There are still hundreds of conversion therapy practitioners in the U.S., despite many state and local laws limiting the discredited and harmful practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
A Trevor Project report released Tuesday, “It’s Still Happening,” identified more than 1,320 conversion therapy practitioners in 48 states and the District of Columbia. More than 20 states, D.C., and numerous cities and counties have enacted laws barring licensed professionals from subjecting minors to such therapy, but those laws don’t affect what counselors offer adult clients, nor do they affect the work of unlicensed practitioners, including many of those who are affiliated with a religious institution. Some faith-based therapists, however, do hold state licenses.
Many of the therapists the Trevor Project identified operate in states that have restrictions, according to the report. And the number is likely an undercount, given that “conversion therapy is increasingly underground and conducted in secret, with many practitioners not publicly advertising their services in a way that can be documented,” the document states.
“While public awareness of the harm and unscientific foundation of conversion therapy has grown dramatically over the years, many believe it to be a thing of the past. This new report shatters this misperception, revealing troubling evidence that conversion therapy is far from being a relic of history,” Casey Pick, director of law and policy for the Trevor Project, said in a press release.“Conversion therapy practitioners are widespread across the country, with many of them utilizing their licenses and credentials to attempt to legitimize the dangerous and unethical practices they aim to impose on vulnerable LGBTQ+ youth. The findings of this report underscore the urgent need for policymakers, state licensing boards, professional associations, accreditation agencies, healthcare leaders, and faith communities to take action today to end this insidious and exploitative industry.”
The Trevor Project’s researchers identified “more than 600 practitioners who hold active professional licenses and over 700 practitioners who operate in a ministerial (official religious) capacity,” the report says. They performed online searches and reviewed all leads that they uncovered.
Pennsylvania, Texas, Minnesota, Missouri, and Ohio had the most identified licensed and unlicensed practitioners, in descending order. Minnesota is the only state in this group with a ban on conversion therapy for minors. The South had the largest proportion of the providers identified — 33 percent — followed by the Midwest, with 28 percent. Hawaii and Vermont were the only states with no identified practitioners.
Conversion therapy has been condemned as ineffective and harmful by every major medical and mental health group in the U.S. The American Psychological Association has found it is “associated with an extensive list of long-lasting social and emotional consequences,” the report notes. “These include depression, anxiety, suicidality, substance abuse, a range of post-traumatic responses, loss of connection to community, damaged familial relationships, self-blame, guilt, and shame.”
It is rooted in the idea that being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer is a mental illness that needs to be “cured” — again, something rejected by leaders of the mental health field.
To end conversion therapy, Trevor Project officials call for more state laws limiting the practice and better enforcement of those that exist. They also urge the federal government to take action through regulatory bodies and for Congress to pass legislation classifying conversion therapy as consumer fraud — such legislation has been introduced but has yet to pass.
“Lifting the curtain and exposing this underground practice is a shocking realization of how much work still needs to be done to put a stop to the deeply entrenched conversion ‘therapy’ industry,” Troy Stevenson, director of state advocacy campaigns for the Trevor Project, said. “Governors and state lawmakers have a particularly unique responsibility to act — and act urgently. They have extraordinary power by way of legislation, regulation and executive action to end this abusive and pervasive practice across the country.”
“Every parent wants their child to be well and to thrive, which is what makes this report so astonishing, and frankly, frightening,” added Brian K. Bond, CEO of PFLAG National, a partner with the Trevor Project in the movement to end conversion therapy since 2012. “When therapists, counselors and trusted faith leaders misrepresent their services, families pay the price. Until lawmakers take action to end these practices, PFLAG National advises LGBTQ+ people and families to avoid services that promote therapies using terms such as ‘conversion,’ ‘reparative,’ ‘reintegrative,’ ‘unwanted same-sex attraction,’ ‘sexual attraction fluidity exploration,’ and ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria.’’’
Officials overseeing the Conservative Political Action Conference knew about past accusations of sexual misconduct by chairman Matt Schlapp but failed to investigate or remove him from his powerful post, an amended sexual battery and defamation lawsuit claims.
In one alleged incident, during a fundraising trip to South Florida in early 2022, Schlapp was accused of stripping to his underwear and rubbing against another person without his consent, according to the filing. In 2017, at a CPAC after-party, Schlapp attempted to kiss an employee against his wishes, the lawsuit claims.
In both cases, according to the suit, the alleged victims reported the unwanted advances to staffers at CPAC’s parent organization, the American Conservative Union, but no action was taken against Schlapp, a longtime Republican power broker and prominent backer of former president Donald Trump.
A 24-year-old U.S.Senate staffer who is allegedly in a video showing two men having sex in a Senate hearing room has been fired. A video of the incident in a Senate hearing room was reported on Friday and quickly went viral online.
Maryland Democratic U.S. Senator Ben Cardin’s office released a statement about the legislative aide who was allegedly in the video’s employment.
