Higher education has increasingly become an environment where resources like gender-neutral housing, campus maps of gender-neutral bathrooms, and “safe space” training programs allow young people to explore their gender and sexuality in safe and healthy ways. The University of Pittsburgh, however, took a defiant step in the opposite direction, dictating last month that transgender students could only use bathrooms and lockerrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificate, as explained recently by university spokesperson Robert Hill:

HILL: As this [policy] applies to use of facilities, a female who identifies as a male, or a male who identifies as a female, may use restrooms or locker rooms of his or her declared gender identity after he or she has obtained a birth certificate designating the declared gender. This practice applies to student athletes as well.

The only way that most states — including Pennsylvania — allow for birth certificate changes is if individuals undergo sexual reassignment surgery (SRS), a costly life-changing procedure that many trans people never intend to pursue. Some states do not offer new or amended birth certificates under any circumstance. And as Pitt junior Alice Haas has pointed out in her outspoken opposition to the policy, SRS amounts to “forced castration” because it results in sterility. For the university to impose such expectations to safely use campus facilities is flagrantly offensive.

Further, as Hill’s comment alludes, the policy raises particular challenges for student athletes. As The Pitt News reported yesterday, the NCAA has rules requiring transgender students be allowed to play on the team with which they identify provided they’ve simply completed one year of hormone therapy — but that rule does not cover lockerrooms. So under the current policy at Pitt, a trans student can play on the right team, but can’t use the right lockerroom.

The policy also conflicts with the non-discrimination protections in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, which identify an individual’s gender by how it is lived and perceived by others. Pitt claims it does not discriminate on the basis of gender identity and expression, but it is essentially erasing an entire population of trans students who don’t — and shouldn’t have to — fit into an arbitrary mold of identity.

PBS’s Newshour featured a segment on Uganda’s ongoing struggle for LGBT equality Thursday, and the nation’s hostility to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s historical call to treat gay rights as human rights. Polls still show that 95 percent of Ugandans favor criminalizing homosexuality — and many back the infamous “kill gays bill,” which would impose harsh penalties on homosexual behavior.

The piece includes Pastor Joseph Serwadda, who heads an association of Pentecostal and evangelical churches, accusing the West of spreading “gayism” and imposing “an agenda for homosexuals in Uganda.” He claims that “Nobody has gone to jail; nobody has been harassed; nobody has been ostracized because of their sexual orientation” and says that he has never met a gay person. Watch it:

Though anti-gay sentiment continues to be fierce in Uganda, the slow but steady growth of public advocacy for gender issues is showing progress. A recent march organized by Sexual Minorities Uganda, for instance, had 30 participants, as opposed to just four at a similar march four years ago. Activist Frank Mugisha points out that the mere fact the nation is having a national conversation about the issue of homosexuality — hostile though it may be — represents a change from a time when it was so taboo people would not even talk about it.

The Roman Catholic Church is cutting off thousands of dollars in aid to a small nonprofit organization providing access to health care and other basic services in protest of its “membership in an immigrant rights coalition that had joined forces with a statewide gay and lesbian advocacy group.” The organization, Compañeros, operates in rural southwestern Colorado, focusing “on economic empowerment and encourag[ing] immigrant community members to establish their own businesses.”

The connection between Compañeros and the LGBT equality organization One Colorado is tenuous. Compañeros is affiliated with the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC), which began a partnership with One Colorado, an organization that opposes discrimination against LGBT people. As Theresa M. Trujillo, the vice president of the immigrant coalition’s board, put it: “The Catholic Church is punishing Compañeros for having a relationship with an organization that has a relationship with an organization whose mission it is to have equality for L.G.B.T. folks.”

But the Church’s decision is part of a growing effort by conservative forces to separate its finances from any organization that is remotely affiliated with causes that they see as undermining religious doctrine, a push that is at times detrimental to the Church’s main mission of helping the poor:

Since 2010, nine groups from across the country have lost financing from the campaign because of conflicts with Catholic principles, according to the campaign’s director, Ralph McCloud. Others have simply chosen not to apply — or reapply — for funds. Mr. McCloud said the Compañeros case was being reviewed and no final decision had been made.

Compañeros was told that unless it withdrew from the coalition, Ms. Mosher said, the group would lose money it got each year.

“I was shocked that our money was all of a sudden in jeopardy, and confused about why,” Ms. Mosher said. “We have no reason to believe that we are in any way going against Catholic teachings. If they are willing to defund our program based on an affiliation, it sends a clear message of divisiveness.”

Some bishops are pushing back against the campaign, noting that the Church’s opposition to gay and lesbian rights should not trump its efforts to fight poverty. “What is apparent is that these conservative groups are succeeding in subverting the mission of…the most important antipoverty foundation in America,” James Salt, executive director of Catholics United, told the New York Times. Several leaders on the Catholic Bishop’s antipoverty and domestic justice and human development campaigns have also sent a memo to the Church noting, “We rely on the judgment of the local bishop and diocese, not the repeated accusations of those with clear ideological and ecclesial agendas.”

Compañeros’ website states, “Compañeros has not taken a position on marriage equality and is being denied half its funding simply for being associated with CIRC.”

Two Catholic bishops of the Archdiocese of Seattle have written a letter asking parishioners to take part in a campaign to repeal Washington state’s recently enacted marriage equality law. Calling the effort “critically important,” Archbishop J. Peter Sartain and Auxiliary Bishop Eusebio Elizondo argue that denying same-sex couples the rights of marriage does not constitute discrimination since gays and lesbians are inherently “different” from straight relationships:

“Treating different things differently is not unjust discrimination,” the bishops claim. “Marriage can only be between a man and a woman because of its unique ends, purpose and place in society. The word ‘marriage’ isn’t simply a label that can be attached to different types of relationships.

“Instead ‘marriage’ reflects a deep reality — the reality of the unique, fruitful, lifelong union that is only possible between a man and a woman. There is nothing else like it, and it can’t be defined or made into something that it isn’t.”

Opponents have until June 6 to collect over 120,000 valid voter signatures to force a referendum on marriage equality. The campaign is being spearheaded by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which has recently come under fire after internal memos revealed its strategy of driving “a wedge between gays and blacks” and manipulating Hispanic voters by making the exclusion of gay people from marriage “a key badge of Latino identity.”

State Sen. Ed Murray (D), a gay Catholic and a sponsor of the law, described the bishop’s call to gather signatures as “fairly reprehensible.” “Here in Olympia, I am watching Republicans press for a budget that takes money from the Disability Lifeline and the emergency food assistance program, yet there is no letter from Catholic bishops or the Catholic Conference stressing the importance of these programs,” he said. “As I read the Gospels, there is a great deal of talk about the poor, and none about homosexuality.”