These bills were passed by the Texan legislature between January and May 2023 — 141 bills curbing rights of LGBTQIA persons were introduced in that session in all.

One was signed into law in June.

“Senate Bill 14 (SB 14) prohibits life-saving medical care for transgender children under the age of 18. This ban includes the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and transition-related surgery. Physicians who violate SB 14 are subject to sanction and revocation of their licences. Since the ban only applies to those seeking these medical treatments to treat gender dysphoria and continues to allow the use of the treatments for other reasons, SB 14 specifically discriminates against transgender individuals,” the letter stated.

Another bill prohibits public universities and colleges from maintaining diversity programmes, or including considerations of race, gender, or sexuality during employment. Yet another prevents transgender athletes from competing on collegiate sports teams that align with their gender identity if their gender identity does not match their “biological sex” as described on a birth certificate. Another restricts access to books in school libraries by banning “educationally unsuitable,” “pervasively vulgar,” and “sexually explicit” materials, but a federal judge blocked its implementation as the law did not provide guidance on how to determine what falls in those categories. Nevertheless, schools have already begun to mark those books out — many feature LGBTQIA+ characters and themes.

As the United States — like India — goes to the polls this year, human rights organisations have intentionally sought to highlight these bills passed last year, lest people forget about the degraded quality of life several others have been forced to live, on account of these bills.

The letter is addressed to experts such as Mary Lawlor, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders; Graeme Reid, UN Independent Expert on Protection against Violence and Discrimination based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity; and Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Its Causes and Consequences, among others.

While this may not necessarily prevent the House or senate from passing other bills in the future, the fact that a body like the United Nations, and other groups in various countries take note of such governmental action, is significant.

Lesbian, gay and transgender groups have sought international solidarity and notice in the past too. And sharing of information through such news clippings, or newsletters was the norm.

In a March 1993 edition of Friends India, a newsletter for private circulation in the Lucknow-based gay group of the same name, a section was dedicated to news from around the world.

Called “Gay News”, it carried snippets of articles from various publications (Indian) about news from the United States. For instance, a March 29, 1993 article in the Times of India, titled ‘White House reassures Gays’ talked about a delegation of gay and lesbian activists meeting White House representatives and the then US President Bill Clinton’s admission that while gays and lesbians would not be denied admission in the military, the top brass may deny them jobs.

Another article in Rashtriya Sahara, dated April 29, 1993 spoke of a Pride parade in Washington that was held earlier that month, and which saw an attendance of between 300,000 to 1.1 million people. The wide divergence was because the former was an estimate by the police, the latter by the organisers. An agency copy of the same parade focused on New York attorney Urvashi Vaid’s speech. It referred to her as an Indian-origin same sex leader (“bharatiya mool samling neta”) and described what she said about the human rights of queer persons. Martina Navrotilova was present at the rally; so was Jesse Jackson. Bill Clinton skipped the rally, but Nancy Pelosi attended on his behalf, the copy stated. A Press Trust of India article titled ‘Marriage with a difference’ described a protest by 1,000 gay and lesbian couples against the legal barriers to marriage and military service. The couples demonstrated by exchanging rings and getting married. The newsletter filed this under “Happy News” on the same page. The newsletters are available for reading at the QAMRA archive, which is a trove of documents collected by individuals, and is housed at the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru.

Among the handful of groups that came up in the 1990s — almost all of them started newsletters — the impetus to exchange news was certainly present; the desire to know of what else was going on in different parts of the world was also quite strong. Some members would subscribe to international publications, or simply reproduce news articles so that their own readers could stay updated. This exchange of information was made stronger as these groups began to get in touch with each other. Almost all of them had some version of a Networking section, where details and information of other groups were listed, some with addresses and telephone numbers, others with simple Post Box numbers to which mail could be sent.

What emerged was exactly not just solidarity among persons of non-normative sexualities and genders, but also a shared language of human rights and its abuses.

The Joint Allegation Letter is as much a descendent of this impulse to network as it is a product of a shared language of rights that LGBTQIA+ people around the world are still fighting for.

Gender Question is a weekly column by Premium editor Dhamini Ratnam on gender, sexuality and our blind spots.