“Aidan Maese-Czeropski is no longer employed by the U.S. Senate,” a spokesperson said. “We will have no further comment on this personnel matter.”
Maese-Czeropski’s LinkedIn profile shows he had worked for the 80-year-old senator since October 2021.
In his defense earlier on Friday, when allegations began to swirl that he was involved, Maese-Czeropski addressed the incident on the platform. He didn’t specifically deny the allegations. “This has been a difficult time for me, as I have been attacked for who I love to pursue a political agenda,” he wrote.
“While some of my actions in the past have shown poor judgement, I love my job and would never disrespect my workplace. Any attempts to characterize my actions otherwise are fabricated,” he said, adding that he would seek legal counsel to address false allegations against him.
The Advocate has attempted to contact Maese-Czeropski for additional comments but has not yet received a response.
The U.S. Capitol Police, in a statement to The Advocate Friday evening, confirmed that they are aware of the incident and are conducting an investigation. “We are aware and looking into this,” a spokesperson said.
The Advocate was first to confirm the incident with U.S. Capitol Police and Cardin’s office.
The footage in question, first released by the far-right outlet Daily Caller, founded by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, shows two men in a sexual act in what appears to be a Senate hearing room, a space typically reserved for legislative proceedings including confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Courtjustices.
The video has sparked widespread controversy and attention, highlighting concerns about conduct and security within government buildings.
The reaction online has been mixed but vigorous.
While many on the right are calling attention to the unprofessional behavior and complaining of depravity and sexual deviancy, others are pointing out the hypocrisy of conservatives glossing over their own sex-related scandals like RepublicanColorado Rep. Lauren Boebert’s recent public groping scandal in a theater with children present or the Florida GOP chairman, Christian Ziegler and his wife, Sarasota County Public Schools board member and Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget, whose own sexual escapades recently came to the forefront after Christian Ziegler was accused of raping a woman with whom the married couple had a sexual relationship.
Christian Ziegler denies the allegations and has not been charged. Bridget Ziegler is not accused of any involvement in the sexual assault. Both have refused to resign from their positions. Bridget Ziegler’s involvement in a secret same-sex sexual relationship was condemned as hypocrisy as she had advocated for Florida’s “don’t say gay” law and promoting bans of books about LGBTQ+ people and topics in schools.
As anti-LGBTQ+ bills from politicians spike across the United States, support for gay and transgender people is also declining among the public.
While the majority of Americans still support marriage equality and anti-discrimination policies, support for LGBTQ+ rights has gone down “across the board” in the past few years, according to a recent report from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).
While around 72 percent of the public supported marriage equality in August 2021, just 66 percent said they support it in 2023. The PRRI cites “partisan dynamics” as a factor behind the shift, which has largely influenced Republican voters.
For example, support for policies requiring transgender people to use bathrooms based on their sex at birth nearly doubled among GOP voters in just seven years. Bathroom bills were supported by just 44 percent of Republicans in 2016, compared to 80 percent in 2023. Support for such policies among Democrats consistently remained low, with 31 percent in both years.
However, the PRRI notes “trends in opinions have not been uniform across the United States.” Opposition to policies like bathroom bans remains strong in traditionally blue states, whereas support for them has been increasing in red states. One trend that remained consistent across states is that fewer people responded with neutral stances such as “Don’t Know.”
The report states that “there is a very close relationship between opinions and policy,” and while it is unclear if “policy change occurred before or after opinion change … there are signals that the anti-LGBTQ turn is shifting norms.”
And while younger generations are more likely to support LGBTQ+ people — particularly transgender people — previous PRRI analysis demonstrates that “partisanship can overcome generational divides.”
“As partisan politicians began to clearly take opposing positions on transgender rights, so too have partisan members of the mass public,” the report states.
Gay and bisexual men at high risk for mpox infection should get vaccinated for the virus even after the current outbreak ends, government health advisers said Wednesday.
The committee’s recommendation now goes to the director to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and — if she signs off on it — is sent out as guidance to U.S. doctors.
More than 30,000 U.S. mpox cases were reported last year. The number dropped dramatically this year, to about 800. But because the virus doesn’t naturally circulate in the U.S., any single case counts as an outbreak, according to the CDC.
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is caused by a virus that’s in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals.
The virus was not known to spread easily among people, but cases exploded in Europe and the U.S. in the spring and summer of 2022, mostly among men who have sex with men. Deaths were rare, but many people suffered painful skin lesions for weeks.
A two-dose vaccine, Jynneos, became a primary weapon in the U.S. It’s recommended primarily for men who have sex with men who have more than one sex partner, who have recently had a sexually transmitted disease, or who are at higher risk for infections through sexual contact for other reasons.
About 500,000 people in the U.S. have gotten the recommended two doses of the vaccine, about a quarter of the 2 million who are eligible, CDC officials said.
