National

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Gunman killed after opening fire outside North Carolina gay bar

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Police shot and killed an armed man outside a gay bar in Asheville, North Carolina. Shakey’s staff said in a social media post that police were called after a man who had been ejected from the bar earlier that night for concerning behavior was seen in the parking lot brandishing a gun, according to ABC affiliate WLOS. The Instagram post is no longer publicly available. Stay up to date with the latest in LGBTQ+ news with The Advocate’s email newsletter, in your inbox five days a week. Asheville police officers responded to the dive bar around 1:57 a.m. Wednesday after receiving a report that […]

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Womontown: How a group of 80s lesbians built their own community to escape the patriarchy

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In the late 1980s, two women set about creating a lesbian community in Kansas City, Missouri. The result was Womontown, an urban community of over 70 women that spanned a 12-block radius and contained 28 homes and 14 apartment buildings. “We just started imagining, what if we could just walk hand in hand, freely, down the street, a bunch of lesbians all in this neighborhood,” said co-founder Mary Ann Hopper in the 2022 documentary, Womontown. “And I thought, well, if we can do the work, I could imagine that it would maybe be fun to live here.” The journey began when Hopper’s partner, […]

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Nonprofit crisis line supports marginalized people wary of police intervention

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When Vanessa Green answers calls to Call Blackline, her responses vary widely. Some people need referrals to trusted nonprofits for emergency resources. Others just need to vent to someone who understands their experience, and Green is happy to fill that role. “We don’t give an opinion,” Green, who helped create Call Blackline in 2014, toldThe Advocate in an interview. “We’re there to affirm their experiences navigating racism and white supremacy and anti-immigration in this country.” Stay up to date with the latest in LGBTQ+ news with The Advocate’s email newsletter, in your inbox five days a week. Call Blackline is a nonprofit crisis […]

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Depositions reveal how an Ohio school board’s hunt for LGBTQ+ ‘ideology’ began

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Last February, the Little Miami School Board in suburban Cincinnati ordered a social studies teacher to remove a “Hate Has No Home Here” poster because it included images of LGBTQ+ and trans Pride flags, alongside other flags. In response, the Little Miami High School teacher George McIntyre sued the districtfor violating his First Amendment rights.  Depositions from the board president, superintendent, high school principal, and an affidavit from a former teacher not only point to how the controversy started, but also to how the hunt for LGBTQ+ “ideology” has disrupted learning environments and could endanger students. Stay up to date with the latest […]

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A federal judge just slapped down Ron DeSantis’ anti-LGBTQ+ “Stop WOKE Act”

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Florida’s so-called Stop WOKE Act, championed by anti-LGBTQ+ Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), received a major blow on Tuesday, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld a 2022 injunction against applying the law to colleges and universities.  In the 2-1 decision, the judges called the law “a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the State’s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry – classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”  The Stop WOKE Act censors protected […]

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Trump-backed game composer says LGBTQ+ people are ‘existential threat’ to Western civilization

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Marty O’Donnell, the Trump-backed Republican nominee in a competitive congressional race, has described LGBTQ+ people as part of an alliance pushing Western civilization toward an “abyss.” O’Donnell, a video game composer best known for his work on the Halo and Destiny franchises, made the remarks during a June 29 interview, weeks after winning the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic U.S. Rep. Susie Lee in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District. “Talk about an existential, existential threat,” O’Donnell said. “We are on the cliff looking down into the abyss. And the abyss is Marxism, its anti-Western philosophy.” He then grouped LGBTQ+ people with Islamists and Marxists, accusing them of pretending to be oppressed. “There is a weird […]

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Texas Tech sued for erasing LGBTQ+ people and Black history from university classrooms

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A coalition of legal and academic freedom groups sued the Texas Tech University System on Wednesday, accusing Chancellor Brandon Creighton and the system’s Board of Regents of turning a conservative political project into campus policy by restricting what professors can teach about race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The federal lawsuit, filed in El Paso, challenges two memoranda Creighton issued in December 2025 and April 2026. It was brought by the American Association of University Professors and its Texas affiliate, Texas AAUP-AFT, with representation from Lambda Legal, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. Stay up to date with the […]

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Campaign to overturn Obergefell uses 14-year-old junk science to ‘prove’ gay people are bad parents

Leading up to the 2015 landmark Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, which made marriage equality a federal right, sociologist Mark Regnerus published controversial research titled the “New Family Structures Study”. Regnerus, who is forthcoming about the fact that his Catholic faith shapes his practice as a social scientist, published the study in 2012 in the journal Social Science Research.  The study purported that children raised by a parent in a same-gender relationship are at greater risk of negative psychosocial outcomes in adulthood compared to children raised by straight parents. The study was funded primarily by The Witherspoon Institute and The Bradley Foundation, […]

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Gay Mainer Jordan Wood announces bid to replace Graham Platner in Senate race

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Out gay politician Jordan Wood has thrown his hat into the ring to replace Graham Platner, the Maine Democrat who was set to face off against longtime GOP senator Susan Collins in November. Wood announced his intentions after Platner dropped out of the race on Wednesday following allegations of sexual assault against him from a previous girlfriend.  Wood announced his intentions on Thursday morning via social media.  Stay up to date with the latest in LGBTQ+ news with The Advocate’s email newsletter, in your inbox five days a week. “It’s official: I’m running to defeat Susan Collins. Not with corporate PAC money. Not […]

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Gay teacher and LGBTQ+ ally parent win $1million lawsuit after false ‘child abduction ring’ claim

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A gay teacher has won in a defamation case (Image: Getty Images, stock) Two Fairfax County Circuit Court juries awarded a gay teacher and an LGBTQ-ally parent over $1million in damages after finding a Virginia political action committee and its leader liable for defamatory social media posts. Robert Rigby Jr. was awarded $350,000 and Vanessa Hall was awarded $750,000 after separate trials in June. Both were members of Fairfax County Public Schools Pride, a group that advocates for LGBTQ-supportive school policies. The defendants in the cases were the Virginia Project PAC, as well as David Gordon, its founder and chair. The lawsuits […]

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