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How GLAAD is Combatting Censorship by Sending LGBTQ Books Straight to Capitol Hill

As LGBTQ-inclusive books are being pulled from classrooms and libraries at an alarming rate, GLAAD is taking direct action by mailing hundreds of copies of a beloved (and banned) LGBTQ title straight to every member of Congress and the Supreme Court.

The campaign is built around Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, a joyful children’s book co-published by GLAAD and Little Bee Books. The title was recently cited in a devastating U.S. Supreme Court ruling that opens the door to even more extreme book bans, despite its completely harmless content. The story follows Chloe, a young girl who learns that when her favorite uncle marries his boyfriend, she isn’t losing him—she’s gaining another loving family member. Somehow, even a message this heartwarming is under attack. And so, GLAAD is making sure all the legislators behind these harmful decisions can review the material themselves.

The removal of Uncle Bobby’s Wedding is just the beginning of a very real and very dangerous culture of censorship, where misinformation and discrimination runs rampant. Meanwhile, real American issues – access to healthcare, gun violence, and economic security – are ignored. In Escambia County, Florida, school board members ignored their own policies that safeguarded LGBTQ books—and even fired the superintendent who stood up for students’ right to read. And in Georgia, a beloved librarian was fired for including a children’s book about a transgender boy in a display created by young readers.

These are not isolated cases. Across the country, extremist groups are targeting queer stories and any book that affirms the existence of LGBTQ people, as well as stories featuring other marginalized communities, or championing Black and brown voices. It isn’t just about books. It’s about silencing voices, erasing identities, and controlling what kids are allowed to know about themselves and each other.

Through this campaign, GLAAD is reminding everyone—especially LGBTQ youth—that they deserve to see themselves in the books they read. Click HERE to join hundreds of others standing in support of queer youth and against censorship before it’s too late.

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Creator of the trans flag is fleeing U.S. due to LGBTQ+ persecution

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Monica Helms, the Navy veteran and creator of the original transgender pride flag, is fleeing the country due to anti-LGBTQ persecution.

She and her wife, Darlene Wagner, launched a GoFundMe earlier this year to facilitate their move abroad.

“We are worried there’s a possibility something could happen where we end up getting arrested just for being who we are,” Helms said in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter when the fundraiser first kicked off.

The couple currently lives in Georgia, which Erin in the Morning’s newest risk assessment map labeled as a “high risk” area for transgender people. Helms is by no means the only transgender refugee fleeing the United States. In May, a Williams Institute poll found that nearly half of all trans adult respondents had considered moving out of state or out of the country.

Since 2023, almost three dozen anti-trans bills have been introduced in Georgia, four of which have passed, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker. There was a ban on trans girls playing on scholastic women’s sports teams, a ban on using state funds to provide transition-related health care to incarcerated people, a ban on providing evidence-based medical treatment for minors with gender dysphoria, and the Georgia Religious Freedom Restoration Act—which does not explicitly target trans people, but is likely to make it easier to discriminate against them using religion as a legal defense. (Thankfully, there have been some successful and ongoing legal challenges to many of these policies.)

However, “even blue states are starting to see problems,” Helms told the Bay Area Reporter. California’s governor reportedly moved to kill pro-LGBTQ bills behind the scenes; New Jersey school boards have engaged in a coordinated effort to forcibly out trans students to hostile parents; and hospitals located within Democratic strongholds across the country are violating state equal protections laws to deny trans kids access to health care, capitulating to Trumpian threats.

NBC’s Jo Yurcaba profiled families of trans kids moving to places like Australia and New Zealand. Hannah Kreager, a 22-year-old trans woman from Arizona, filed a groundbreaking asylum claim in Canada earlier this year; if granted, it would mark the first time a trans person from the United States would be given asylum in another country due to their LGBT status.

Of course, all of these stories come with the presumption of privilege. Trans people in these scenarios may have had familial support and/or a source of income or wealth that enabled them to uproot their lives to a safer place. Others resort to bouncing from state to state to receive care, uprooting their lives to live in a more tolerant community or traveling across state or international lines periodically to access health care.

As for Helms, she vowed to continue to fight for trans people no matter where she lives. “We will not abandon our activism,” she wrote in her GoFundMe.

Helms designed the transgender pride flag after having a conversation with the creator of the bisexual pride flag in 1999, she told the Bay Area Reporter. She has said it is important to her that it remains open and free to use for the public. The pink, white, and blue flag has become a household symbol for trans people and their loved ones.

“No matter how you fly it, it’s always correct, which signifies finding correctness in our own lives,” Helms said.

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Judge orders Trump to restore hundreds of diversity, equity, and inclusion webpages

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The US government has been ordered to restore dozens of webpages on gender identity and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as part of a court settlement.

District Court judge Lauren King ordered the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to restore hundreds of webpages removed from government sites under orders from president Donald Trump.

Nine medical organisations and public health nonprofits sued the US government after Trump issued an executive order in January directing the health department to remove pages containing vital information and data on gender identity, HIV prevention, and health advice for marginalised groups.

Affected websites included the National Institute of Health’s HIV risk reduction tool, an FAQ page on Mpox treatment and hundreds of sites on health issues affecting the LGBTQ+ community.

As part of an agreed settlement finalised on Tuesday (2 September), the government must restore the data and cease the deletion of further resources.

The Washington State Medical Association (WSMA), Washington state’s largest medical association and lead plaintiff in the case, said it was “thrilled” at the settlement result.

It is expected to restore webpages on pregnancy risk, opioid-use disorder, HIV data, and much more.

Dr John Bramhall, WSMA president, said following the judgement that he was “extremely proud” of the healthcare community for “pushing back on this egregious example of government overreach.”

“This was not a partisan issue,” he continued. “Open data benefits everyone, and ensuring its availability should be a bipartisan priority.”