The new recommendation may serve to remind people the virus is still out there, and that people can be infected during international travel, CDC officials said.
The daily average of new U.S. cases is one to four per day, though some people likely aren’t being diagnosed, CDC officials said. Two deaths were reported in September, bringing the total to 54 in the U.S. since mpox hit last year.
San Francisco had more than 800 cases last year, but the count dropped to an average of only one per month in the first half this of year. The number of cases rose to seven in August, 20 last month and at least 10 so far this month.
“Things are much better than they were last summer,” said Dr. Stephanie Cohen, who oversees STD prevention work at San Francisco’s health department. “But there are (still) many more cases than there should be.”
Three weeks before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived in the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, Michigan to deliver what was to be one of the final public speeches of his life. Hundreds of people packed the gymnasium at the local high school to hear the civil rights icon speak. In the audience that night was an 18-year-old boy named Jerry DeGrieck. DeGrieck, already a longtime supporter of the Civil Rights Movement from an early age, was defying an edict from his avowedly racist parents prohibiting him from attending.
DeGrieck’s presence that night, however, was not the only secret he was hiding. Jerry DeGrieck was also gay, and he knew it.
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“From the time I was eight years old, I knew that I was different,” he told LGBTQ Nation. “I didn’t even know what the word homosexual was, I never really heard it. But I knew that I was different.”
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700 miles away, in Levittown, New York, Nancy Wechsler’s parents were raising her in a much different way. As ardent socialists, they instilled in the young Nancy a deep commitment to the causes of social and economic justice, including aggressive support for the Civil Rights Movement. She was, as she described, a “red diaper baby.” And like Jerry DeGrieck, Nancy Wechsler knew early on in life that she was gay.
Despite the differences in their upbringings, the shared core values they acquired early in life made it inevitable that DeGrieck and Wechsler would eventually come to know each other as political compatriots when they both began attending the University of Michigan in the early 1970s. As student movement colleagues, they would eventually make history by being elected to the Ann Arbor City Council in April 1972 under the banner of the socialist Human Rights Party.
As members of the Ann Arbor City Council, the pair would spearhead a number of bold initiatives. Within their first few months, they were successful at pushing through several progressive policies that have since become standard in many areas across the country. From a formal declaration of Gay Pride Week, to eliminating local criminal penalties for possession of marijuana, to a Human Rights Ordinance which made Ann Arbor the first city in America to outlaw discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation, DeGrieck and Wechsler’s influence was changing the game in Ann Arbor, as well as the entire United States.
Despite these accomplishments, it is also perhaps fitting that many LGBTQ+ Americans may never have heard the names Jerry DeGrieck and Nancy Wechsler. They have both always believed that individual notoriety should take a back seat to a cause far more important than any one person. “Electoral politics is not about the individual” is a sentiment they both expressed during interviews with LGBTQ Nation. “I viewed electoral politics more as a platform to challenge people and raise issues,” Wechsler said.
It was in the process of raising one of these issues that both DeGrieck and Wechsler would unwittingly make history of their own.
On the night of October 14, 1973, the owner of a local straight bar known as The Rubaiyat had ejected several lesbian patrons for dancing together and kissing. Wechsler, who was part of the group that had been ejected, met the police when they arrived at the scene and attempted to explain that The Rubaiyat’s owner was in violation of Ann Arbor’s Human Rights Ordinance.
“He just looked dumbfounded,” she recalled, “like he actually hadn’t heard of it and didn’t know what to do with what I was saying. And he certainly didn’t inform [the owner] that he was going against the Ann Arbor city ordinance. So, he was not helpful. Police are rarely helpful.”
The police took no action against The Rubaiyat or its owner, Greg Fenerli. Indeed, this inaction fit a pattern of Ann Arbor city officials ignoring complaints of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Since the passage of the Human Rights Ordinance in July 1972, at least a dozen such complaints had been filed with the Ann Arbor Human Rights Commission, with no action taken on any of them by the Ann Arbor City Attorney, Ed Pear. The ordinance was simply not being enforced.
The following day, October 15, the council was set to hear the annual report of Ann Arbor’s Chief of Police, Walter Krasny. Sensing an opportunity to pressure the city to finally enforce the Human Rights Ordinance, Wechsler and DeGrieck made the decision to finally, at long last, come out together during the council meeting.
It was a moment long in the making for DeGrieck.
“I was ready to come out, I really wanted to come out,” he recalled. “I remember going to the University of Michigan Health Services to see a counselor because I wanted help coming out, and I had a few sessions with the counselor and she said to me, ‘I will help you if you want to be straight, but I will not help you come out.’”
In a time before the American Psychiatric Association’s declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness, coming out as gay was seen by many as unthinkable, much less for anyone serving in elected office.
