President Obama has condemned anti-LGBT laws recently passed in two Southern states in an attempt to reassure British tourists, reports USA Today.
“I want everybody here in the United Kingdom to know that the people of North Carolina and Mississippi are wonderful people,” Obama said during a Friday news conference. “They are beautiful states and you are welcome and you should come and enjoy yourselves. And I think you’ll be treated with extraordinary hospitality.”
But at the same time, the president also went on record as opposing recently passed “religious freedom” laws, which could have a negative effect on LGBT people. Obama called the new laws “wrong” and said they “should be overturned.”
Obama’s comments came in response to the British Foreign Office issuing an advisory warning travelers to North Carolina and Mississippi of those new laws. That guidance, issued earlier this week, noted that the United States is an “extremely diverse society,” and, as such, attitudes toward LGBT people vary from place to place. It also suggested that LGBT travelers refer to the Human Rights Campaign and other sources to see if those laws might adversely impact them.
In North Carolina, lawmakers removed protections against discrimination in public accommodations by repealing local pro-LGBT ordinances and required that transgender people be forced to use only the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex. In Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant (R) signed into effect a law that grants individuals and business owners significant leeway to discriminate against LGBT people or others, such as single mothers, of whose lifestyle they disapprove based on “sincerely held” personal beliefs.
Obama also said that the move to pass the laws was motivated not solely by animus, but by political considerations and some lawmakers’ sincerely held convictions.
“Although I respect their different viewpoints, it’s important for us not to send signals that anyone is treated differently,” Obama added.
Cameron defended the Foreign Office’s advice to travelers, noting that the office tries to give advice “dispassionately” and “impartially” about laws that could affect British citizens abroad.
“Our view on any of these kinds of things is that we should use law to end discrimination, rather than embed it or enhance it,” Cameron said. “And that’s something we’re comfortable saying to countries and friends anywhere in the world.”
A federal judge has ordered St. George, Utah, to pay a group of drag performers more than $350,000 in attorneys' fees after previously ruling in the troupe's favor in a First Amendment case.
U.S. District Judge David Nuffer ordered the city to cover the legal costs accrued by Southern Utah Drag Stars over a three-year legal battle, finding it is bound by the terms of a 2025 settlement.
Southern Utah Drag Stars initially planned to stage a drag show at a private venue, but it was canceled after the owner received threats against employees' safety, according to St. George News. The group then applied for a permit to hold the show in a public park in April 2023.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little recently signed a bill into law adopting what may be the strictest bathroom ban in the nation, under which anyone who enters a bathroom that does not align with their sex assigned at birth can face prison time.
Idaho already bars transgender students in public schools and universities from using bathrooms that do not align with their sex assigned at birth, and has a separate law requiring multi-occupancy restrooms in colleges, universities, correctional facilities, and domestic violence shelters to be restricted based on a person’s assigned sex at birth. But this new bill goes even further.
A Christian father who appeared on a court TV show sued his 18-year-old son for $6,000, claiming he was owed reimbursement after the teen failed to complete a summer conversion therapy program his parents had enrolled him in.
The dispute played out on a recently recirculated episode of Equal Justice with Judge Eboni K. Williams, which debuted in 2023. It’s unclear when the episode originally aired, but it was uploaded to YouTube on March 26, 2026.
As noted by LGBTQ Nation, courtroom television shows are not actual courts and don’t have to follow the same rules. Equal Justice bills itself as a "small claims court arbitration" show, meaning a neutral third party -- in this case, Williams -- hears both sides of a dispute and issues a decision that may be binding if the parties agree in advance to accept it. Arbitration is not the same as civil litigation.
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