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Co-plaintiffs include Washington State Nurses Association, the Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Paediatrics, AcademyHealth, the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.

Vital health and DEI webpages vanished ‘in the blink of an eye’

The organisation, which represents more than 13,000 physicians, emphasised the importance of readily available health data and information for the general public on all topics.

Condemning the sudden removal of “trusted health information,” Dr Bramhall said many resources which physicians rely on to monitor a patient’s health “vanished in [the] blink of an eye.”

“Not only was our ability to provide care to our patients compromised, but our trust in our federal health institutions has also been badly shaken,” he continued. “The WSMA engaged in this legal effort to resist interference into the physician-patient relationship and to show patients and communities that, regardless of the whims of governments or politics, physicians are committed to providing accurate, evidence-based care.”

A spokesperson for HHS said to Fox News Digital it remains “committed to its mission of removing radical gender and DEI ideology from federal programs, subject to applicable law, to ensure taxpayer dollars deliver meaningful results for the American people.”

The settlement comes as health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr was grilled in a Senate hearing over his vaccine policies and notorious views on public health.

The 71-year-old, who is infamous for his conspiratorial scepticism on vaccines, was accused of a “reckless disregard for science” during the Thursday (4 September) hearing after firing the Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) head over his vaccine policies.

Democratic senator Ron Wyden, who sat on the committee, accused Kennedy of trying to “[take] vaccines away from Americans,” adding: “I hope at the very least, Robert Kennedy has the decency to tell the truth this morning.”

Justifying the CDC firings, Kennedy said they were “absolutely necessary,” called the US the “sickest country in the world,” and claimed “that’s why we need to fire people at the CDC.”

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Amy Coney Barrett, conservative panelists discuss overturning marriage equality

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Conservative Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett doesn’t appear inclined to overturn marriage equality — but can she be trusted?

Barrett calls the right to marry “fundamental” in her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, which comes out Tuesday. However, she has previously said the matter should be up to each state. And in her confirmation hearings in 2020, she was cagey about whether she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion nationwide, butin 2022 she voted to overturn it.

Meanwhile, panelists at the National Conservatism Conference, held this week in Washington, D.C., discussed the possible reversal of Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that established marriage equality in every state.

In her book, Barrett writes, “The court has held that the rights to marry, engage in sexual intimacy, use birth control, and raise children are fundamental, but the rights to do business, commit suicide, and obtain abortion are not.”

Barrett recently told Norah O’Donnell of CBS News that she hopes to help readers “understand the law.” It’s not just an opinion poll,” she said.

“You know, what the court is trying to do is see what the American people have decided. And sometimes the American people have expressed themselves in the Constitution itself, which is our fundamental law. Sometimes in statutes,” she said. “But the court should not be imposing its own values on the American people. That’s for the democratic process.”

Barrett was evasive about her views on marriage equality during her confirmation hearings. But she had previously suggested it should be decided state by state.

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton recently said she expects the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, to overturn Obergefell. “It took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade,” she told Jessica Tarlov of The Five in a podcast interview. “The Supreme Court will hear a case about gay marriage. My prediction is they will do to gay marriage what they did to abortion. They will send it back to the states.”

Last month, Kim Davis, the former clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, asked the Supreme Court to hear her case challenging Obergefell. Davis, a conservative Christian, quit issuing marriage licenses altogether after the ruling so she wouldn’t have to issue them to same-sex couples. The high court justices haven’t said if they’ll take the case.

Some political observers disagree with Clinton, saying the Supreme Court likely doesn’t want to revisit marriage equality, even though two ultraconservative members — Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — have said they’d like to overturn it.

Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek that Barrett’s comments in her book and to CBS indicate she’s “not inclined to overturn the right to same-sex marriage.” She has sometimes gone against other conservative justices.

“As to whether other justices share her apparent view, I would further guess that at least Justice Thomas would not agree with her,” Rossi added. “In the end, my prediction is that a majority of the court will stand firm and preserve the right to same-sex marriage.”

O’Donnell’s interview on with Barrett will air on CBS Sunday Morning at 9 a.m. Sunday and at 11 a.m. on CBS News 24/7.

If the court did overturn Obergefell, there would be some protection from the Respect for Marriage Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. It requires federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages, and requires states to recognize those performed in other states. However, no state would have to offer equal marriage rights.

In addition to Davis, there are other right-wing forces who would like to see the ruling reversed. At the National Conservatism Conference’s “Overturn Obergefell” panel Thursday, participants portrayed marriage equality as the source of many societal ills, including harm to children — something debunked by many studies.

“The last 10 years have made one thing unmistakably clear: We can either recognize gay marriage, or we can recognize a child’s right to the mother and father. We can’t do both,” anti-LGBTQ+ activist Katy Faust said at the event, according to The Washington Times. “If we are to retake legal marriage, we highlight the real victims, the children starved of maternal or paternal love, acquired by predators, mass produced, trafficked across borders, struggling with identity confusion, subjected to risky households.”

“If an adult can assemble sperm, egg, and womb — and ‘intend’ to parent the child —they get the baby,” she said. “Biologically related or not. Pedophile or not. Retiree or not. Foreign national or not. Intent-based parentage is child trafficking disguised as constitutional rights. Gay marriage did that.”

“The moment the state has the power to assign parenthood to strangers, it can unassign it from you,” she added. “Your legal relationship to the children you’ve begotten is weaker than it was a decade ago. Make no mistake. Gay marriage did that.”

Jeff Shafer, director of the Hale Institute, a conservative think tank, said that “Obergefell requires the gender neutralization of indelibly sexed legal standards. The whole point of Obergefell’s audacity was to knock over a cultural pillar that defines and orients a whole legal framework.”

