A hit-and-run car crash that killed three men and injured another in front of a Black-owned gay bar early Sunday morning “appears to be intentional,” the Chicago Police Department said in a press conference Monday. Officials said the incident is not currently being investigated as a hate crime.
Police said the crash occurred after an argumentinside the Jeffrey Pub turned into a physical altercation on the street. At one point, one of the parties involved got into his car and slammed it against the group standing outside the pub. Officials said they recovered the vehicle that rammed into four men outside the bar, but they are still searching for the driver.
Brendan Deenihan, the department’s chief of detectives, is asking the public to come forward with information.
“You can’t charge a car with a crime, obviously,” Deenihan said. “We need to know who the driver was, and we know that people out there know that.”
The four male victims were taken to local hospitals, with three succumbing to their injuries, according to the police.
The deceased victims were identified as Donald Huey, 25, Jaylen Ausley, 23, and Devonta Vivetter, 27, according to Brittany Hill, a spokesperson for the Cook County Bureau of Administration. The surviving victim has not been named publicly and is still hospitalized, according to NBC Chicago.
Dashcam footage of the incident obtained by NBC Chicago shows several people on the street when a physical altercation broke out. The video also shows the moments just before the car is about to hit the men but does not show the actual hit-and-run incident.
A woman who witnessed the crash said she saw a car speeding down the street before “a lot of chaos” ensued.
“I was standing outside the bar talking to one of the victims,” she said. “I took like three steps, and a car came and hit him, and he flew over the car.”
The Jeffrey Pub shared a message on Facebook about the sad episode, offering condolences to the victims’ families and encouraging anyone with information to come forward.
“Our hearts heavy this morning that such tragic event has occurred,” the post stated. “And to those that lost a loved one or friend we stand with you.”
Pope Francis has met with a fourth group of transgender people who found shelter at a Rome church, the Vatican newspaper reported Thursday.
L’Osservatore Romano said the encounter took place Wednesday on the sidelines of Francis’ weekly general audience. The newspaper quoted Sister Genevieve Jeanningros and the Rev. Andrea Conocchia as saying the pope’s welcome brought their guests hope.
The Blessed Immaculate Virgin community in the Torvaianica neighborhood on Rome’s outskirts opened its doors to transgender people during the coronavirus pandemic.
Francis previously met with some of them on April 27, June 22 and Aug. 3, the newspaper said.
“No one should encounter injustice or be thrown away, everyone has dignity of being a child of God,” the paper quoted Sister Jeanningros as saying.
Francis has earned praise from some members of the LGBTQ community for his outreach. When asked in 2013 about a purportedly gay priest, he replied, “Who am I to judge?” He has met individually and in groups with transgender people over the course of his pontificate.
But he has strongly opposed “gender theory” and has not changed church teaching that holds that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.” In 2021, he allowed publication of a Vatican document asserting that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions since “God cannot bless sin.”
Recently, Francis wrote a letter praising the initiative of a Jesuit-run ministry for LGBTQ Catholics, called Outreach. The online resource is run by the Rev. James Martin, author of “Building a Bridge,” a book about the need for the church to better welcome and minister to LGBTQ Catholics.
Francis praised a recent Outreach event at New York’s Jesuit-run Fordham University, and encouraged organizers “to keep working in the culture of encounter, which shortens the distances and enriches us with differences, in the same manner of Jesus, who made himself close to everyone.”
Taiwan on Friday blamed “political considerations” for the cancellation of WorldPride 2025 Taiwan after it said the organizers had insisted the word “Taiwan” be removed.
Taiwan participates in global organizations like the Olympics as “Chinese Taipei,” to avoid political problems with China which views the democratically-governed island as its own territory and bristles at anything that suggests it is a separate country.
Taiwan’s southern city of Kaohsiung had been due to host WorldPride 2025 Taiwan, after winning the right from global LGBTQ rights group InterPride.
Last year, after an outcry in Taiwan, it dropped a reference to the island as a “region,” wording that suggests it is not a country.
But the Kaohsiung organizers said InterPride had recently “suddenly” asked them to change the name of the event to “Kaohsiung,” removing the word “Taiwan.”
“After careful evaluation, it is believed that if the event continues, it may harm the interests of Taiwan and the Taiwan gay community. Therefore, it is decided to terminate the project before signing the contract,” said the Kaohsiung organizers.