Despite all this, in their statements before the council that day, both DeGrieck and Wechsler did the unthinkable. They came out. In so doing, they became the first openly LGBTQ+ elected officials in American history. Before Harvey Milk, Barney Frank, Danica Roem, or any of the other hundreds of openly LGBTQ+ elected officials that have come since, there was simply Jerry and Nancy, fighting for the enforcement of the historic ordinance they themselves had championed.
“I remember it feeling really good to just come out,” Nancy Wechsler recalled, “even though there was a lot of pushback and shock. I remember people on the city council could barely look at us, they just looked disgusted. It’s like it was bad enough that we were these lefty, socialist, union-supporting people who helped organize demonstrations that actually shut down city council meetings, but then we were queer, too?!”
Over the following months, in the face of both public and private backlash, Jerry and Nancy continued to advocate for proper enforcement of the Ann Arbor Human Rights Ordinance, sharply criticizing both Chief of Police Walter Krasny and City Attorney Ed Pear for their inaction. By the time their terms were up the following April, however, they both nonetheless had come to realize it was time to move on.
“Before I was on the City Council I used to walk around Ann Arbor by myself a lot and just relax and walk. After I was on the City Council I didn’t have that kind of privacy…” Wechsler recollected. Following the death of her mother that December, the decision to move on from Ann Arbor and political life was an easy one.
DeGrieck, meanwhile, was initially keen on running for a second term, but eventually realized, as he and Nancy had always sought to stress, “Electoral politics is not about the individual.” He also decided not to run again in April 1974. The following month, the City of Ann Arbor undertook its first ever enforcement action under the Human Rights Ordinance for an act of anti-gay discrimination, with City Attorney Ed Pear filing suit against the owner of a local motel for firing a gay employee.
In the fifty years since, both Wechsler and DeGrieck have laid down roots worlds away from the Michigan college town where they both humbly etched their names into history. DeGrieck has since relocated to Seattle, where he went to work for the King County Department of Public Health, recently retiring after helping to lead the county’s COVID-19 response. Wechsler has since settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has continued to be involved in a number of social and economic justice causes.
Of their contributions to the movement and their importance to LGBTQ+ elected officials across the United States over the past fifty years, Speaker pro tempore of the Michigan House of Representatives Laurie Pohutsky — herself openly bisexual — had the following to say:
“It’s hard to overstate just what Jerry DeGrieck and Nancy Wechsler coming out means for all of us openly LGBTQ elected officials who have served since. Being the first of anything comes with great responsibility, anxiety, and fear, and all of that was of course compounded by the time during which Jerry and Nancy came out. All of us who have followed in their footsteps owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for their courage, and while barriers of bigotry and hatred still exist for LGBTQ elected officials, we can draw from the example that Jerry and Nancy set by knocking down the very first one.”
Reflecting on the current challenges confronting the LGBTQ+ community, DeGrieck reserved specific ire for members of the community who refuse to support the rights of transgender people.
“I can’t stand it when some gay people, particularly gay men, don’t see trans issues as their issue. I think that that is really pathetic,” DeGrieck said. “Trans people are some of the most marginalized folks in this country and are scapegoated. How a young person who is trans feels and is impacted by all of the marginalization, hate and dismissiveness is just something we cannot tolerate.”
He singled out Montana State Representative Zooey Zephyr for special praise.
“We need trans leaders like Zooey Zephyr of Montana to be out there. To know us is to love us. A lot of people used to not know that there were lesbians and gays in their midst. I think the more out people are, the more other people know them, and I think that makes a difference.”
It is a sentiment which harkens back to that fateful evening in the gymnasium at Grosse Pointe South High School. It was the night DeGrieck defied the prejudice of his own family to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the overwhelming moral authority with which he spoke for what would prove to be one of the last times.
In the midst of his speech at Grosse Pointe, Dr. King uttered a simple yet profound truth, which rings out across all backgrounds, and across all struggles for justice and human dignity: “I still believe that freedom is the bonus you receive for telling the truth. Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
When the GLAAD Media Institute (GMI) visited Kansas City, Missouri on Oct. 14 to facilitate a multimedia workshop called Telling Your Story: Messaging & Media Tools for Today’s Activist Justice Horn said something that had the room snapping in agreement.
“National organizations don’t visit cities like Kansas City or Tulsa, so for GLAAD to be here means a lot to the LGBTQ community of Missouri,” said Horn, the chair for the LGBTQ Commission of Kansas City. Horn said that because states like Missouri and Oklahoma are fully locked anti-LGBTQ states, they’re over looked.
It’s true. The “Show-Me” state introduced the highest quantity of anti-equality laws (48) this year next to Texas (54), according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
“I think at the basis it’s ensuring that both youth to adult, members of our community, aren’t going to be bullied; that’s with slurs to legislation, to policy. What we are doing here in Kansas City is making an environment where none of that is welcome, that everyone is affirmed and accepted here in Kansas City,” Horn said. “I think this sets a tone of what’s important, and that’s ensuring everyone is welcome here in our community.”