Orthodox Rabbi Ilan Feldman put in, “Marriage is not for us to redefine. It’s God’s plan for the world,” ignoring that the U.S. is not a theocracy and that different faiths have different ideas about marriage.

Another on the panel was longtime anti-LGBTQ+ activist John Eastman, a close ally of Donald Trump. He was forced to resign as a law professor at Chapman University because of his role in the rally that preceded the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection, and he has been disbarred. But he’s still out there trying to end marriage equality.

He said he’s encouraged by the fact that after Davis filed her request with the Supreme Court, the court asked for a response from the gay couple who sued her over her denial of their marriage license. She wants to avoid paying damages to them as well as having the court overturn Obergefell.

The request for a response indicates the high court is interested in the case, he said at the conference, according to The Washington Times, although he thinks the court may limit itself to religious freedom concerns. “We should be very clear in the Kim Davis case, this wasn’t about the couple being able to get a marriage certificate under the auspices of Obergefell — they got one,” he added. “It was getting it from her despite her religious objection. It was an Orwellian bend-the-knee move.”

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It’s time to stop watching and do something

In today’s world, being gay in San Francisco is a privilege. A loud, public, and often colorful privilege. We walk through neighborhoods where our LGBTQ+ flags fly high. We have businesses that reflect us and city officials who hear our voices. This isn’t true everywhere, and we know it. But even here, even now, I see a growing numbness, especially among younger gay men. Myself included.

Because being a younger gay man today means being born into the aftermath of a war we didn’t fight. We’re the first to inherit a kind of queer ease that many of our elders couldn’t have imagined. We aren’t closeted in the workplace by default. We have dating apps, community centers, and corporate sponsorships. But most strikingly: we have each other, out in the open.

And yet all around us are generations of queer people who remember fighting just to survive. People who buried partners, watched whole friend groups vanish, and still got up and marched anyway. Fighting through the silence of a government that let their friends die during the AIDS crisis. Fighting against religious zealotry, the criminalization of their love, and the moral panic in classrooms.

I try to shut up and listen during Pride, to make space for memory. Because if I don’t, I risk forgetting that this was never just a celebration, it was a bitter fight. And it still is. Take a step back from the glitter and look at where we are right now.

This year, there are over 500 anti-LBGTQ+ bills introduced across the United States. Transgender people are being banned from sports, bathrooms, and healthcare. Drag shows are criminalized. Books that include queer characters are pulled from school shelves. Children are being told their queer families are unnatural. In some states, simply discussing queer identity is now seen as “indoctrination.”

In June, the Department of Defense stripped Harvey Milk’s name from a Navy ship, allegedly to remove “politics” from military naming conventions. But how is it apolitical to erase the name of a man who gave his life speaking truth to power? A man who had to leave the Navy because he refused to stay silent about his sexuality? A man who became the first openly gay elected official in the United States?

This year felt different. Pride was subdued. It was still provocative, loud, and unapologetically us. But there was fear, and it makes me wonder what we would do if the country decided Pride was no longer constitutional. I hope we will be like Hungary, defying Orbán’s Pride ban.

Many of us here in coastal cities cheer from the sidelines. We post infographics. We change our avatars. We celebrate with a bottomless brunch. But what are we doing for the people in Kentucky, Texas, Florida, and Idaho? Or queer kids who don’t see a way forward, let alone a rainbow? Are we fighting for them like our elders fought for us?

I say this not to shame us, but to wake us up.

If generations before us ran a marathon through fire, we can’t just stand at the finish line with signs that say “Yas, queen!” The baton is in our hands now. And the torch isn’t just symbolic.

It’s still burning, because the work isn’t finished.

Pride was born from protest: it was a riot against police brutality, a refusal to be erased. That spirit still matters. Because the pendulum is swinging again, hard and fast, and this time it’s coming for everything: from books to bodies, education to healthcare, our trans siblings to our queer visibility.

I know it’s tempting to feel safe here in San Francisco. But safety can breed complacency. And the truth is, if one of us is under attack, we all are. Queer liberation isn’t a local issue. It’s an international one.

So yes, go out and celebrate in your authenticity. Be joyful. Joy is resistance, too. But don’t forget that grief is part of this story, and so is responsibility. Ask yourself what you’re doing to protect the next generation. Donate to legal defense funds. Support queer youth orgs. Show up to school board meetings. Vote like your life depends on it, because theirs does.

Pride means more when you remember who died to make it possible. The parade doesn’t end at the afterparty. It ends when we all have the same rights, dignity, and chance to live fully and freely. We inherited Pride, now let’s earn it.

So grab the torch. It’s heavy, yes. But it’s ours now.

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Arrests, protests and sidewalk chalk: How Florida’s rainbow crosswalks became a political lightning rod

The battle over LGBTQ inclusion in Florida has expanded outside of the state’s classrooms to its crosswalks. 

Last month, the Florida Department of Transportation began removing rainbow crosswalks, Black history road murals and other street art after it updated its guidelines earlier this year to prohibit “non-uniform traffic control devices, such as pavement markings on state and local roads.” 

A rainbow crosswalk created in Orlando as part of a memorial for the 49 people fatally shot at the Pulse LGBTQ nightclub in 2016 was among the first that the Transportation Department painted over last month. 

The next day, protesters gathered at the crosswalk to “re-paint” it with multicolored sidewalk chalk, and they continued to turn up to re-chalk the crosswalk after rain washed it away almost every day. Transportation officials repainted the crosswalk again last week, and Orlando police are now patrolling it 24/7. 

Last weekend, four people were arrested for defacing a traffic device with chalk, though none have faced formal charges yet, so it’s unclear what kind of penalties they could face, according to Blake Simons, an Orlando-based lawyer who is representing them. A judge released all of them on their own recognizance, he said. 