InterPride did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The White House will announce today it is zeroing in on the population most at risk currently of contracting and spreading the monkeypox virus: men who have sex with men. A pilot program rolls out this weekend at Charlotte Pride.
The Biden administration’s deputy director for monkeypox response, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, described the new effort to LGBTQ Nation ahead of the White House announcement.
That starts with bumping up the supply of the vaccine for local health jurisdictions where large LGBTQ events are happening. The program sets aside 50,000 doses of vaccine from the Strategic National Stockpile that jurisdictions can request on top of their existing vaccine allocations and supply.
The Administration is working with North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana health departments to determine dose numbers in preparation for upcoming events including Charlotte Pride this weekend, and Atlanta Black Pride and Southern Decadence in New Orleans over Labor Day weekend.
At Charlotte Pride, Daskalakis says, “we’re going to be providing them 2000 additional doses on top of what they’re already allocated specifically for this event.”
State and local health departments are responsible for getting vaccines to where they’ll be administered.
To get doses in arms, “Charlotte is looking at specific events associated with Pride that are going to include, in effect, what will look like vaccine pop-ups, where people entering the event or going to the event will be able to acquire a vaccine.”
The second part of the pilot focuses on education and outreach, along with in-person technical assistance.
“With public health being really local, we’re going to make sure that we provide them what they need in terms of education, outreach materials and any technical assistance to be able to work on the ground to make sure that we’re providing folks with culturally appropriate information about how to prevent monkeypox, and also awareness of the disease.”
“Part of that package is definitely really clear advice around safer sex and safer gatherings. To make sure that it’s extraordinarily clear, given what we know about the data, that this is affecting gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, and that a lot of the transmission has been in the context of sex and sexual activity.”
The pilot also provides guidance to local jurisdictions to develop testing strategies and tools for information-gathering from event participants.
Two weeks ago, New York and California were among several states to declare monkeypox a public health emergency.
CDC data as of August 16 indicates 12,689 total confirmed monkeypox cases in the U.S., with New York, California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Illinois topping the list of highest infection rates.
Seven-day averages show the number of daily reported infections skyrocketed from 45 in the week ending July 11, to 528 the week ending August 10, when 1391 cases were reported on a single day.
Federal officials have allocated 1.1 million doses of the Jynneos vaccine to states and say they’ve shipped about 600,000 of those.
Clark Simon, president of Charlotte Pride, welcomed the administration’s new initiative: “The more vaccines the better.”
But with a caveat.
“I know health departments need to state where this specific virus is predominantly being seen, the pronouncement of it. But just to clarify, in terms of language and messaging, this is not an STI [sexually transmitted infection]. It is not a gay disease. It is a community-spread disease. And in this instance, showcases itself predominantly in men who have sex with men. But we’re also seeing instances in which there are children getting it at daycares and things like that. Much like COVID, it’s about community spread.”
Daskalakis was sensitive to the messaging.
“Monkeypox is a virus, it’s not a sentient being,” Daskalakis said. “It doesn’t differentiate between people based on sexual orientation or gender identity. And so making sure that we’re serving the folks who are in populations that are overrepresented in the outbreak, like gay and bisexual men, and men who have sex with men, is really important, while also making sure that there’s an awareness outside. Infections don’t heed orders, they don’t heed sexual networks or social networks. So being vigilant, making sure surveillance is really good, and that providers are tuned in is the most important thing right now.”
Atlanta Black Pride president Terence Stewart, next in line for the pilot program, added to Simon’s pandemic analogy.
“It is like COVID. We didn’t think it would either hit the shores of the United States or would be coming in as fast as it was. Because you want to vaccinate as many people as possible, but you also don’t want to scare people, right? So it’s a lot going on.”
Residents of a small town in western Michigan helped raise almost $100,000 for their local library after it was defunded over the inclusion of LGBTQ books.
Primary voters in Jamestown Township, a community 20 miles east of Lake Michigan, rejected a proposal last week to renew tax funds to support the Patmos Library in nearby Hudsonville that serves Jamestown and the surrounding area. The rejection, which passed with nearly two-thirds voter approval, eliminates 84% of the public library’s annual budget, or $245,000.
Larry Walton, the library’s board president, told local news site Bridge Michigan that he was not expecting the loss of funds and that the library would likely run out of money late next year without those tax dollars.
