LGBTQ Breaking News Service

LANSING — A Michigan prison officer says she was forced to quit her job over employee harassment that targeted her because she is gay and put her at heightened risk of sexual violence.

Bridget Cadena could soon get her day in court as jury trials resume around the state. Her lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Corrections was scheduled to go to trial in Jackson County Circuit Court in January, but the case was adjourned because of the pandemic.

Cadena alleges a corrections officer identified her as a lesbian while talking to a kitchen worker in front of male prisoners at Parnall Correctional Facility near Jackson. Separately, the same officer referred to her using a derogatory term used against gay women, prompting similar mocking and sexually threatening remarks from prisoners, who were within earshot, the suit alleges.

“These comments … undermined plaintiff’s ability to perform her duties and maintain discipline and respect with the inmates,” and caused Cadena “valid increased fear of being raped and/or sexually assaulted by an inmate,” the suit alleges.

Cadena complained, but officials did not interview her and she believes no serious investigation took place, the suit alleges. 

The department, which is the only defendant in the case, has denied the allegations in court filings. It says it conducted a “robust, two-month investigation” into Cadena’s complaint but “could not find sufficient supporting evidence.”

Cadena, who joined the department in 2014 and transferred to Parnall in July 2016, alleges she was forced to resign in June 2017, at the recommendation of her doctor, because of stress and anxiety attacks from the harassment.

More:Michigan prisoners received $22.6M in stimulus checks; state clawed back $6.1M

More:Black Michigan prison officer: I was demoted after reporting co-worker’s use of ‘N’ word

“Leaving that job … was the saddest day of my life,” she said in a news release. “It destroyed me. I was so sad. I didn’t want to leave even though I was going through everything I went through” because “this was my career.”

Cadena, of Oakland County, sued the department in February 2020, alleging sex discrimination under the state civil rights law, a hostile work environment, and retaliation.

Jackson County Circuit Judge Richard LaFlamme refused to dismiss the case in December, though he described the case as “extremely tenuous,” partly because prisoners could have learned about Cadena’s sexual orientation from sources other than the corrections officer Cadena complained about. The Michigan Court of Appeals refused to hear the department’s appeal of that decision in April.

“This incessant, egregious and blatant discrimination against Ms. Cadena was made far worse by the inaction of the Michigan Department of Corrections,” said Royal Oak attorney Jim Rasor, whose firm represents Cadena.

“Instead of doing a proper investigation, instead of relocating her to a safer environment, they allowed this to continue until Bridget had no choice but to resign.”

The complaint alleges that after Cadena complained about the officer who made the remarks, she was informed by her union representative that the officer had been told to stay away from her. But that did not happen, and she was forced to interact with the officer on a daily basis, the complaint alleges

A captain who supervised Cadena saw those interactions and did not intervene, though the captain separately showed another officer a photo of Cadena that he had on his computer and said he found her attractive, the complaint alleges.

In a court filing, the department said that Cadena testified that after she made  her complaint, her one-on-one communications with the officer were professional and infrequent and he made no further comments about her sexual orientation.

The department said Cadena was engaged to a female co-worker on the same shift and had shared her sexual orientation with co-workers. Her attempts to blame one co-worker for “any and all prison knowledge of her sexual orientation” is “complete conjecture,” the department said in a court filing.

At a December hearing, Assistant Attorney General Bryan Beach, representing the department, said “dealing with the hostile comments from prisoners is part of the job,” and Cadena did not request a reassignment or ask for help.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.  Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter. 

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With a mix of delight and awe, Kopay watched it all unfold from his small apartment in Palm Springs, Calif.

“Looking at all of this, seeing the reaction to Carl’s announcement, it gives me a surge of contentment,” he said. “But I have to say, I thought this would happen 40 years ago.”

He noted the clutch of retired N.F.L. players who have recently made their sexual identity publicly known, and the large numbers in women’s sports like basketball and tennis. But an active player coming out in the N.F.L., a league still basking in a soup of toxic masculinity and macho posturing? For Kopay, a seeker of true change in sports, that has always been the holy grail.

“I thought that when I came out it would not be long before players in the league followed me,” he said. “But I had to wait. Oh, did I have to wait.”

Kopay, who was a running back, recalled the 1960s and ’70s, when he lined up for a series of teams in an N.F.L. career that stretched nearly a decade. He didn’t hide his sexuality. Most of his teammates and coaches knew. He remembers that Vince Lombardi, who coached Kopay in Washington, was particularly supportive.

But going public? Not a chance.