But the battle has spread beyond Orlando. City officials in Key West and Miami Beach planned to meet Wednesday to discuss resolutions regarding their cities’ rainbow crosswalks, which the state has ordered them to cover by this week. In St. Petersburg, transportation officials painted over a “Black History Matters” street mural that covered a stretch of road in front of the Woodson African American Museum of Florida. Two pastors were arrested Friday night for trying to stop officials from painting over the mural. 

On Monday, St. Petersburg residents gathered at the city’s one remaining rainbow street mural. Tamara Leigh, 40, the founder of local group Tampa Bay Black Lesbians, said that about 100 people gathered at the event to create art and write messages of hope and love with chalk donated from across the country. She said that what struck her the most after the Black history mural was removed was how gray the street suddenly was.

“This is what happens when you remove diversity,” she said. “This is what happens when you don’t encourage inclusion. This is what happens when you shut people out. What’s left over is gray, and that was incredibly impactful for me. It’s just a visual representation of the things that are happening in this state, in this country.”

New state and federal guidance on ‘political messages’

Florida’s Transportation Department has said it is “ensuring roadways are not utilized for social, political, or ideological interests” and that the state is prepared to withhold funds from local governments that don’t comply with the directive to cover rainbow crosswalks and street murals. 

Many cities were given deadlines in early September, though some, including Delray Beach, were extended after the city requested a hearing with the Transportation Department. Delray Beach officials have until Friday to submit supporting documents contesting the removal of a rainbow street mural, according to WPTV, an NBC affiliate based in West Palm Beach. 

15-foot tire marks across a newly-unveiled Pride flag intersection in Delray Beach
Tire marks across a newly unveiled Pride flag intersection in Delray Beach, Fla.WPTV

The guidance applies to a variety of street art, including a “Back the Blue” mural on the street outside the Tampa Police Department’s headquarters and a crosswalk in front of the Daytona International Speedway that looks like a checkered raceway finish line, The Associated Press reported. 

Florida’s Transportation Department said it informed local governments of its policy change in June, and then, in July, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy directed the country’s governors to “identify needed safety improvements” within 60 days. 

“Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork,” Duffy said in a statement at the time.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has maintained a similar refrain. 

“You don’t have a First Amendment right to commandeer someone else’s property,” DeSantis said Tuesday, when asked about protesters who were arrested in Orlando for chalking the rainbow crosswalk in front of Pulse. “You do not have a right to take somebody else’s property for your messaging purposes.”

‘Refuse to be erased’

Some Floridians who disagree with the Transportation Department’s new policy say its reasoning isn’t supported by data. For example, an April 2022 studycommissioned by Bloomberg Philanthropies using historical crash analysis found that roadways with asphalt art projects saw a 50% decrease in the rate of crashes involving pedestrians or other vulnerable road users, a 37% decrease in the rate of crashes leading to injuries and a 17% decrease in the total crash rate. The study also found a 25% decrease in pedestrian crossings involving a conflict with drivers, a 27% increase in frequency of drivers immediately yielding to pedestrians and a 38% decrease in pedestrians crossing against the walk signal.

An investigation by WPTV found that there have been only two crashes at the intersection where Delray Beach’s Pride mural is located since the crosswalk was painted four years ago. In contrast, there were 15 incidents at the same location in the four years beforehand.

Orlando Police officers warn people not to apply chalk to the crosswalk outside of the Pulse Interim Memorial,
Orlando police outside the Pulse interim memorial in Orlando on Aug. 24.Phelan M. Ebenhack / AP

Brandon Wolf, a survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting and the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, said Wednesday that the state has repeatedly changed its justification for removing the street art. He pointed to data showing that vibrant crosswalks improve pedestrian safety. He also noted that in 2023 DeSantis named a road in Florida after conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. 

“It doesn’t work to say you’re erasing political statements from the pavement, and so now you’ve gone to, ‘Well, we just want every crosswalk to be standard,’” Wolf said. “The incoherence of their own strategy tells you that they’re not sure why they’re doing this, except to visibly demonstrate that they have control and power. That is what this is about. It is about a physical demonstration of force, of power over people — a reminder that they are the people in control, and at any given moment, they can decide to erase something.”

Blake Simons, the attorney representing the four people who were arrested at the Pulse crosswalk over the weekend for using chalk on it, said that he is personally not upset about the Transportation Department’s policy. Rather, he said protesters have a right to exercise their free speech.

“As long as people are not actually damaging things, we still have the right to exercise our free speech, even through conductive actions, as long as we’re not defacing property,” Simons said, adding, “This argument that this chalk is defacing it is just ludicrous.” 

Wolf said DeSantis and the Trump administration have “desecrated” the Pulse nightclub memorial, where the state approved the rainbow crosswalk in 2017. When he’s there, he said, he feels closest to his friends Juan Guerrero and Drew Leinonen, who were killed in the shooting.

He added that the protests are “a testament to the power of the people to refuse to be erased.” 

“If DeSantis and Trump thought that they could silence or erase a community with one crosswalk or with one bucket of paint, they were sorely mistaken,” Wolf said.

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LGBTQ+ publications are losing advertisers amid DEI purge

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It’s not just individual companies or Pride celebrations — even journalism is starting to suffer as conservatives wage war on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Brands are becoming increasingly reluctant to sponsor or work with LGBTQ+ publications amid anti-DEI campaigns, with several prominent outlets reporting loss of support from advertisers. Mark Berryhill, CEO of equalpride, the parent company of The Advocate, Out, and Pride.com, told The Guardian that companies recently “may have been a little bit more cautious than they have been in the past.”

“We’ve tried to do a better job in this political climate of just selling the importance of our buying power,” Berryhill said. “Everybody’s cautious, and I don’t think it’s just LGBTQ. I think they’re cautious in general right now with their work with minority-owned companies.”