“The library is the center of the community,” he said. “For individuals to be short-sighted to close that down over opposing LGBTQ is very disappointing.”
Walton did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
Two days after the vote, Jesse Dillman, a Jamestown resident and father of two, launched an online fundraiser to help raise the $245,000 to keep the library open.
“I am very passionate about this, and I have people that are behind me to do this,” he said in an interview. “I think I have to do it now, because the iron is hot. If this is going to happen, it’s going to happen now.”
As of Thursday morning, approximately 1,800 people had contributed more than $90,000. While many of those donors are local, people from as far away as Australia have contributed, Dillman said.
One donor, Michigan librarian Beth Pierson, wrote on the fundraising page: “I’m saddened and scared by what I’m seeing across the country regarding the attempts to limit freedom of access to information. Thank you for stepping up to do the right thing for the Patmos Library!”
Another donor, Georgia resident Shereen Mendelson, wrote, “People who ban books are never written well in history. You have my support from Georgia!”
More support came from a second donation page created by Michelle Barrows, also a resident of Jamestown. As of Thursday morning, she had raised almost $5,000.
Efforts to discontinue funding for the library can also be found on social media. In May, a private Facebook group called Jamestown Conservatives was launched. The group, which as of Thursday morning had 158 members, states that it was “created to help others of the community to be aware of the pushed agenda of explicit sexual content that is being infiltrated into our local libraries aiming toward our children.” The page also states that it stands to “keep our children safe” and “keep the nuclear family intact as God designed.”
The page administrator, Lauren Elyse, did not respond to a request for comment.
The controversy in Jamestown is part of a larger national debate over access to LGBTQ books in public libraries and schools. This debate has accelerated over the past year, with the American Library Association issuing a statement in November warning of a “dramatic uptick in book challenges and outright removal of books from libraries.” The association said LGBTQ books and books by Black authors were being targeted in particular. In 2021, five of the 10 most challenged and banned books in the United States were flagged because of their LGBTQ content, according to the group’s annual Top 10 Most Challenged Books list.
During a two-hour-long Patmos Library board meeting Monday, residents spoke both in favor of and against funding the library, WOOD-TV reported that most of the speakers were in favor.
Among the speakers was a former library employee.
“The purpose of a public library is to serve the public,” she said. “That includes everyone of all backgrounds, beliefs and interests. That means having material available from all viewpoints and topics, not what just makes some people comfortable. If you don’t agree with something, don’t check it out. That’s the beauty of a library. You have the choice to come in by yourself or your family and make the selections that best fit you.”
At the conclusion of the meeting, the board voted unanimously to place the issue of funding on the town’s November ballot.
Following Monday’s meeting, Dillman said he’s optimistic that the library will be able to get its funding back. In addition to continuing his fundraising efforts, he said he signed up to be on an independent town committee to help secure tax dollars for the library.
Anti-LGBTQ hate surged onlinefollowing the passage of a Florida law thatlimits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, a new report found.
This particular surge involves rhetoric implying that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people are “grooming” childrenand includes such slurs as “groomer,” “pedophile” and “predator” in relation to the LGBTQ community.
The month after the Florida Senate passed the Parental Rights in Education bill, or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, on March 8, tweets mentioning the LGBTQ community alongside these slurs increased 406%, according to the report, which was conducted by the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign and the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The law, which took effect July 1, bans instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity “in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
To evaluate the increase in rhetoric related to “grooming”, researchers collected a sample of 989,547 tweets that were posted between Jan. 1 and July 27 and that mentioned the LGBTQ community alongside words including “groomer” and “pedophile.” They found that an average of 6,607 tweets a day used such rhetoric in the month after the bill passed, a significant increase from 1,307 tweets the month before.
On March 28, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the bill into law, there was also a marked increase in the use of the “#OKGroomer” hashtag, which the report said was often used as a derogatory response to tweets from LGBTQ educators, organizations and health care providers, among others. On the day after DeSantis signed the bill, “OK groomer” tweets peaked with 9,219 total, or about one every nine seconds, the report found.
“Grooming” rhetoric was spread by a “small group of radical extremists as part of a coordinated and concerted effort to attack LGBTQ+ kids to rile up extreme members of their base,” the report said.
Tweets from just 10 people — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’ press secretary — were viewed an estimated 48 million times and were “responsible for driving” the “grooming” narrative, researchers found.
