there was a prevalence of depression, anxiety, social isolation, decreased capacity for intimacy, and suicidal thoughts and behaviours.

Timothy Jones, a researcher at La Trobe University, is in the final stages of research into gay conversion therapy in Australia.

He told BuzzFeed News that, contrary to popular belief, conversion therapy is "a pretty mainstream idea" in Australian evangelical and Pentecostal churches.

"It’s also different to what people think. It’s rarely medical in terms of electroshock therapy and things like that," Jones said. "It’s often the line between psychological counselling and spiritual counselling that’s really unclear."

Jones added that everyone interviewed for his research project had experienced "quite significant harms" from their involvement.

"We really want to address conservative religious groups who are well meaning," he said. "They’re not trying to be horrible to queer people. They think they're being kind and helping people, but actually they’re harming people."

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on her first day on the job, February 8, 2017.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

The top prosecutors for 19 states and the District of Columbia sent a letter on Wednesday to US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos demanding she keep Obama-era campus rape rules in place.

The 20 attorneys general, all Democrats, said they worried DeVos would rush through reforms undermining protections for rape victims in college. New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said DeVos has taken a "reckless approach to governing," and that rolling back mandates put in place under the Obama administration would "put students in danger."

"It's consistent with the new Trump policies where they are really leaving vulnerable populations to fend for themselves, and that's simply un-American," Balderas, the letter’s coauthor, told BuzzFeed News.

DeVos is considering changes to how the department enforces the gender equity law Title IX as it pertains to school responses to sexual assault reports. Last week, she and Candice Jackson, the department's top civil rights official, met with rape survivors, students accused of assault, and attorneys to discuss sexual violence on campuses. One of those meetings included members of a men's rights group, outraging victims' advocates and Democratic lawmakers.

Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania's attorney general who organized the letter, told BuzzFeed News the signatories were prepared to take legal action to ensure Title IX protections stay in place. "The 20 AGs who signed that letter were putting Secretary DeVos on notice that we support the current regulations, and if she rolls them back, then she will have us to deal with further," Shapiro said. When asked what he meant by that, Shapiro replied, "We'll see what actions she takes. What I can tell you is we are committed to ensuring these protections stay in place. And if need be, we'll take legal action to try and protect victims."

The state attorneys general want DeVos to retain a 2011 directive that laid out rules for how schools should handle sexual assault cases. They also want the department not to roll back a 2014 document issued by the White House’s now-disbanded campus rape task force that expanded on the 2011 mandates.

Critics claim the Title IX rules have skimped on due-process protections for accused students, while victims’ advocates have insisted the federal directives are critical in providing rights for campus rape victims.

"While we recognize that there is a great deal more that can be done to protect students and agree on the importance of ensuring that investigations are conducted fairly, a rushed, poorly-considered effort to roll back current policies sends precisely the wrong message to all students," the attorneys general wrote in the letter to DeVos. "Yet there is every indication that is exactly the approach your Department is taking."

The attorneys general focused on comments Jackson made last week to the New York Times, suggesting that 90% of campus rape cases were instances of drunken regret. Jackson apologized and said her remarks were "flippant." The third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Patty Murray of Washington, called on DeVos to fire Jackson over the comments.

The group stopped short of calling for Jackson’s resignation, writing, "we have serious concerns as to whether Ms. Jackson can be entrusted to oversee a fair, thorough process in evaluating the Department’s policies in this area."

The attorneys asked DeVos not to take any significant steps without further input from people affected by the policies, and suggested convening a bipartisan group of state attorneys general.

Many of the attorneys general are also part of a lawsuit against DeVos over changes to college financial aid rules that were meant to protect defrauded students.

LINK: Betsy DeVos Wants To “Quickly” Change The Way The Government Treats Campus Sexual Assault

Jina Yun for BuzzFeed News

My name is Lauren. I am 22 years old. I am a recent college graduate. I am a writer and an activist on my good days. I am an older sister and a friend.

I am also autistic and a lesbian. It’s certainly no picnic, but hey, I try my best. And no, I do not wish I was "normal."

Jina Yun for BuzzFeed News

Disability and sexuality are topics that are often kept separate. Autistic people, or people with any disability, having sex lives makes a lot of abled folks uncomfortable — and many straight folks can't separate the idea of gay, bi, or queer identity from sex.

Jina Yun for BuzzFeed News

Once a classmate in my women's studies class asked the TA if it's possible for people with mental disabilities to fall in love. Though I was upset to hear her ask that — and technically know that the answer is yes — I sometimes ask the same question myself. When so much of the LGBT movement as a whole is centered around being in love, it’s hard not to feel a little left out.

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Because I struggle to understand dating norms and have a small pool of potential partners, I sometimes fear that I will never find love. I’m the same age my mom was when she met my dad, and I have never been in a relationship.

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My autistic and lesbian identities are intertwined by people’s desire to get rid of both groups. Whether it’s conversion therapy or applied behavioral analysis, parents shell out money to torture their children into compliance with what they deem "normal." There are parents who would rather their child potentially die of a preventable disease than have them be like me.

Jina Yun for BuzzFeed News

Even in conversations with people who consider themselves to be our allies, we’re so often told “don't let your sexuality define you.” Some people who are not in the LGBT community respond to our movement with dismissive questions like “Why do you need to label yourself? Why can’t we all just be humans?”

The equivalent for the autistic community is usually people who are not autistic insisting that we refer to ourselves as “people with autism” — rather than "autistic" — because we're "people first." As if being autistic implies you’re not a person. When people talk like this, all I hear is “I want to sweep your difference from me under the rug.”

Jina Yun for BuzzFeed News

Neurotypical and cisgender, heterosexual people often operate under the assumption that our suffering is caused by our differences, and not by a world that hasn't been built for people like us.

But why should I want to like men? Why should I wish my brain worked like everyone else’s?

Jina Yun for BuzzFeed News

Has it ever occurred to you that I might like being different, even though sometimes it hurts? I love my love for women. I love my androgynous presentation that is made of the pieces of masculinity and femininity that I like best. I love my active imagination. I love my ability to see patterns where others do not, and to think outside the box.

Jina Yun for BuzzFeed News

I will keep fighting for my right to love these things about myself no matter how uncomfortable it makes others feel. ●

The good news is you’re not alone.

Everyone's coming-out story is different, but you can pretty much guarantee most people felt super nervous before taking that first little step out of the closet.

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If you're considering sending a quick text, just to get it over with, read these first.

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If you need to hear some coming-out stories that will warm your cold, dead heart — here you go.

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