Support The Advocate’s Journalism. Become a member today. 

Tag Warner, CEO of Gay Times, revealed that the publication has lost 80 percent of its advertisers in the past year, as well as over $6.7 million in expected advertiser revenue. Executives at Amaliah, GUAP, and Stream Publishing, which publishes Attitude magazine, also reported facing hesitancy from brands recently — though it didn’t start with Donald Trump.

Even before Trump’s executive orders terminating all DEI positions in the federal government, dozens of major companies had already abandoned their practices. Many made their decisions after conservatives online specifically targeted them for their policies and threatened boycotts, with failed filmmaker turned failed congressional candidate Robby Starbuck taking credit for spearheading the movement.

Many of the companies abandoning DEI also stopped sponsoring Juneteenth and Pride events. Heritage of Pride, the organization that produces New York City’s annual Pride events, previously had five “Platinum” donors — those who had donated $175,000. This year, it has just one. Groups behind WorldPride, San Francisco Pride, Silicon Valley Pride, Oakland Pride, St. Louis Pride, Columbus Pride, Twin Cities Pride, and Toronto Pride have also reported losing sponsors.

Research suggests that companies abandoning their inclusive practices may be acting hastily. Americans are twice as likely to buy or use a brand that supports LGBTQ+ rights, according to a GLAAD survey, and those ages 18 to 34 are over five times more likely to want to work at a company if it publicly supports LGBTQ+ rights.

“The one thing that maybe this whole controversy has helped us with a little bit is to really make brands realize it’s a business decision. It’s not just a charity or something you should do because you feel guilty,” Berryhill continued. “You should do it because it’s the right thing to support LGBTQ journalism. We’re small. We need to get the word out. We have important stories to tell. But it’s also a good business decision. The more we show that side, certain brands will come along.”

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Keeping the record queer with LGBTQ+ archives

Have you ever wondered what to do with the piles of Advocate or Out magazines you’ve collected through the years? Or swag you’ve collected at Pride events that you keep in storage boxes in closets? What about those ticket stubs to Melissa Etheridge concerts you kept religiously? LGBTQ+ archives throughout the country seek to create a home for those artifacts to help preserve queer history. 

Archives can help people understand that they aren’t alone, archivists say, allowing them to see that queer identities have always been around and are a part of history, even if some of that history has been lost or erased.

A proud lesbian at the first Stonewall anniversary march in NYC in June 1970.

Collecting physical pieces of history is Invisible Histories’ mission. It’s a queer community archive working to preserve LGBTQ+ history in the Deep South. Maigen Sullivan and Joshua Burford are the cofounders and co-executive directors. Their work is finding people and organizations willing to donate their items to help preserve the region’s LGBTQ+ legacies.

Seeing a queer historic record can be enlightening, Burford says. It’s evidence that counters the “misconception that queer identity is only for young adults,” he adds, and it can help bridge generational gaps. Queer history provides an “antidote to the isolation and invisibility” that’s been historically experienced by LGBTQ+ people, while also providing accessible records and a more complete picture of community history beyond major events, Burford says. Archives illustrate that queer people have always been here, surviving, thriving, and existing.

Donations to Invisible Histories have included flyers from the Boybutante Ball, a drag event that began raising funds for the Georgia organization AIDS Athens in 1989. The group also has digitized and transcribed oral histories recorded on cassette tapes by southern LGBTQ+ activist Donna Jo Smith, who interviewed a number of fellow queer rights advocates in the ’80s and ’90s.

A child holds a sign at the L.A. Pride Parade in West Hollywood, California, in June of 2019. 

Items of value to archives don’t have to be decades old, Sullivan and Burford say. “We are in an incredibly acute historical moment. And so your everyday is also really historically significant both now and in the future,” Sullivan says.

Showing “existence and resistance through archival work” is key to fighting authoritarianism, she adds. “We can go into the archives and show you, ‘Look at all these amazing people and what they did.’ Now, what would you like to do with this information? What would you like to do with this power that we’ve given you to imagine the future?” Burford says.

It’s something that Olivia Newsome, a special collections coordinator with the Lesbian Herstory Archives, echoes. This volunteer-run archive has existed since the early 1970s, with a mission to preserve lesbian history. The organization recently featured on social media a scrapbook showing a woman’s membership card to the Gay Activists Alliance as well as a letter from her mother about accepting her daughter. 

Wildrose has been a mainstay of LGBTQ+ nightlife in Seattle, Washingon, since 1984.

“Archiving lesbian history, queer histories, as they are being forcibly removed by fascist regimes … is important to remind people that we exist. Archiving your own life and the lives of those around you can be a radical moment of self-actualization. In a world which tells you not to exist, you can engage in the radical act of literally putting yourself into a broader historical context,” Newsome explains. 

Sullivan points out there’s also concern that under the Trump administration — which has made news for erasing queer and trans identities from government web pages and policy — could go after archives in academic spaces. That possibility has spurred Invisible Histories to seek to collaborate with academic archives to ensure these collections remain safe and available for years to come. 

Ultimately, donating to and learning from archives can be done by anyone, especially in the current political moment. “Archiving isn’t just for famous people, the wealthy, or for white cishet men,” Newsome says. “Archiving is for us all — your life matters and deserves to be remembered.” 

Find out more at InvisibleHistory.org and LesbianHerstoryArchives.org.

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CALL TO ACTION: Tell the FTC: Hands Off Gender-Affirming Care

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an alarming Request for Information (RFI) to attack the field of gender-affirming care—a safe, effective, and medically necessary practice grounded in decades of research and clinical expertise—as an “unfair and deceptive practice.”

The FTC’s actions are not grounded in evidence and are a distortion of the agency’s mission to protect the public from actual deceptive practices. Instead, they reflect a deep-seated bias against transgender, gender-diverse, and intersex people.