However, no matter what’s at stake, Kansas City’s LGBTQ advocates and public officials will continue to organize for the LGBTQ people of their state and beyond. For instance, this May, Kansas City Council declared itself a “Sanctuary State” for transgender medical care, before the state’s trans medical ban for youth under 18 took effect in late August. The state also legalized discrimination against trans athletes’ participation in school sports.
Both laws would have directly affected GLAAD Media Institute Alum Atlas Mallams, a first-year Computer Science major at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), if not for the city’s actions. He came to the media workshop to learn how to better tell xey story.
“When I first came out as a transgender man, I didn’t really know that much about the LGBTQ community as a whole. I didn’t really know the strife, the things that they go through on a day-to-day basis, the things they have to watch out for when they are walking down the street,” said Mallams.
Mallams says they were surprised when he first experienced discrimination for being trans, he did not expect it. That’s when they started to realize the lack of news coverage on the day-to-day harms that LGBTQ people experience.
“I wanted to gain the resources to know how to speak that and make sure I can make an impact, and put my view points out there and what I want to say out there, and what I want people to know about my own story out there in a way that’s going to help people understand,” Mallams continued.
Other advocates, parents, teachers, and city officials expressed this concern about how the news media in Missouri amplify the discrimination against people in a time where stories like Atlas’ are important for other trans and queer youth.
People said they look to local news stations like ABC 9 and KSHB, and alternative news like the Kansas City Beacon, Kansas Public Radio, Kansas Reflector, and Missouri Independent.
“You can’t trust any of the media [in Missouri],” one participant could be heard saying in the back of the room.
This statement about distrust in the media speaks to the concerns of Alvaro Ontiveros Aguilar – an advisor to the city on the LGBTQ Commission of Kansas City.
“My biggest concern for LGBTQ equality in Kansas City and Missouri overall is having legislative protection for my community,” said Ontiveros Aguilar to GLAAD after the training. “My first task on the commission has been to try and spearhead a movement to get a hate crime ordinance added on to our municipal codes. That is one of my biggest passions and largest concerns.”
Ontiveros Aguilar says the ordinance would define “hate crime” and “gives prosecutors the tools to enforce municipal law to protect victims of hate crimes,” reported KCTV CBS 5.
Overall, the more people shared their stories, the more they told GLAAD that they are doing what the state refuses to do, create safety and equality for not just the LGBTQ community, but the many communities that make up the LGBTQ community too.
In the last six years alone, Kansas City’s City Council has established practices and policies that keep people safe like banning conversion therapy (2019), establishing an LGBTQ employee resource group (2018), establishing an all-gender restroom policy for city buildings (2021), and so much more.
More on the GLAAD Media Institute: Using the best practices, tools, and techniques we’ve perfected over the past 30 years, the GLAAD Media Institute turns education into armor for today’s culture war—transforming individuals into compelling storytellers, media-savvy navigators, and mighty ambassadors whose voices break through the noise and incite real change.
A transgender woman and a gender-nonconforming gay man, both Black, were fatally shot while driving around their home city of Toledo, Ohio, in November.
A suspect was identified in their killings, but he was later found dead in Cincinnati.
Trans woman Amiri Jean Reid and gender-nonconforming man Kejuan Richardson, both 21, were shot in the head in the early evening of November 14 before crashing their vehicle, TV station WTOL reports. They were pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Toledo police classified the deaths as homicides and issued an arrest warrant for Jorenzo Phillips, 19. But he was found dead in Cincinnati on November 23, Thanksgiving Day, of a gunshot wound that was apparently self-inflicted, according to another TV station, WXIX. No information has been released regarding his motive.
Richardson, a Toledo native, worked for KFC and was a fan of Avengers movies and basketball, Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondentsreports. Reid was known for her “ribald sense of humor,” the site notes, and her love of wordplay. “She also shared experiences of transphobia in her social media feed,” according to the site.
“Amiri’s life was cut short by senseless violence, and this narrative has become far too common for Black trans women,” Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative, said in a press release. “Although our community can find solace in the Toledo police identifying her killer, the sad reality is that it won’t bring Amiri back and she won’t be able to experience the joys that come with living a long and full life. Despite the tragic ending of Amiri’s life, her spirit will live on, and we must never forget her name.”
“The killing of Black trans and gender-nonconforming people is a devastating trend that continues to rise,” Cooper added. “We’ve seen too many lives, like Kejuan’s, taken far too early, and as a Black trans woman, it makes me angry to read yet another headline of a murder within the trans community. Despite Kejuan’s life ending so tragically, it is important to remember them for all the amazing things they did while they were still here without disregarding the horrific way that they died. Kejuan and Amiri’s lives must be celebrated to remind those with hate in their hearts that the trans community will not be silenced.”