Years later, Sam tried to break that mold. When he told his truth after his final season at Missouri, a profound societal shift was underway. A little over a year later, the Supreme Court would finally make gay marriage legal in the United States.

Still, the football world was not ready. On draft night, TV cameras zoomed in as Sam kissed his boyfriend on national television. Cue the bleating anger from some fans, the weak-kneed squeamishness from some retrograde corners of the league.

The Bank of England began circulating its new £50 bank notes featuring World War II codebreaker Alan Turing on Wednesday, which would have been the pioneering math genius’ 109th birthday.

Often referred to as the “father of computer science and artificial intelligence,” Turing was hailed a war hero and granted an honor by King George VI at the end of the war for helping to defeat the Nazis. Despite this, however, he died as a disgraced “criminal” — simply for being a gay man. 

“I’m delighted that Alan Turing features on our new £50 bank note. He was a brilliant scientist whose thinking still shapes our lives today,” Sarah John, Bank of England’s chief cashier, told NBC News. “However, his many contributions to society were still not enough to spare him the appalling treatment to which he was subjected simply because he was gay. By placing him on this new £50, we are celebrating his life and his achievements, of which we should all be very proud.” 

Born in London on June 23, 1912, Turing graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1934. At the start of WWII, he joined the British government’s wartime operation, designing a code-breaking machine known as “Bombe.” Bombe went on to supply the Allied Forces with significant military intelligence, processing, at its peak, 89,000 coded messages per day.

At the end of the war, Turing was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, an honor granted by the royal family to a selected few for their contribution to science, arts and public service. 

In the years that followed, Turing carried on working as a computer scientist. His design for the Automatic Computing Engine, or ACE, would have been the first and most advanced computer for his time. But his colleagues at the National Physical Laboratory feared the engineering was too complex and decided to build a much smaller pilot ACE instead. Their competitors at Manchester University consequently won the race, and the disheartened Turing had joined their forces as deputy director. Turing also wrote the first programming manual. 

“What we really don’t realize is how this moment and Turing’s vision changed the entire world. Before this, literally nobody in the world had imagined that a single machine could apply countless strings of abstract symbols. Now we know them as programs,” according to David Leslie of the Alan Turing Institute.

But being an outstanding computer scientist and a war hero didn’t spare Turing from what some have called a “witch hunt” of gay and bisexual men in the U.K., which led to the imprisonment of thousands of gay men and those suspected of being gay throughout the 1950s.

In January 1952, Turing was prosecuted for indecency over his relationship with another man in Manchester. Despite being referred to as a “national asset” during this trial by character witness Hugh Alexander, the head of cryptanalysis at the Government Communications Headquarter, Turing was persecuted. 

In March of that year, Turing pleaded guilty and, to avoid imprisonment, had to agree to be chemically castrated by taking a hormonal treatment designed to suppress his libido. 

His criminal record disqualified him from working for a governmental intelligence agency. Disgraced and disenfranchised, he took his own life by cyanide poisoning June 8, 1954, in his home in Manchester. He was 41. 

Homosexuality was decriminalized in the U.K. more than a decade later June 14, 1967. 

Despite his tragic end, Turing’s legacy as a wartime hero and the father of computer science has lived on, and the British government has attempted to right its past wrongs. In 2009, more than a half century after Turing’s death, then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, speaking on behalf of the government, publicly apologized for Turing’s “utterly unfair” treatment. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a royal pardon.

Featuring him on a £50 bank note marks another milestone. This is the first time that a gay man is featured on a British bank note. It has been welcomed by parts of the LGBTQ community as a symbol of the country facing up to its dark past of the horrific persecution of gay men.  

This visionary computer and artificial intelligence pioneer, once criminalized and disgraced, is now widely celebrated. In Turing’s own words from 1949: “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”

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Jared Polis, the 43rd Democratic Governor for Colorado, was born May 12, 1975, at Boulder Community Hospital. He is a tried and true Coloradoan and has been making history since he first hit the ground running and has in many ways been leading the charge for social change throughout his career.

Polis began his foray into making history in the political world in 2008 when he became the first same-sex parent to be elected to the U.S.Congress.

In 2018, Polis again made cultural history when he became the first openly gay person to be elected a Governor in the nation. He was also the second open member of the LGBTQ community to become Governor, following Governor Kate Brown, Governor of Oregon.

He is also the first Jewish person to be elected as Governor of Colorado.

He has been an outspoken and influential proponent of education, human rights, civil liberties and a vocal opponent of the Patriot Act throughout his career. Of course, he has also been a defender of LGBTQ rights.