A person wearing a doctor's jacket and stethoscope gestures and writes on a clipboard. A patient sits beside them with their hands folded.

What’s Happening? 

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an alarming “public inquiry” to attack the field of transition-related healthcare (gender-affirming care)—a safe, effective, and medically necessary practice grounded in decades of research and clinical expertise—as an “unfair and deceptive practice”. 

We are calling on our community, trans people and our allies, to take action in support of the health care that is vital for our lives. The FTC is accepting public comments via Request for Information (RFI) until September 26. 

Under Sections 5 and 12 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, the FTC has the authority to launch investigations into misleading, unfair, and deceptive trade practices and issue enforcement orders based on their findings, whenever they deem necessary and appropriate. RFIs such as this are likely intended to inform who they investigate and how. This authority extends to the ability to investigate and issue enforcement orders against those marketing and advertising various health products. 

Why Does it Matter?

The Trump administration has continued to push false narratives about the transgender community. The FTC’s RFI is their latest effort to discredit our essential health care. Gender-affirming care is a safe, effective, and medically necessary field of medicine grounded in decades of research and clinical expertise. The provision of this healthcare to trans youth is overseen by well-trained clinicians utilizing staged and evidence-based clinical guidelines, that prioritize informed consent and open communication between providers, patients, and their families. For trans people, this care can be lifesaving. 

This RFI will also impact intersex adolescents and adults whose healthcare needs significantly overlap with gender-affirming care, and whose identities have also previously been attacked by this administration. Adolescent and adult patients with intersex variations face similar consequences as they often depend on these same medical providers, who treat transgender patients, when seeking care. 

The FTC’s actions are not grounded in evidence and distort the agency’s mission to protect the public from actual deceptive practices. Instead, they reflect a deep-seated bias against transgender, gender-diverse, and intersex people. The FTC should focus on stopping real consumer harm—not undermining trusted medical care that saves lives.   

What Can You Do? 

The FTC has opened a 60-day public comment portal—and your action and your story are urgently needed. This is a critical opportunity to submit your public comments in support of gender-affirming care for adolescents.

Read below for special instructions on how to submit your comment, what to include, and what not to include. Find a template from A4TE to write your comment here.

What You Need to Know Before You Submit

This portal will enable Advocates for Trans Equality to submit your story, on your behalf. This ensures that your submission is not traceable back to the computer or device you used to submit your comment. This “air gap” is a protective measure for our community and our allies. Because Advocates for Trans Equality is submitting your comment on your behalf, you may not notice your comment in the portal right away. We commit to submitting comments by the RFI’s deadline, September 26. Antagonistic, hateful, and threatening comments submitted through this portal will be omitted. If for any reason we encounter difficulty in submitting your comment, we will make every effort to contact you to resolve the issue. We will also retain a copy of your comment securely in our internal records.

Remember Your Audience

We encourage all submitting parties to consider the nature of the actions described in their comments, related to the FTC’s hostile framing of gender-diversity and the provision of gender-affirming care. Given this hostility, the information that you provide should be measured, free of identifying information, and provided in such a manner as to not put yourself or others at risk.  

This portal will enable you to submit to the FTC Request for Information (RFI) with a reduced risk of identification than you may have if you were to make your submission directly to the Federal Regulations Portal. 

As you draft your comment, depending on your experiences with and relationship to transition-related healthcare, also called “gender-affirming care”, there are certain pieces of information you should consider sharing as well as pieces of information you should highly consider omitting.

Legal Disclaimer: As an intermediary party in your submission, Advocates for Trans Equality and Advocates for Trans Equality Action Fund take no responsibility for comments, statements, or actions described in your submission; nor does our delivery of your submission to the FTC represent an endorsement of said statements, attitudes, or actions.

By submitting text to this portal, you are consenting to having the exact, unedited text of your comment uploaded to the FTC’s Regulations.gov comment portal. If you include your name or other identifiable information, we will include this in your submitted comment.

BEFORE YOU SUBMIT A COMMENT, PLEASE READ:

Tips for your Safety

All submitting individuals should read the following guidelines closely to minimize community risk. Don’t see yourself listed below? That’s okay! You can still submit a comment. Reviewing the information below can still help you craft a comment that is safe and helpful!Expand allCollapse all

All Submitting Individuals

These comments will be viewable by the general public as well as this administration’s Federal Trade Commission. Accordingly, we highly recommend that regardless of your experiences, you withhold and avoid disclosing any identifying information. This includes:

  • Your full name (consider using a pseudonym); 
  • Your date of birth, social security number, or other identification numbers; 
  • The name of your patients, children, or medical providers; 
  • The state you currently reside in and where transition-related care was received; 
  • Your address; 
  • The exact location, including the name of the clinic or hospital, where you or your child received care; 
  • Where you work

Again, all submitting parties should withhold the information above, as well as any similar identifying information.

Parents and Caregivers of Trans and Gender-Diverse Youth

Great Information to Share

This RFI is seeking information regarding your experiences accessing and navigating the clinical provision of transition-related healthcare with your minor child. The RFI is looking for information from the public regarding how that care was described to you and your child, as well as the conditions under which it was provided. In that regard the following types of information are excellent to share in your submission:

  • Any barriers to accessing this care; 
  • The ways in which potential adverse effects of various treatments were described to you; 
  • The materials you received about this care; 
  • The depth of the discussion and the number of appointments that pre-dated the first treatment; 
  • How your child was diagnostically assessed; 
  • Your oversight of the treatment process; 
  • The strength of your child’s understanding of their gender identity; 
  • The psychological and mental health support that your child received both before and alongside this care; 
  • The positive effects and benefits of this care for your child; 
  • Your provider’s professionalism; 
  • The deliberate and gradual nature of how this care was provided; 
  • The clinical guidelines that your provider utilized; 
  • Your role in supporting your child in their transition; 
  • The extensive nature of the counseling you and your family received regarding this care.