“We’re in the middle of a growing wave of hate and demonization targeting LGBTQ+ people — often distributed digitally by opportunistic politicians and so-called ‘influencers’ for personal gain,” Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said in a statement, according to a press release. “Online hate and lies reflect and reinforce offline violence and hate. The normalization of anti-LGBTQ+ narratives in digital spaces puts LGBTQ+ people in danger.”
In an emailed statement, Pushaw stressed that Florida’s new law affects those in “kindergarten through third grade.” However, critics of the law argue the language can be applied to those beyond grade 3.
“By definition, then, opponents of the law support adults talking to young children about sex and gender behind their parents’ backs. If you know a politically correct word for such behavior, I’ll gladly use it instead,” she said. “There are groomers of all sexual orientations and gender identities. My tweets did not mention LGBTQ people at all. Florida’s parental rights law likewise does not single out any identity or orientation.”
Pushaw added, “The only side playing into the hands of bigots, are the progressive activists who pretend that ‘grooming’ is somehow unique to the ‘LGBTQ community.’ It is not, and I do not understand why the Human Rights Campaign would want the public to think otherwise.”
A spokesperson for Greene did not answer questions about the report’s findings but encouraged NBC News to “be objective” and shared several links to the congresswoman’s Twitter posts and articles from the conservative news site Washington Examiner.
Boebert did not immediately return a request for comment.
Ahmed said Facebook and Twitter claim in their rules that they prohibit the use of “grooming” rhetoric to target LGBTQ people, but the report found that the platforms don’t always enforce those rules.
Researchers used Twitter’s “Report an issue” feature to report the 100 most-viewed tweets that used “grooming” rhetoric after July 21, when Twitter told the Daily Dot that calling transgender people “groomers” violates its policy against hateful conduct.
Twitter didn’t act on 99% of the 100 tweets, the report found.
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Twitter confirmed that use of the term “groomer” is prohibited under the site’s policy when it is used as a descriptor “in the context of gender identity.” The spokesperson said Twitter remains committed to combating abuse motivated by hatred or intolerance.
Researchers identified a similar problem on Facebook, whose parent company, Meta, also told the Daily Dot that calling LGBTQ people “groomers” violates existing policy.
Researchers identified 59 paid ads on Facebook and Instagram that promote the narrative that the LGBTQ community and its allies are “grooming” children. After researchers reported them, Meta removed only one of the ads and has continued to accept and run other similar ads since, the report said.
The report also found that Meta profited off the ads. According to statistics from Meta’s Ad Library, the company accepted up to $24,987 in payment for the 59 ads, which received more than 2.1 million impressions, the report said.
“The clear message from social media giants is that they are willing to turn a blind eye,” Ahmed said. “LGTBQ+ rights have been transformed after decades of hard-won progress, but progress is fragile unless you continue to defend it.”
A Meta spokesperson said in an email, “We reviewed the ads flagged in the report and have taken action on any content that violates our policies.”
Joni Madison, interim president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement that the rise of online vitriol “doesn’t just have political implications — there are deadly, real world consequences as violent rhetoric leads to stigma, radicalization, and ultimately violence.”
The report provides recommendations to Facebook and Twitter, including that they hire, train and support moderators to remove hate and enforce their community standards, act on hashtags that fuel anti-LGBTQ hate, and be liable for harm when they fail to enforce their community standards.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order Tuesday to ban conversion therapy, a discredited form of therapy that seeks to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, for minors.
The executive order directs state agencies to discourage conversion therapy for people of all ages, and to instead promote evidence-based practices for supporting LGBTQ people. The order also directs the Department of Human Services, among other agencies, to ensure that state funds are not being used to provide or reimburse for conversion therapy.
“Conversion therapy is a traumatic practice based on junk science that actively harms the people it supposedly seeks to treat,” Wolf, a Democrat, said in a statement. “This discriminatory practice is widely rejected by medical and scientific professionals and has been proven to lead to worse mental health outcomes for LGBTQIA+ youth subjected to it. This is about keeping our children safe from bullying and extreme practices that harm them.”
Survivors of conversion therapy have said that it can include talk therapy and being urged to take on traditional gender roles. A 2020 United Nations report found that it can also include more extreme practices such as aversion therapy, which can involve administering electric shock or medication to induce nausea while exposing the patient to same-sex erotic images.
