National

/ /

LGBTQ+ Task Force’s Evan Low: What’s at stake this midterms

,

Amid a torrent of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and a national political climate increasingly defined by fear and distortion, Evan Low has come to an unsettling realization: What the country is living through right now is not normal. Low, the president and CEO of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and Victory Institute and a former California state lawmaker, had just returned from Creating Change, the annual gathering of LGBTQ+ advocates and organizers hosted by the National LGBTQ Task Force in January. The conversations, he said, were less about inspiration than confirmation that the scope, coordination, and intensity of attacks on LGBTQ+ people have […]

/ /

185 Years of Gay Cruising: A Brief History

While it’s widely believed that cruising culture has existed for hundreds of years, the official term emerged in the 1960s as gay slang referring to a discreet method of men seeking out anonymous same-sex encounters in parks, bathrooms, waterfronts, bathhouses and other such places. Here are 23 key moments that shaped cruising culture in the United States. 1842 While a homosexual subculture is growing in New York City, the general public still refers to gay people as “sodomites,” as the word “homosexual” isn’t coined until 1868. Newspapers regularly publish articles calling out and expressing their disgust of suspected sodomites. One reader writes a letter to the […]

/ /

How a Former Blogger Became the New Leader of America’s Anti-Gay Marriage Movement

,

In September 2025, the National Conservatism Conference hosted a meeting of America’s biggest right wing players in Washington, D.C. Some notable attendees included the Alliance Defending Freedom’s (ADF) president Kristen Waggoner, Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, and U.S. representatives and government officials, including Tulsi Gabbard and Sebastian Gorka. On the evening of its second day, Katy Faust took the stage: “We, as a country, have to do what no other country has dared. We retake marriage on behalf of children. … A massive coalition spearheaded by my nonprofit … aims to do exactly that,” Faust, the founder of Them Before Us—a 501(c)(3) whose goal is “defending children’s right […]

/ /

Fewer young Americans support LGBTQ+ protections, survey finds

,

Just 7 in 10 Americans aged 18 to 29 support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ residents, a new survey has found. That is down from 80 percent expressing support in 2015, just ten years prior, primarily driven by a decrease in support from young Republicans, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. Stay up to date with the latest in LGBTQ+ news with The Advocate’s email newsletter, in your inbox five days a week. While support has decreased overall in recent years, protections for LGBTQ+ protections are still widely popular among Americans, according to the surveyreleased Thursday by the institute, titled the “2025 […]

/ /

ACT UP marks 39th anniversary with NYC die-in at Palantir over Trump administration contracts

In the middle of a busy New York City street, dozens of people lay still atop the pavement on Saturday afternoon. ACT UP, one of the world’s most prominent HIV advocacy groups, organized the demonstration outside Palantir, a software company that develops surveillance technology and contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The demonstration was a callback to die-ins staged by AIDS advocacy groupsfrom the 1980s onward to celebrate the organization’s 39th anniversary. Hundreds of protesters rallied at the New York City AIDS Memorial, then marched to Palantir’s unmarked office in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, protesting government spending on ICE and the war against Iran amid cuts to funding for […]

/ /

Tennessee librarian risks job after refusing to move LGBTQ+ children’s books

,

Luanne James, director of the Rutherford County Library System in Tennessee, has garnered national support after refusing to move more than 190 LGBTQ+-themed books out of youth sections. In an 18 March letter she sent to the board, she argued that relocating the titles would amount to “viewpoint discrimination” and violate the First Amendment, writing plainly: “Therefore, I will not comply.” The board voted on 16 March to shift the books into adult sections following a review of “age-appropriate” materials prompted by state directives. Library Board chair, Cody York, defended the move as a way to limit children’s exposure to content […]

/ /

Former DOGE staffer says ChatGPT helped feds cancel grants mentioning ‘LGBTQ+’

,

A former Trump administration staffer testified under oath that humanities grants referencing LGBTQ+ people were flagged for cancellation, sometimes simply because the word appeared in a project description. The testimony from Nathan Cavanaugh, a political appointee in his late 20s who worked with billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team via the General Services Administration, offers an unusually detailed window into how the administration moved to purge diversity-related projects from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The NEH distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in grants each year to support historical research, museums, archives, and public humanities programs across the United States. Cavanaugh’s January […]

/ /

Governor vetoes bill that would’ve funded Charlie Kirk’s anti-LGBTQ+ organizations

,

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed a bill to create a specialty license plate honoring slain MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk. Republican legislators are unlikely to override her veto, as they only have six- and four-seat majorities in the House and Senate, respectively. The bill would have donated $17 of the license plate’s $25 price to Turning Point USA (TPUSA), Kirk’s organization for young conservatives, which pushes anti-trans, anti-immigrant stances and encourages students to harass and report left-wing college professors. In her March 6 veto letter, Hobbs wrote that the bill (S.B. 1439) fell short of “working toward solutions that bring people together […]

/ /

Trump adds anti-trans provisions to voter ID bill that could disenfranchise millions of Americans

For months now, President Trump has been pushing legislation that would federally mandate voter ID nationwide, baselessly claiming elections are rife with fraud, non-citizens are voting in extraordinary numbers, and Democrats “want to cheat,” as he put it at a news conference from his Doral golf resort in Florida on Tuesday. House Republicans passed the bill in February, and it’s now in the Senate, where it faces long odds overcoming a 60-vote threshold in the face of united Democratic opposition. Over the last week, however — at the same time he’s taken America into war with Iran — Trump has added demands […]

/ /

Fact Sheet for Reporters: Challenging “Transgender for Everybody” Rhetoric at State of the Union

GLAAD is releasing a fact sheet for reporters on Pres. Trump’s LGBTQ record ahead of his 2026 State of the Union address. Reporters are urged to provide facts and context to Pres. Trump’s remarks about LGBTQ people: The Trump Accountability Tracker documents at least 470 policies and statements targeting LGBTQ Americans, including 50 instances of Pres. Trump mentioning “transgender for everybody” since taking office in January 2025. The phrase is deployed to diminish support of transgender people with broad criticism of political opponents in unrelated speeches, interviews, and topics. By contrast, transcripts of all presidential remarks since January 2025 show fewer than 25 mentions of “affordability,” […]

«‹ 3 4 5 6›»