It’s a time to remember the history that is often forgotten and honor the many strides the LGBTQ+ community has made in recent decades. As a queer young person myself, I wanted to better understand the rich history that came before me to gain a deeper appreciation of what it means to be a queer American at this moment in time.
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I spoke with Victor Basile, a long-time LGBTQ+ rights advocate and the first executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest queer rights advocacy group. Basile was also the co-founder of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, which supports LGBTQ+ political candidates. This year, he released his memoir Bending Toward Justice, about the history of HRC.
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In our conversation, I was looking for context: I needed something to help me understand the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ attacks we’ve seen in recent years.
Together, we sat down virtually to look at where we stand and where we go from here.
LGBTQ Nation: Can you provide an overview of the current landscape of LGBTQ+ rights for queer youth in the US today?
Victor Basile: It’s pretty rough. We’re facing an onslaught of bills against queer youth, with more than 420 anti-LGBTQ bills having been introduced into state/local legislatures this year. They come mostly from red states and queer youth are largely the ones targeted. Until recently we’ve made some great progress. And it’s only in recent years that have we seen — what I call “emboldened behavior — because anti-gay politicians see a political advantage. I see this as a fairly recent development. And it may get rougher before it gets better.
LGBTQ Nation: What do you mean by ‘get rougher’?
VB: In red states, little will get in the way of the passage of many of these anti-LGBTQ bills, try as we might. There are just too many states and too many legislators to successfully fight. But just as we did in the 80s and early 90s when things were so bad, we did learn how to fight and we did learn how to win. And the same is true now: We’re eventually going to beat these attacks back if we stay focused and organized. We’ve been down this road before.
LGBTQ Nation: Tell me more about the period of time when you served as the head of the Human Rights Campaign
VB: There were frequent ‘gay bashings’ directed mostly at gay men [like Matthew Shepard]. The police would do little to help, they would say the victim got what they deserved for being gay and the courts would agree.
The government also turned its back on us when AIDS came around as we watched thousands of people die, which started around 1983. It took Ronald Reagan until 1987, when he made a speech about it. Every year up until then, his administration zeroed out any funding for AIDS research. It wasn’t until 1983 that Congress put money on the books to fight AIDS. But queer youth today don’t know much about that history. Through telling these stories, it may give some hope to today’s youth that we may overcome.
LGBTQ Nation: What’s on your mind this LGBTQ History Month?
VB: To know us is to love us; the more visibility, the better life is. Do you know how National Coming Out Day started? It grew from the War Conference held in 1988, which was a gathering of about 275 activists around the country to address the government’s handling of the AIDS epidemic. It was called this way because we felt, back then, that the government was at war with us. And the overwhelming conclusion, despite all our disagreements, was the need for people to be “out” in public and that would eventually change people’s minds about our community.
I was there. It brought together older and younger activists, and women made up a third of the activists. Where it fell short was people of color because it was overwhelmingly white. That was a failure of the War Conference.
LGBTQ Nation: How would you say the conversations surrounding the LGBTQ+ community have evolved since the 1988 conference?
VB: The term ‘transgender’ was not at all on the boilerplate during my time at the HRC so there was this general unawareness of the trans community. The attacks directed at the lesbian and gay community back then are now being directed to the trans community today; it’s repeating itself.
And back then, it was so hard to get the mainstream media to cover the LGBTQ community. But turn on the TV now and you’ll see there are LGBTQ characters. The public is now on our side, the polls are still favorable to same-sex marriage even in red states. It’s why this month is so important.
LGBTQ Nation: We’ve talked a lot about the past, but where do we go from here? The future’s looking bleak to me.
VB: There is little doubt in my mind that we will overcome this. How much time that takes, I don’t know. We have not faced this type of political repression before and just need to figure out how to fight here. It’s a battle we may win state by state, and we have to take care of our own.
Given everything going on, we’ve come a long way. This is just a setback.
When Jenny Fran Davis set out to write her second book, she had already tasted literary success with her debut novel, 2017’s young adult coming-of-age story “Everything Must Go.” But instead of following her previous book’s proven path to acclaim, the queer 25-year-old author chose to write an adult fiction title that would probe the “interior world of femme characters.” In the end, the unapologetically titled “Dykette” — a comedy of manners centering on a desperately self-conscious femme lesbian named Sasha — became one of the most buzzworthy titles of 2023, demonstrating a growing fervor for LGBTQ fiction that is transforming the book world.
“This book really came along at a time where we’re in this renaissance of gay literature. There was an immediate audience that wanted to accept it with open arms. There was a receptiveness that I don’t know would have been there five years before,” Davis told NBC News, drawing a contrast between 2023 and the year her first novel came out. “Just the title alone would have been scarier for publishers even five or 10 years ago, but there was definitely this sense of, ‘People want this now,’ and I think publishers are always looking for what readers want.”
