The Lavender Ledger: Your Strategic LGBTQ+ Reader By Erin In The Morning

Our service for the week to cover the news we did not carry but do not want you to miss.

Inside EITM’s newsroom, we track dozens of breaking stories weekly—tips flood in from readers embedded in state houses, school boards, and organizations across the country. Our sources are everywhere. But here’s our strategic dilemma: while we’re chasing down original leads and working our exclusive angles, critical intelligence is moving through other channels that deserves your attention.

Consider this your weekend drop.

These are the stories that crossed our desk, passed our vetting, and matter to LGBTQ+ people—reported by trusted outlets while we were deep in our own investigations. Think of it as our intelligence-sharing agreement with you: the essential coverage from across the LGBTQ+ media landscape that we’ve been monitoring, verified, and deemed operationally significant.

This week’s important releases:

Conversion therapy is quietly rebranding — and targeting trans youths, by Erin Allday

There is a growing conversion-therapy movement aimed at pressuring transgender teens to abandon their identities under a deliberately misleading name. The practice, called “gender exploratory therapy,” does not explore gender at all; instead, it seeks to gaslight patients into attributing their transgender identity to anything other than genuine transness. Crucially, these “exploratory” therapists will never greenlight transition. And as state conversion-therapy bans come before the Supreme Court, this subversive practice is drawing increased scrutiny.

U.S. bishops officially ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals, Associated Press

News emerged this week that U.S. bishops voted to ban gender-affirming care at Catholic-affiliated hospitals, a move that could significantly restrict access for many transgender people. Catholic systems play an enormous role in American health care, with roughly one in seven patients nationwide receiving treatment at Catholic-affiliated hospitals. And despite recent attempts at outreach to transgender people in some papal meetings, those overtures appear not to extend to the medical care many trans people rely on to live and work authentically.

Olympics organisers moving towards blanket ban on transgender women from women’s sport, by Rob Harris

The IOC is reportedly preparing to ban transgender athletes, as well as cisgender athletes born with intersex traits, from competing in Olympic sports. The policy, expected to take effect next year, could subject many competitors to invasive and unnecessary medical testing. The last time the Olympics adopted similar rules, numerous cisgender women unexpectedly learned they had a Y chromosome and were deemed ineligible to compete despite being assigned female at birth. The move follows threats from Donald Trump aimed at Olympic athletes over transgender inclusion, coupled with intense pressure from his administration, and could export anti-trans politics into countries around the world.