What to be Cautious of Sharing

This administration, including the FTC, has demonstrated a hostility towards gender-diversity itself as well as the field of transition-related care. Accordingly, the information that you provide has a high potential to be taken out of context and distorted. Within the context of the FTC’s authority to investigate this healthcare, parents/caregivers are likely to be considered “consumers”, much like patients. This, however, is an informed guess and we encourage parents/caregivers to exercise caution with what they communicate in their submission. Some considerations:

  • Avoid characterizing experiences as quick or brief; 
  • Avoid downplaying providers’ disclosures of potential adverse effects; 
  • Do not share the names of your providers, nor any identifying information about them; 
  • Be cautious regarding how you describe the informed consent process.
Medical and Behavioral Health Professionals

Great Information to Share

This RFI is seeking information regarding how adolescents and their families accessed transition-related healthcare. As healthcare professionals you play an integral role in this process, ensuring that transgender adolescents can access the potentially lifesaving medical care that they need to thrive and lived authentic and fulfilling lives. Your role in this care is also under particular scrutiny by the RFI, and as a result you should carefully consider the information you share and how you share it. We have provided a list of recommended Do’s and Do Not’s for you to take into consideration while your draft your comment

DO: 

  • Keep your submission HIPAA compliant. 
  • Do ensure all information about you and your patients is de-identified. 
  • Do share general, high-level descriptions of your experience and expertise. 
  • For example: “As a pediatric endocrinologist who has treated gender-diverse patients for over 23 years…” or “I am a licensed psychotherapist who has treated over 2,000 adolescents during my career…”. 
  • Describe the depth and length of conversations with patients and their parents in equal measure and weight.  
  • Describe the depth and length of your discussions with families regarding the benefits, common adverse effects, and potential adverse effects of treatment. 
  • Describe the procedures related to policy development within professional medical and behavioral health.  
  • Describe the rigor of the informed consent process.  
  • Describe the evidence-based nature of the care you provide. 
  • Feel free to share articles from peer-reviewed journals. 
  • Describe the materials you provide to parents and patients.  
  • Describe the benefits of treatment that you’ve witnessed for patients and their families. 
  • Describe the staged and intentional nature of your clinical approach. 
  • Describe the length, rigor, and depth of your professional training.  
  • Present evidence-based, peer-reviewed statistics and information regarding the patient population. 
  • Keep information focused on the patient/family relationships, to the exclusion of administrative procedures and practices.

DO NOT: 

  • Provide information about the state you practice medicine in. 
  • Provide identifying information about your practice or your patients. 
  • Provide your name. 
  • Provide the exact name of the institutions where you were trained. 
  • Provide the name of your practice, hospital, or clinic where you practice. 
  • Provide license numbers. 
  • Cite op-eds as substantiating evidence regarding this care.
  • Downplay your expertise. 
Adults Who Received Care as a Minor Adolescent

You are likely to be considered a “consumer” by the FTC, you should still carefully consider the information you share in your comment, as well as how you share it.  

Great Information to Share

  • Any barriers to accessing this care; 
  • The ways in which potential adverse effects of various treatments were described to you and your parents; 
  • Your ability to understand and consent to care; 
  • The materials you received about this care; 
  • The depth of the discussion and the number of appointments that pre-dated the first treatment; 
  • The depth and strength of your understanding of your gender-identity prior to initiating care; 
  • The psychological and mental health support that you received alongside this care; 
  • The positive effects and benefits of this care; 
  • Your provider’s professionalism; 
  • The staged nature of how this care was provided; 
  • The clinical guidelines that your provider utilized; 
  • Your parents’ role in supporting your child in their transition; 
  • The extensive nature of the counseling you and your family received regarding this care.

What to be Cautious of Sharing

  • Avoid characterizing experiences as quick or brief; 
  • Avoid downplaying providers’ disclosures of potential adverse effects; 
  • Do not share the names of your providers, nor any identifying information about them; 
  • Be cautious regarding how you describe the informed consent process.

Ready to submit your comment? Click below to tell your story.

SUBMIT YOUR COMMENT HERE

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Republicans resurface anti-trans attacks in the closing stretch of the Virginia governor’s race

As Virginia’s race for governor enters its final stretch, Republicans are turning to a familiar page in their playbook: anti-transgender attacks. 

On the airwaves and social media, GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and her allies have increasingly zeroed in on attacking Democratic former Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s stances on transgender people’s participation in youth sports and use of school locker rooms and public bathrooms. 

It marks the resurfacing of a culture war issue that emerged as major flashpoint in the 2024 campaign, most notably when Donald Trump used it as part of his closing message against Kamala Harris. 

Now, facing a polling and fundraising deficit ahead of this November’s election, Virginia Republicans are betting that it remains a politically potent way to paint Democrats as extreme and out of touch, as they try to hang on to control of the governorship in a blue-leaning state. 

The Earle-Sears campaign released a digital ad this week claiming that Spanberger “voted to allow men in girls’ sports, bathrooms and locker rooms” when she was a member of Congress. The ad also alleges, “If a child secretly identifies as transgender at school, [Spanberger] says the parents shouldn’t be told.”

The ad’s first allegation cites Spanberger’s vote in February 2021 on a House bill — named the Equality Act – that proposed adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the traits protected under various pieces of federal civil rights laws. The House, controlled by Democrats at the time, passed the bill, but it stalled in the Senate.

The ad’s second allegation cites a September 2022 post on X by Spanberger in which she attacked a plan by Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin that she said would “out kids, require their identities not be respected, and hurt them in the very places where they are supposed to learn and thrive.”