The release of “Dykette” (Henry Holt and Co.) in May coincides with a yearslong surge in the popularity of LGBTQ fiction, which continues to drive sales even as the broader fiction market slows in the wake of the Covid-19 book boom. Beginning with a smaller but noticeable uptick in 2019, those sales reached record figures this year, resulting in 6.1 million units flying off shelves in the 12-month period ending in May.
And the numbers are holding strong: In the 12-month period ending in October 2023, LGBTQ fiction sales reached 4.4 million units, up 7% from the prior 12-month period and 200% from the 12-month period ending in October 2019, according to exclusive data provided to NBC News by Circana BookScan. In contrast, the data showed that total fiction sales were down 3% in that latest year-over-year time period and up just 27% in the four-year span.
“There’s been LGBTQIA fiction forever, but what really makes this different over the last five years is that those storylines have been moving from a more niche area of fiction into the mainstream,” Kristen McLean, Circana’s lead book industry analyst, told NBC News of what she calls a “generational story.”
More than just migrating from the margins, queer fiction titles are thriving against a backdrop of record attempts to censor works by and about the LGBTQ community. This meteoric rise, according to McLean and other industry experts, is due to a confluence of factors, including younger readers’ openness toward issues of gender and identity, a new generation of writers employing queer themes and, perhaps most importantly, the pandemic-era rise of TikTok’s literary-minded arm.
‘Different flavors of storytelling’
After a tumultuous few years, it may not be surprising that fiction is the genre driving sales of LGBTQ books, as opposed to the less-transportive nonfiction space. A more elusive part of the narrative, however, is what’s bringing in new buyers of queer fiction. To answer that, McLean pointed to the fact that varying styles of fiction books carrying an “LGBTQ+” tag — or BISAC code, the U.S. book industry’s three-tiered book categorization system — are reaching readers in record numbers.
“It used to be that the only books carrying an LGBTQIA tag very specifically had that storyline front and center, and that is giving way to all kinds of different flavors of storytelling,” she said, noting what she sees as a “broadening of perspectives” that’s attracting new and less traditional readers of queer fiction.
Now, “we see growth in fantasy, in general fiction, in sci-fi, and that really speaks to the richness of the story world and the fact that these things are cross-pollinating,” she added of books that carry “LGBTQ+” as their secondary BISAC code.
To McLean’s point, there wasn’t just one type of queer fiction title that captured the popular imagination this year. Following in the footsteps of Alice Oseman’s “Heartstopper,” the screen adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s young adult hit “Red, White & Royal Blue” was a wild success. Sapphic titles like “Dykette” and Tembe Denton-Hurst’s “Homebodies” repeatedly topped 2023’s most-anticipated and best-of lists. And Justin Torres’ genre-defying work “Blackouts” took home the coveted National Book Award for fiction last month, while Eliot Duncans “Ponyboy” was reportedly the first book with a transgender protagonistto be longlisted for the prize.
Even bookstore aisles are starting to look different because of the way queer themes are appearing in a variety of texts, according to Suzi F. Garcia, editor of the LGBTQ nonprofit Lambda Literary.
“As access to these kinds of books has grown, we’re seeing more nuances come forward. So it’s not just an LGBTQ shelf in a bookstore anymore. They’re taking up room on every shelf,” Garcia said of queer titles in general. “You’re seeing writers from other genres getting interested in exploring fiction, because they see it as a more gay-friendly space. You see a lot more cross-genre writers too, and they’re bringing their audiences with them.”
Because of those new audiences, Garcia added, publishers across the industry are expected to have LGBTQ titles in their catalogs, lest they lose sales to smaller operations that specifically cater to fans of queer fiction. And increasingly, according to McLean and others, that has meant mining unexplored spaces like self-publishing for fresh talent, as well as paying attention to what young readers are posting about on BookTok.
A next-generation book club
BookTok, the corner of TikTok dedicated to literature, began gaining traction in the early days of the pandemic, when homebound readers started consuming and posting about books en masse. Progressively, that led to a growing number of BookTokers — who skew younger, more male and more diverse than the average book-buying population, according to Circana — discussing genres within fiction, like romance and fantasy, which have thrived on the platform. And industry watchers have not hesitated to connect that interest to recent sales trends.
“Most of the authors that are growing in the romance space right now are next-generation authors, and it’s closely tied to BookTok,” McLean said of writers like McQuiston and Oseman, who — along with Mo Xiang Tong Xiu and Rick Riordan — are among the year’s top-selling writers of LGBTQ fiction, according to Circana. “In fact, we see a lot of these authors taking share from romance bestsellers like Nora Roberts, Debbie Macomber or Nicholas Sparks.”
Kevin Norman, a BookTok influencer with nearly 250,000 followers, is quick to agree that social media engagement is what’s driving sales of queer fiction specifically. He attributes the popularity of genres like romance, fantasy and “romantasy” in print and on social media to the way that younger readers have learned to use platforms like TikTok to advocate for the books they love.