As a continuation of our spotlight of LGBTQ members of our Estes Park Community, we thought it would be appropriate to shine a light on our state leader, who has done much to help our community get through some of the natural disasters we have endured during his tenure in office. We reached out to his office and were granted a short, exclusive interview with Governor Polis.

We started the interview by asking the Governor about his experiences growing up as a member of the LGBTQ community here in Northern Colorado. Having just published a history of Pride in Colorado, we started by asking about his experiences with the Pride celebrations here in Colorado. Polis spent his high school years in California, so his experience with Pride here in Colorado was limited.

“I attended my first Pride events in the late ’90s and early 2000s,” he said, “but it wasn’t nearly as big of an event as it is now.”

The conversation then turned to some of the struggles the state has overcome protecting LGBTQ rights.

“We all remember in 1992 when Colorado became the hate state because the voters overruled the civil rights protections that Denver, Boulder, and other cities had. It was a long road back.” Polis continued, “Colorado was one of the earlier states to protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination in the workplace with fully inclusive protections. It has really been a national discussion, of course, but I think in Colorado, people have really learned to meet their friends and neighbors where they are and accept them for who they are.”

Polis added that “It is sad that in some states, that in particular, the transgender community is being targeted and in some cases being excluded from being able to participate in sports and being discriminated against. In our state, we focus on a Colorado for all, that means you be you—and regardless of what your gender is, or who you love, there is a place for you in Colorado.”

As long as I’ve been a parent, I’ve always wanted to do everything I can to raise kids that feel comfortable in their own skin and feel loved unconditionally, kids who will be able to exist just as they are in our family and in the world knowing they are wrapped up in love by those they count on to support them. 

Kids who have the confidence to stand up for others when they need to.

Part of that means teaching them a healthy, normalizing view of LGBT individuals so that they feel free to safely explore their own identities as they grow up and so that they can be better allies to their friends, loved ones, and community.

As a cisgender, heterosexual person who isn’t always a perfect parent or a perfect ally, I know that inclusive, supportive parenting takes work, and I know that starts with listening to LGBT voices.

Last year for Pride Month, guest blogger Fernande Galindo stopped by Coffee Nebula to share an LGBT perspective on raising LGBT-affirming kids in this incredible post. 

This year, I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned on my journey for readers who are, like me, cisgender or hetero parents working on raising LGBT-affirming kids while learning to be better allies themselves.

Thanks to an amazing community of LGBT friends and loved ones and a ton of great resources from LGBT educators, I’ve managed to put together some of the things I’ve learned. 

But first, let’s quickly define a couple of key terms:

Cis- is derived from the Latin meaning “on the side of.” Sometimes shortened to just “cis,” cisgender describes a person whose gender identity reflects their sexual assignment at birth. This term is often combined with “het,” short for heterosexual, to mean a person who identifies as their birth-assigned sex and is only or primarily romantically attracted to the opposite sex or gender. 

• LGBT-Affirming

In a literal sense, “to affirm” means to offer emotional support or encouragement. To be LGBT-affirming means to acknowledge and support LGBT individuals. Bright Futures Psychiatry explains LGBT-affirming as making space for people who identify as LGBT while accepting what their identity means to them and being “willing to avoid ignorance about their experiences” and “agreeable to that person having rights that fit their identity.” 

• Imperfect Ally

One of the best definitions I’ve found to describe imperfect allyship comes from Emily Souder of Mother Hustle:

Imperfect allyship is a concept reflecting the notion that a person can identify as an ally of an oppressed group of people (people of color, for example, which is the group I focus on here) while also accepting that they aren’t going to “get it right”  with their actions each and every time. They might say the wrong thing, or get confused. An imperfect ally may even freeze or feel paralyzed about what to do next. They accept that they don’t know everything (because let’s be honest, of course they don’t). What they have, though, is a heart and spirit open to learning, re-learning, and doing better.

Demonstrate Growth

One thing the world seems to be short on these days is normalizing the experience of admitting when we’ve been wrong and embracing a willingness to learn, grow from, and openly discuss our mistakes. This is also one of the hardest things for most people to do…it certainly is for me. 

Like a lot of ’80s and ’90s kids in the Bible belt, I’ve had to spend many years of my adult life working to gradually untangle much of the problematic and harmful biases I held and continue to hold about LGBT people and issues. 

Until I was about 20 years old, most of what I knew about what it means to be LGBT came from one of three places: 

• My fundamentalist church
• My community
• Pop culture

I grew up in a church that was informed by a hardline fire-and-brimstone approach when it came to anything that didn’t fit with late 20th-century conservative values, cherry-picking Levitical law accordingly. 