“That’s insane,” the narrator in Earle-Sears’ 30-second ad says. “Spanberger is for they/them, not us,” borrowing a line Trump used in his anti-Harris ads last year. 

Earle-Sears’ campaign launched a second ad this week on TV claiming that Spanberger “wants boys to play sports and share locker rooms with little girls” and that “Spanberger will let children change genders without telling their parents.”

Spanberger’s campaign had generally avoided addressing the issue head on throughout the race. But on Thursday, she began running a TV ad that more forcefully responds to the attacks. 

“Nothing matters more to me than the safety of all our kids, and as a law enforcement officer, I went after child predators,” Spanberger says directly to the camera in that ad. “So it really angers me to hear these lies about who I am. I believe we need to get politics out of our schools and trust parents and local communities.” 

In response to questions from NBC News about Republicans’ focus on trans issues, Spanberger campaign spokesperson Connor Joseph reiterated many of those same points in a statement.

“As a mom of three daughters in Virginia public schools, a former federal law enforcement officer, and a candidate for Governor, Abigail’s priority is making sure that all of Virginia’s kids are safe,” Joseph said in an email to NBC News. 

“As a federal law enforcement officer, Abigail investigated child predators, arrested drug dealers, and worked side by side with police departments to keep Virginians safe — and just last month, Virginia’s largest police union endorsed her for Governor,” Joseph continued, referring to the Virginia Police Benevolent Association’s support for Spanberger.

“Winsome Earle-Sears should stop trying to score political points with the White House and start answering for why she stands with an administration that is driving up costs for Virginia families, killing Virginia jobs, and taking away Virginians’ healthcare,” Joseph added.

Republicans have used anti-trans attacks on the campaign trail to excite their conservative base and portray Democrats as outside the mainstream. The same theme made its way into the first TV ad released this week by New Jersey Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli, slamming Democrat Mikie Sherrill for caring “more about pronouns and sanctuary cities than” about “solving our problems.” 

The broader issue has so far played a more pronounced role in the Virginia governor’s race. The Republican National Committee has blasted out posts on X across several accounts alleging that Spanberger hasn’t taken a clear stance onhow she feels about trans people participating in sports and use of public restrooms. 

The issue has also played out in recent local headlines. Arlington and Fairfax counties, in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, have sued Trump’s Education Department over funding threats it issued against those counties’ school districts in response to their policies allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms for the gender they identify with. The lawsuits have become a point of contention in the state, with Earle-Sears and conservative groups pressing Spanberger to take a clear stance on the situation.

The tensions over the issue boiled up at a protest last month outside an Arlington County school board meeting in which officials were discussing the policy. Someone held a sign up at that rally that stated, “Hey Winsome, if trans can’t share your bathroom, then Blacks can’t share my water fountain.” Earle-Sears was attending that meeting, and an image of that sign appeared in one of Earle-Sears’ latest ads. Spanberger has denounced the sign as “racist” and “abhorrent.”

In addition, in northern Virginia’s Loudon County, two students were suspendedafter they expressed discomfort with school policies on locker rooms, a story that has made the rounds in the conservative media ecosphere.

Earle-Sears’ campaign indicated that it would continue to hammer Spanberger on the topic.

“Abigail Spanberger can’t run from her record,” campaign spokesperson Peyton Vogel said in a statement. “In Virginia, her radical agenda has resulted in child predators entering girls’ bathrooms and students feeling unsafe. No amount of ad money can erase those facts.”

It’s difficult to gauge how voters evaluate the importance of trans issues in Virginia’s gubernatorial race. The polling that’s been conducted in recent months — the latest of which shows Spanberger leading Earle-Sears within the margin of error — has not surveyed Virginia voters on that particular issue. 

Additionally, Spanberger has maintained a robust advantage on the airwaves. She outspent Earle-Sears on ads almost 2 to 1 from Jan 1. through Labor Day, according to AdImpact, and has outspent her by even more over the last two weeks.

But Republican strategists argued the strategy will help boost Earle-Sears, saying it could help her follow Youngkin’s successful focus on parental and cultural issues in the Virginia’s gubernatorial election four years ago. 

“I think it’s incredibly potent,” said Justin Discigil, a Republican operative in Virginia who currently works for Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC. “This is an 80/20 issue. And the fact that the ‘moderate standard-bearer’ of the Democratic Party cannot squarely put herself on the 80% side is dumbfounding.” 

“This is perhaps the most commonsense issue in American politics today, and voters inherently get it without much explaining,” he added.

Zack Roday, a Virginia-based Republican strategist who is not working with the Earle-Sears campaign, said that he found it “very surprising” that Spanberger hadn’t yet found a solid message for questions on the issue.

Nationally, Democrats have been divided on how to handle trans issues in the wake of Trump’s 2024 victory. For instance, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, made waves earlier this year when he said it’s “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports, breaking with some in his party. 

In Virginia, some Democrats have pointed to the fact that Earle-Sears, as a member of the Virginia Board of Education earlier in her career, did not take any action to alter the body’s position on gender identity and bathroom and locker use. 

During Sears’ tenure, a Virginia school district became the center of controversyafter a transgender student was allowed to use a restroom that did not match their biological sex. 

Democrats also maintain that the Republican strategy amounts to an attempt to distract from Spanberger’s focus on affordability and economic issues, as well as on her efforts to tie Earle-Sears to Trump. 

“Winsome Earle-Sears can’t defend her extreme record,” Democratic Party of Virginia spokesperson Maggie Amjad said in a statement. “From voting against the right to contraception to dismissing Trump’s threat to Virginia’s economy and Virginians’ healthcare, it’s clear Sears won’t put Virginians first. The Commonwealth deserves a Governor whose number-one priority is Virginia working families, not loyalty to Donald Trump.”

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