The executive order makes Pennsylvania the 26th state to at least partially bar the practice for minors, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Twenty other states and Washington, D.C., completely ban the practice, while five states partially ban conversion therapy for minors. A federal court has barred three states — Alabama, Georgia and Florida — from enforcing conversion therapy bans. The remaining 21 states have no law or policy on conversion therapy.
Mathew Shurka, a conversion therapy survivor and co-founder of Born Perfect, a national campaign to end conversion therapy, said Wolf is “taking a critical step to protect LGBTQ minors” in Pennsylvania.
“LGBTQ kids and their families are targeted by so-called therapists causing lifelong harm,” Shurka said in a statement. “This executive order demonstrates that our political offices have the power to protect our youth and it is their responsibility to do so.”
The governor’s executive order cited research that has found conversion therapy contributes to negative mental health outcomes among LGBTQ youth.
A national survey published in March by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that 13% of all LGBTQ respondents ages 13-24 reported being subjected to conversion therapy, and 83% of those reported being subjected to it before they turned 18. The number was higher for transgender and nonbinary young people, 18% of whom reported being subjected to conversion therapy.
A 2020 peer-reviewed study published by The Trevor Project in the American Journal of Public Health found that LGBTQ youth who experienced conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report having attempted suicide than youth who had not experienced it, and more than 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the past year.
“Taxpayers’ dollars must never again be spent on the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion ‘therapy’ — which has been consistently associated with increased suicide risk and an estimated $9.23 billion economic burden in the U.S.,” Troy Stevenson, senior campaign manager for advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, said in a statement citing the research the group published in March.
He added, “We urge the state legislature to pass comprehensive state-wide protections and for governors across the nation to follow the Keystone State’s lead in ending this abusive practice.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
Leading LGBTQ+ charities including GLAAD, and pharma company Gilead have teamed up to support responses to the monkeypox outbreak.
The coalition, which also includes the Human Rights Campaign, the National Black Justice Coalition, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the National Minority AIDS Council, was announced on 9 August.
Gilead, which makes PrEP pills Truvada and Descovy, has pledged up to $5 million in global grant funding to support a public education and vaccine hesitancy campaign, a public policy response and a global outbreak emergency fund.
The fund will issue grants of up to $50,000 to pre-existing Giliead grantee organisations that work in regions that have the highest active monkeypox outbreaks.
“Funds may be used to cover expenses such as community mobilisation activities specifically addressing MPV outbreak in communities disproportionately impacted by HIV, operating costs related to HIV testing and service interruptions and essential safety materials,” said GLAAD.
Charities such as GLAAD and HRC will focus on providing critical information about monkeypox to demographics and regions that are being significantly affected by the outbreaks, predominantly gay and bisexual man, and those living with HIV.
“As we saw with HIV, COVID-19, and now [monkeypox], disinformation continues to challenge the LGBTQ+ community,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said.
“This new collaboration will enable creating and distributing content and resources to help our community know the facts and to understand prevention and treatment.
“When communities receive accurate, timely information, they are empowered to take appropriate action, leading to long-lasting, positive health outcomes.”
Giliead executive vice president of corporate affairs and general counsel Deborah Telman said the collaboration would ensure that the “immediate needs of impacted communities” were met, while steering groups away from disinformation which can lead to further spread of the disease.
In an interview with Reuters, spokesperson Rich Ferraro said that “with this partnership, we’ll be able to do more.”
There are currently a total of 31,800 confirmed monkeypox cases around the globe, according to regularly updated statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Provention (CDC), with 31,425 of those coming from countries that have not historically reported monkeypox.
Because the disease has been found to disproportionately affect gay and bisexual men, there is a fear the outbreak could lead to homophobic stigma.
In America, far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene has become notorious for spreading misinformation on the subject, saying that the disease is a “scam”.
“It’s not a threat to most of the population, and so it’s not a global pandemic, it’s really not, and people just have to laugh at it, mock it, and reject it. It’s another scam,” she said.
The CDC has said that research is still determining whether monkeypox can spread through “semen, vaginal fluids, urine, or faeces” and has only currently determined that it can spread through skin-to-skin contact, which can happen during “intimate contact.”
Mariah Hanson has always loved throwing parties to create a feel-good environment that was easy for people to meet new friends, celebrate their lives and go home with a few extra awesome memories. Under the Club Skirts Marquis, Mariah created the world famous Dinah Shore Weekend in 1991 with just that intention in mind – to create an exciting, community building, life affirming, unimaginably stellar experience for her customers.