When I say that I was religious, I mean I was extremely religious. I annotated my Bible, did the daily devotionals, took notes during every sermon, and parroted back everything I was taught without question. I went on mission trips, knew all the Christian pop music parody songs, and even taught Sunday School for a while. 

While I love and respect the faith of all of my fundamentalist friends and family, I eventually came to realize that my church had a habit of repackaging some pretty hateful beliefs as “Christian concern.” 

Without getting too deep into the theology or repeating any of the hurtful language, I still feel extremely remorseful today when I reflect on some of the beliefs and assumptions I held based on those teachings and openly shared in public spaces when talking about LGBT folks. 

It’s especially easy to hold onto these ideas when your entire understanding is based on othering and offensive tropes written by cisgender heterosexuals. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, LGBT representation in films and on TV was poor. When it did exist, it tended to be woefully stereotypical and primarily focused on gay men. I am ashamed to say that for many years, my concept of LGBT was primarily shaped by the Blue Oyster Club scene from the Police Academy films (for a gay man’s perspective on how toxic this era was for LGBT individuals, check out this essay from Eric Jimenez-Lindmeier).

And while I’ve spent most of my adult life working on deconstructing my preconceived notions and finding better ways to be an ally to LGBT folks, I know I’ve got a long way to go. While I can’t undo any of the damage I’ve done to others in my own ignorance, I can choose to speak openly about those mistakes to normalize personal growth for my kids. 

If you’re just now starting to learn about LGBT issues for the first time, all of this can seem overwhelming, especially if you’re coming from a background similar to mine. Here is a terrific discussion of intent versus impact to help you navigate missteps as you work on trying to educate yourself. 

Encourage Kids to Be Themselves

The rise and fall of the gender reveal party serves as a somewhat bizarre metaphor for why emphasizing traditional gender roles isn’t the healthiest way to celebrate a new child’s individuality. It’s almost a little too on the nose that so many of these events have quite literally gone up in smoke. 

But even without the explosions, forest fires, and alligator abuse (I’m not kidding) that somehow keep popping up at gender reveal parties, these events shine a light on so much of the worst baggage that comes with social expectations about gender by emphasizing stereotypes. 

These are just a few cringy examples of gender reveal dichotomies:

• Tutus versus touchdowns
• Pink versus blue
• Baseballs versus bows
• Guns versus glitter

Someone will surely object that these are supposed to just be “in good fun.” The problem with that thinking is that there’s a direct line between this type of thinking and boys being told they shouldn’t cry, girls being given dolls while boys are given tools, boys getting pressured to join sports when they’d rather pursue fashion, or kids afraid to tell their folks they’d rather take a boy to the prom than a girl.

Studies have shown that rigid and stereotyped gender roles can negatively impact a child’s self-esteem. According to Common Sense Media, “a lifetime of viewing stereotypical media becomes so ingrained it can ultimately affect kids’ career choices, self-worth, relationships, and ability to achieve their full potential.”

I don’t think getting jazzed about a kid’s gender necessarily comes from a wrong-hearted place. After all, it’s the first thing you really know about a new baby while you’re waiting to meet them. It gives you the first glimpse into who they might be. If people could see their kids’ eyes or hair color, I honestly think we’d have parties celebrating those facts. But one of the best parts of raising kids is in realizing that they are their own unique person. Why put limitations on who they are before they’re even born? 

And for that matter, why do one set of kids need to wear body-fitting clothing that don’t even have useful pockets? Why should another group of kids only have boring clothing in primarily neutrals, blues, and reds? Why can’t kids just play with whatever they want to? What about a certain style of clothing or a certain color of toy even makes them gendered? If you think about it, it’s pretty weird that we gender things like skinny jeans and toy guns to begin with. 

On the other hand, letting kids explore all of their interests encourages intellectual curiosity, and letting them dress however they want to dress gives them an outlet for exploring their unique personality and how they want to express who they are.

Demonstrate Acceptance

A family’s support and acceptance is crucial to every child’s well-being and safety. Even if you don’t yet know if your child is LGBT, make sure they understand that your home is a safe and loving environment to be themselves, regardless of their sexuality or gender identity. 

According to the Institute of Medicine, LGBT youth have a greater risk of poor physical and mental health than their cisgender and heterosexual peers, while the Pediatric Clinics of North America found that “family support and acceptance is associated with greater self-esteem, social support, general health status, less depression, less substance abuse, and less suicidal ideation and behaviors among LGBT youth.”