“Romance was a genre that, for a long time, got shunned and [was] not taken seriously. With social media, people are now able to talk about their favorite niche books and bring them to the mainstream,” Normansaid, adding that TikTok “really made books cool.”
To some, it may seem like a leap to say that posting about books on social media is translating to print sales, but the numbers show an overlap between genres that are popular on BookTok and those driving trends.In June, Circana reported that romance titles accounted for 30% of the uptick in LGBTQ fiction sales, and, according to Circana’s data for NBC News, romance was among the highest-selling LGBTQ categories in both adult and young adult fiction as of the end of October.
Booksellers — like Leah Koch, co-owner of the bicoastal romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice — also say they can see the influence of younger readers not just online, but in their shops, too.
“People age into the romance genre every year, but this happened a lot more rapidly. All of them just joined at once, basically,” Koch said, describing BookTok as “a new generation’s form of a book club.”
The Ripped Bodice is a romance bookstore with locations in New York and Los Angeles.Madeline Derujinsky
“More importantly, they actually buy books. They’re not just talking about them or taking pictures,” Koch said. “It has an actual economic consequence on our sales, on the type of people who are coming into the store, on the books that they’re asking for.”
It isn’t just new romance titles that younger readers are buying. Among many BookTokers, there’s a fervor for rediscovering older works, which has significantly bolstered sales of a number of backlist titles, including Colleen Hoover’s works and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2017 sapphic sensation, “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” And some up-and-coming influencers are going in a different direction altogether.
Zoë Jackson — a BookTok influencer with almost 65,000 followers and the founder of a book club dedicated to “complicated female characters” — says she’s been successful on social media specifically because she recommends “indie” LGBTQ fiction like Sarah Rose Etter’s surreal novel “Ripe,” rather than blockbuster romances.
“For a while, the main queer books that were being talked about [on TikTok] were the few big queer romances that, at this point, are ubiquitous,” Jackson told NBC News, naming Madeline Miller’s 2011 Trojan War retelling, “Song of Achilles,” and “Red, White & Royal Blue.” “I love those books too, but people like to see things they don’t see right when they walk into Barnes & Noble.”
Beyond ‘token acceptance’
While powerful, the rise of BookTok hasn’t meant that traditional publishers, and many of the ways they do business, have been upended completely. But, according to Michael Reynolds — the editor-in-chief of independent publisher Europa Editions, which released this year’s standout erotic text in K. Patrick’s debut novel, “Mrs. S” — the rising interest in LGBTQ fiction is putting pressure on publishers to be much more active in that space.
“When the book industry sees that there’s segments of the market in growth, then it tends to run off to that segment,” Reynolds said. “I think that’s what we’re seeing now, in terms of the output on the publishing side of things.”
Reynolds, whose tenure has brought “My Brilliant Friend” author Elena Ferrante to the English-speaking world, said that while traditional publishing has been famously good at ignoring audiences for decades, once it senses an appetite for certain kinds of books, its added value is “ferreting out talent” and getting quality works on the shelves. But, he acknowledged, the key part of that process is having a readership that’s then willing to buy those works.
“One of the nice things about the moment we’re living through is that it’s not simply token acceptance; it’s commercial success,” he said. “It really does make a difference — that bottom line — when you’re doing something new.”
Kendall Storey is the editor-in-chief at Catapult, which released two of the year’s most talked-about works of sapphic literary fiction: Marisa Crane’s “I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself” and Ruth Madievsky’s “All-Night Pharmacy.” She said she views the way the publishing industry is adapting to the fervor for queer fiction as a fairly predictable course correction.
“To say that we’re seeing more and more successful books exploring issues of gender and queerness is to say that literature is doing what it’s always done, which is representing different experiences and ways of seeing over time,” Storey said, noting that almost half of Catapult’s 10 bestsellers from last year were LGBTQ titles, up from just one in 2021.
While publishers seem optimistic about how rising LGBTQ fiction sales reflect on their sector at large, others in the book world are critical of how long it’s taken the industry to get to this point and are eager to see more steps forward.
“If you were to look at the queer shelves when we opened in 2016, like 99% of [the books] were from indie presses or self-published. There were very few traditionally published queer romances; I could probably count them on one hand,” Koch, the Ripped Bodice co-owner, said.
“Seven and a half years later, they’re still only doing a couple a year. That adds up to a lot of books, but we’re still really early in the life cycle of this,” she added, referring to traditional publishers’ hesitancy to invest in a larger array of LGBTQ fiction.
Like Koch, Garcia from Lambda Literary is eager to see publishers meet the moment by encouraging authors to take risks and further experiment with genre and form as part of the next phase in queer fiction’s evolution. Looking forward to next year, she said, “I’m hoping that’s what we see: a lot more audacity from fiction.”