She choose the world-renowned Palm Springs Modern Art Museum to host her first Dinah. Mariah knew an event inside this spectacular museum, surrounded by priceless artwork, was just the kind of statement she was trying to make – that our community is worth the very best and she was going to offer it. Mariah’s first Dinah was sold out, packing every room of the museum, where partygoers drank martini’s while surrounded by tens of millions of dollars worth of art.
Mariah wanted Dinah goers to feel safe, and inclusive, so she booked entire hotels so that they were 100% The Dinah occupied, brought in national sponsors, popular national recording artists, and kept all events in walking distance to create our very own world within a world. These simple but daring concepts, creating an empowering lesbian world within the city, catapulted the Dinah to international fame. Today, The Dinah is considered the largest lesbian/queer women event in the world.
The Dinah 2022 happens September 21 – 25 with the new Margaritaville Palm Springs serving as host hotel and the location of most of the parties. The overflow Hotel, The Doubletree, is booking now. Go to: www.thedinah.com to see the full schedule and purchase ticket.
Gary Carnivele: What is the history of The Dinah (formerly The Dinah Shore Weekend), which you started in 1991 and how it’s evolved over the years?
Mariah Hanson: I think it’s evolved a lot. I started it when I was thirty-ish and I really had no idea what I was getting into and I thought I’m going to try this. I booked the Palm Springs Museum, which was the state-o- the-art modern art museum. I figured out if you were a corporate member of the museum, you could, for $2500, host a cocktail reception in the art museum. Afterwards the board changed the guidelines to make sure that I could never host another event there. I’m 31 years older and I had the coolest job in the world. I got to drink for free. Now, that I’m older I realized that I need to do something substantial with it. At this stage, The Dinah really reflects my own personal journey which and reflects mine. My desire and commitment to create not only an open platform for LGBTQI+ but an inspiring place that tells stories. One that really speaks to women empowerment in every aspect. Attendees are noticing that the artist I booked prove there are no glass ceiling other than the ones we imagine. At the end of the weekend, people really get the up-lifting vibe that we all have. I feel like people leave the event feeling incredible and I just got an experience all to myself. And that was by design.
GC: What do you have in store for your attendees this year?
MH: it’s a really, special year. The 31st anniversary and so proud of the fact that we have produced a music festival event. People are so ready to get out and enjoy themselves and they belong to this community. We have been denied for 2 years and so I feel like people are really bringing it. There’s also issues that have come to the forefront that we know we won’t necessarily be too we will bet you it’s not but is there and so turn on slot right now that is so in our faces. I think it’s always been there with a certain function of our society and the state but this anti-misogynist, anti-women platform that the far right puts forward where women should be seen and not heard is so mind-boggling to me. It really came to the surface during the Trump administration. He is – in my opinion – very hateful individual and he really helped a lot of the hate come to the surface. He and the GOP stacked the Supreme Court who overturned a woman’s right to reproductive rights. Justice Thomas intimated that he’s going after marriage equality next. What are we do about that? I think when people come together with a kind of commonality we can fight oppression. It’s also a wonderful option to see how powerful we are when we collectively say no more answer
GC: Do you think there will be a political element at The Dinah?
MH: How can you not be political right now as a woman or a member of the queer community. it’s a scary time for all of us but I think it’s especially scary for women, women of color, women od lower social economic status. It’s a really frightening and we must stand up, be strong and say ‘no.’ We’ve done it before and we’re going to do it again. I think that that this time around we have so many more male supporters because we need you! It’s one thing for us to be doing this but we need our male allies more than ever. It’s an awesome opportunity for men to really show up and stand up and I know that they will because those hateful voices that we’re hearing are in the minority and that’s what we should remember.
We all need to stand up, speak up and vote in. The voting blocks that really can swing votes in a national election are all across the Midwestern states. We’re hoping to galvanize younger people, we didn’t the year before. We have been experiencing a certain kind of circumvention of our democracy one where it’s state governments versus the federal government. This is a test about how you can run a country our founding fathers never imagined. Because of technology it’s easier than ever to destroy what is a democratic institution. Trump was very close to becoming a dictator just like all the horrible people he admires so much.