The Pediatric Clinics also found that family support for LGBT teens is correlated with lower incidence of substance abuse and is especially protective against depression for transgender youth. 

For advice on how to respond if your child comes out as LGBT, check out this article from Family Equality. 

Raise Activists

This advice comes from our good friend Casey, who tied the knot with his husband Jory last year. “Society tells us we are islands and that our actions are just our own,” he told me, describing this culture as “toxic individuality.” 

But to be part of a healthy community, we need to teach kids to engage in a type of community stewardship, working together to make the world a better place. As Casey explained, “I think the word I am looking for is citizenship. To help them understand that we are all united and other people’s experience affects the world around them.”

To find out more about raising activist kids, I spoke with another dear friend, Olivia, whose teenagers have been involved in community activism alongside her for years. “I think I’ve taught mine through example – in my jobs and how I live, taking them to rallies and to talk to legislators. Letting them know they have a voice and it matters.”

Start by teaching kids to stand up for others and focus on raising confident kids who aren’t afraid to speak out against bullying. According to the CDC, 33% of self-identifying LGBT kids reported bullying within the past year as compared to around 17% for among their heterosexual classmates. These kids are also more likely to be cyberbullied or to avoid school out of fear for their safety. For resources on anti-bullying education, check out this tool kit. 

Keep Learning

One of the most important things you can do to be a better ally and raise the next generation of allies is to listen. And for some reason, it can sometimes be one of the hardest things to do. 

Make a point of actively seeking and listening to many diverse LGBT voices. Below are a few more resources for further reading:

7 Easy Ways to Be an Ally When You’re Cishet

LGBTQ Terminology Glossary with helpful videos from It Gets Better Project

Video on understanding sex and sexuality with Crash Course Sociology

Bonus for TV Geeks

If you love great teen and tween-rated family-friendly TV with a positive, normalizing representation of LGBT individuals as much as we do, here are a few of our family’s favorite recommendations to check out:

Xena, Warrior Princess (Roku)

The Owl House (Disney)

Steven Universe (Cartoon Network)

Schitt’s Creek (Netflix)

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix)

Supergirl (Netflix)

I love reading your comments and listening to what you have to share, so please feel free to add to the discussion below. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a beautiful week in your nebula. 

• Coming out is hard, yet millions and millions of ordinary people have done it.
• Pro sports is one of the last bastions of the closet, and only gay players can fix that.
• By coming out, Raiders DE Carl Nassib paves the way for other gay pro athletes to come out.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib is gay, and his announcement of that fact makes him the first openly gay person on an active NFL team roster.

This is great. I’m happy for him that he has off his chest something he says he’s struggled for 15 years about how to say. And I’m thrilled for gay players in the NFL and on college teams — or who aspire to play in the NFL or on college teams — who may be wondering what will happen if they come out.

Nassib, who is in the middle of a three-year, $25 million contract, sends a strong message by coming out: You can be gay and play at the highest levels of this sport.

Now it’s time for others to follow his lead and come out, too.

The closet is bad

I understand that not every gay man is in a position to disclose his sexuality. Some people have good reason to fear they will be rejected by people they depend on emotionally or financially if they come out. Some have good reason to fear violence. And even when the risks are not so grave, coming out can still be hard. One of the injustices of homophobia is it can give people good reasons to hide parts of themselves.

At the same time, coming out is something that millions and millions of people have done, en masse, even in times when our society and its institutions were much less accepting than they are now. Every day, people come out at greater personal risk and with fewer resources than are available to a professional athlete who considers whether to come out.

So while I have compassion for people who find it hard to come out, I worry that fixating on the “difficulty” or “bravery“ associated with coming out can actually reinforce the appeal of the closet, by suggesting that a person must be extraordinary to manage coming out. In fact, ordinary people come out all the time. For some, it isn’t even that hard. But more importantly, it can be very rewarding, even for those who find it terrifying. How often do you hear people say they wish they had stayed in the closet?

And the closet isn’t just soul-crushing to the people who feel they must hide in it. It also sends a damaging message to others. When you hide your sexual orientation, you reinforce the idea that it is shameful to be gay, and that there are good reasons to hide it. Staying in the closet produces a negative externality by validating homophobia.

Which, again, is not to say that nobody ever has a valid reason to do stay in the closet. But these are factors to consider: Do I have an opportunity to help people with less power than me by coming out? Is my silence making harder for them to speak their truth? And how bad will it really be if I just tell my truth?

It’s great that Nassib reached the conclusion that this was time to come out — I expect he will feel happier, and he’s done a true service by making it easier for other players to make the jump after him. Now they should find their way to doing so.