A transgender couple faces criminal charges after being beaten by a mob over their use of a women’s restroom at Cypress Black Bayou Park in Benton, Louisiana.
Aurora Rush and Shae Sanders went to Cypress Black Bayou Park on May 31 for a lakeside cookout. Rush, a trans woman, used the women’s restroom and returned to the lake without incident. Later, as the couple headed back to their car, Sanders, who is nonbinary and was assigned female at birth, stopped to use the same restroom, according to journalist S. Baum, reporting for Erin Reed’s Erin in the Morning Substack.
As Rush waited outside, she says a man began harassing her. He followed her to her car, threatening to harm her if she entered the women’s restroom, calling her slurs, and trying to provoke a fight. After leaving some belongings in the car, Rush returned to a pavilion outside the restroom to wait for Sanders.
Soon, a crowd of about 10 men and women surrounded Rush, screaming threats and profanities and vowing to stop her from entering the restroom by any means necessary. Claiming they were protecting their children, members of the crowd allegedly threatened to kill her. When Sanders exited the restroom and tried to lead Rush away, the mob surrounded and attacked them.
Sanders, who has a preexisting structural defect in their spinal cord, was knocked unconscious and suffered a gash above their eye that required stitches. A scratched cornea also left them temporarily blind in one eye for several days. Sanders has a neurostimulator implanted in their shoulder, with wires connecting the device to their nervous system. Doctors are still determining whether the attack damaged those wires, which could have life-threatening consequences.
Rush, who receives disability benefits due to a hip injury that limits her mobility and ability to lift heavy objects, suffered a concussion and blood pooling around her eyes. She also sustained scratches, contusions, and large welts, including swelling above one knee that grew to the size of an apple.
Following the attack, Sanders was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, while Rush was questioned by police called to the scene by a park employee. Although neither Rush nor Sanders fought back, Rush was arrested and taken to a men’s jail despite having a “female” gender marker on her driver’s license. There, she was searched by a male guard and booked under a man’s name she had never heard of or used.
Baum found no evidence that anyone else was arrested that day, and the sheriff’s office did not respond to Erin in the Morning’s request for information about other arrests. Rush later searched Facebook for the name under which she had been booked and recognized it as belonging to one of her alleged attackers.
The sheriff’s office charged Rush with two counts of disturbing the peace — one for “fighting” and another for allegedly using offensive language that constituted a threat or “fighting words.” Each charge carries a possible fine and up to a year in prison. Sanders was charged with one count of disturbing the peace, which carries a possible fine and up to six months in prison. Both were offered plea deals but have refused them.
“I’m more angry at the response of the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office than I am at the people who beat us up,” Rush told Erin in the Morning. “They further victimized me. I cannot just go to court, sign a piece of paper, pay a couple hundred dollars in fines, and let it just go away like it never happened. It’s an egregious miscarriage of justice.”
Courtney Newburry, the couple’s attorney, said it’s her opinion that her clients were victims of a hate crime.
“I believe the facts will show that this attack was targeted, calculated, had been simmering all day, and is the direct result of the dangerous and harmful rhetoric that demonizes and dehumanizes transgender people,” Newburry told Erin in the Morning. “I believe the facts will show that the attackers had made a determination as to Aurora’s gender and that determination led them to believe they had the power to do what they did; that they believed themselves to be the heroes here.”
Sanders and Rush were scheduled to appear in court on July 15, but the hearing was postponed until August. Meanwhile, they continue to struggle with health problems caused or worsened by the attack.
Meanwhile, local officials are considering an ordinance that would give law enforcement more authority to prosecute transgender people for using certain sex-segregated spaces — similar to laws enacted elsewhere.
On July 15, the Bossier Parish Police Jury — the parish’s governing body — unanimously approved the proposed ordinance on the first of two required votes, according to Baum. The measure was reportedly requested by Bossier Parish Sheriff Julian Whittington and would impose one of the country’s most punitive anti-transgender bathroom bans.
“There was nothing on the books for him to do as law enforcement,” juror Glenn Benton told Erin in the Morning, referring to the incident involving Rush and Sanders. “That’s why [Whittington] asked us to do it.”
The proposed ordinance would impose up to a year in jail on anyone who uses a parish-owned or -operated bathroom, locker room, or changing room that does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth, or who refuses a request to leave such a space.
The ordinance would also require parish employees, from law enforcement officers to janitors, to monitor restroom traffic for anyone using the “wrong” restroom or risk disciplinary action themselves. It remains unclear whether the measure has taken effect: some local officials say it has, while the sheriff’s office says it has not.
The Police Jury is scheduled to hold a final vote on the ordinance on September 2.
A 20-year-old Brooklyn smoke shop employee has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for fatally stabbing gay professional dancer O'Shae Sibley at a Midwood gas station in 2023.
Last month, a Brooklyn jury found Dmitry Popov, who was 17 at the time of the stabbing, guilty of manslaughter as a hate crime for killing the 28-year-old Sibley during an altercation fueled by anti-gay animus.
Popov was also convicted of second-degree menacing, second-degree aggravated harassment, and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. But he was acquitted of the most serious charge, second-degree murder as a hate crime.
According to evidence presented at trial, Popov and two friends encountered Sibley and his friends at a Mobil gas station on July 29, 2023, and began harassing them for dancing and voguing to music while filling up their car. Sibley and his friends were returning from a day at the beach.
The three youths hurled homophobic and anti-Black slurs at the men, telling them to "Get that gay shit out of here" and mocking their appearances and effeminate mannerisms.
GxBar, an LGBTQ-friendly salon in Kyiv, was vandalized by unidentified individuals who poured blood and left severed pig heads and entrails around its main entrance.
The vandalism targeted the GxBar Special salon, which has faced other attacks in recent months that the business believes are linked to its support for the LGBTQ community.
According to a post on GxBar's Instagram account, the salon was defaced around 6:17 a.m. on July 21. Security footage from inside the salon shows at least one person -- and possibly others -- dousing the entrance in blood and placing the pig heads on the building's front stoop.
U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who is challenging U.S. Sen. Ed Markey in the Democratic primary, apologized for the hurt caused by controversial remarks he made about transgender athletes following Kamala Harris's loss in the 2024 presidential election.
Moulton, 47, and Markey, 80, sparred during an August 3 debate aired on Boston PBS affiliate WGBH ahead of the September 1 primary. WGBH News' Adam Reilly asked Moulton about comments he made to The New York Times in 2024, attributing Democrats' electoral losses to positions on hot-button cultural issues that he argued were out of step with most Americans.
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