GC: Let’s get back to The Dinah. Tell us about the schedule.
It’s jubilant pool parties and exciting evening events. The Dinah schedule is always very consistent. We start on Wednesday with The Official Dinah Pre- Party to which we’re inviting w the locals who we really appreciate. This year, that happens at Chill Bar, 8 p.m. – 2 a.m. World-class DJ’s, dancing poolside, and cocktails.
It’s the first time we’ve done it in the morning so we’re starting out wild and crazy right from the get-go.
Thursday is our opening party that’s happening at AsiaSF Palm Springs, which is a beautiful location. At midnight there will be a performance by the winner of our ‘Emerging Artist Contest.’
Friday kicks off at Noon with ‘The G(irl) Spot” a pool party, hosted by “The Real L Word’s’ Rose Garcia. DJ’s will provide great music.
Friday night we are at the ballroom at Margaritaville, our host hotel, for ‘The Black and White Ball,’ where Taylor Dayne will perform. Taylor gave me this great deal so that she can bring her band and not just sing to a track. I really appreciate it and Taylor is very supportive of our community. Also, Canada hip-hop artist Haviah Mighty, who is a really a powerful force.
Saturday is our big ‘The L Word Pool Party,’ which includes a ‘Celebrity Meet and Greet.’ ‘Battle of the DJs,’ and a vendor fair. IV4 and Cassidy King will perform. This all happens at Margaritaville Resort 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Saturday night we have ‘The Hollywood Party,’ in the Grand Ballroom at the resort. There will be fabulous 11 p.m. performance by Fletcher, an up-and-coming artist who about to bust out into stardom as a recording artist. She’s amazing and I’m so excited we were able to book her.
‘The Sunday Funday Pool Party’ happens at the resort 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. The will be fun games, exciting contests, and daring antics where you can win The Dinah 2023 tickets. Rubber Duck Dive, Best Dyke-ini, Guzzling a Beer Contest are all fun crowd-pleasers.
The Dinah 2022 ends with ‘The Dinah Official Closing Party’ 9 p.m. – 2 a.m. where the nation’s hottest DJs will spin and the winner or our ‘Emerging Artist’ will entertain us with an encore, midnight performance.
GC: Tell us more about the performing artists and how you go about booking them?
Cassidy King is our sleeper hit. I think she’s someone that we’ll all come to know sooner rather than later. She’s so amazing. She’s doing videos that she directs herself that portray our narrative, our stories. She’s all about queer romance, queer friendship, break ups. The videos are interesting because we are normalized in them. Just as we are now in the music industry. Sunday night I love our lineup mostly because for the first time ever it is all queer. And that really speaks to how queer people are willing to be out and front runners now in the music industry. We are breaking so many barriers and changing minds. It’s wonderful because I will tell you it was very hard to book queer acts throughout my career. I would approach big names, that we knew were queer, but they would decline because they didn’t want to be identified with a big, queer event like The Dinah. Her people or her record label would be squeamish. Thankfully, that has changed over these 31 years.
GC: Talk about the host hotel the Margaritaville
MH: Margaritaville, formally the Riviera, has been one of my favorite hotels in Palm Springs, just iconoclastic. Margaritaville changed the decor but has maintained all those beautiful bones. It’s an incredible 5-star hotel with two big, beautiful pools, this fantastic Grand Ballroom, and an inside garden – it’s just very upscale. Now it’s got a more of a Margaritaville theme but it’s still a great hotel with 400 remodeled rooms.
GC: Who attends The Dinah?
MH: Women of all ages really, but it does trend younger. The Dinah is a music festival and so we book performers and our DJs spin music for all ages. It’s also a right of passage and a bucket list item for the queer community. Go to The Dinah at least once in your life. What I love about older women attending is that they get to see how free society has become and how many inroads we’ve made. We can finally get to the point where we could be at 5-star hotel, which is completely booked. The Dinah is considered a legacy event in Palm Springs it’s the cities top 10 events. The whole city welcoming The Dinah’s attendees illustrates who important it is to their community. It’s important that we showcase how much work we’ve done to gain our civil rights because this wasn’t the case 31 years ago. I think queer women love to see how much freedom there is today. Now I can send mailing advertisements in The Dinah envelopes because so many people are out even in small towns across the states. IN the early days some women would chastise me: I can’t believe you didn’t put this in a plain envelope. My mailman now knows that I’m gay. It was heartbreaking. We’ve come a long way baby so h
GC: How many how many women do you expect to attend The Dinah 2022?
MH: I’d say this year we will have 7,000 – 10,000. I think it’s going to be a big year. A lot of local women come but the majority like 95% of the people coming out of all over, many from California but 50% from out of the state. We get a small percentage from out of the country.
GC: I would imagine COVID-19 has really impacted The Dinah.
Last year, I had to cancel it and then I dealt with the nightmare of having to refund as much as I could. My customers were very understanding – kind and patient. I was able to transfer 600 of ticket buyers to this year. The year before, we had zero transmission. I wanted everyone to understand that we need to show the world that we are conscientious and we care about each other. We’re asking people to test themselves before the event breakthrough cases vaccine is no guarantee that you’re Covid-free. We don’t want to be spreading it and we don’t want anyone else to get sick. The tests are 70% accurate and The Dinah needs to follow city, state, and CDC guidelines. We are asking people to please get tested.
GC: Talk about the people that work with you to produce a really amazing event.
There are many amazing women working with me the last couple months. I have about 40 people in Palm Springs that are familiar with the city, its vendors and services. Light and sound is another group of 30 hard-working people. Very mom-and-pop. We love it because we get to do it our way without the bureaucracy of a corporation. There’s a real leaning into what is needed at the time, where is our community is at the time, so we speak every year to what we think needs to be said. I think it’s really important for messaging to lead the way and so we like to do that every year and help inspire people to live bigger and brighter and better lives. And that includes everyone, that includes trans, non-binary, queer, lesbian. I’ve worked with transfolk who really helped me understand that some people are born in the wrong bodies and want to be authentically who they are. I have been very pro-trans in my career. I don’t believe in separatism. I don’t believe in keeping our world so small that people don’t fit in. I think that everybody needs to be invited to the table so when we are producing The Dinah we keep that in mind. You can’t just say: I’m inviting everyone. I want everyone to feel safe at The Dinah. We keep those things in mind because they are important, critical. I’m proud of the fact that we have in that messaging. There are too many people in our community who don’t live in really inclusive parts of our country. We want The Dinah to be the place where we invite you to just come on in let all your isms, all your differences, and all your fears melt away. This is a world where I can live for five days out loud, together being the beautiful people that we are and experience really cool, powerful people. We were together for five days and got to meet people from different backgrounds, from different ways of identifying. We all got along, we enjoyed each other. We found all these commonalities to take that home with us.
GC: Have you ever thought about doing a similar event here in Sonoma County?
MH: Yes, I have. I love what Gary Saperstein is doing with Gay Wine Weekend and I think there’s room for a women’s event. There’s not a lot of convention space here but I think the Renaissance is probably your best bet. We’ve been talking about it recently because this is the first time that I have been here permanently. I bought my grandfather’s house here in Sonoma in 1999 where my mother lived for her final years. I finally came back and feel settled. It’s an opportunity for me to really start thinking seriously about producing a Dinah event here where everyone is invited. Personally think we should always feel comfortable bringing our best guy friends.
GC: How can folks find out more about The Dinah 2022 and purchase tickets
MH: The website in thedinah.com and it is the best way to see the complete schedule and purchase tickets. Although I will say that our social media platforms are also a lot of fun.
GC: Thank you for taking the time to tell us all about The Dinah 2022. Best wishes for a successful event. We’ll wait to hear from you about the exciting event you’ll produce here.
MH: Thank you Gary and we hope to see all your readers at The Dinah.
Anti-LGBTQ+ violence in the UK is rising at a record-breaking rate, alarming police figures have shown.
Reports of homophobic hate crimes more than doubled in five years, shooting from 10,003 in 2016-17 to 26,824 in 2021-22. In the past year the figure soared by 32 per cent – the biggest yearly rise since record-keeping began.
Transphobic hate crimes similarly swelled by 240 per cent, from 1,292 reports in 2016-17 to 4,399 five years later, in what is also believed to be the largest increase ever seen by the authorities.
Across the UK’s 45 territorial police forces, just five reported a decrease in reports of homophobic hate crimes compared to the previous reporting year, VICE World Newsreported.
All others recorded dizzying increases, with Merseyside Police reporting the highest rise from 64 in 2014-15 to 1,618 between 2021 and 2022.
London has emerged as the epicentre of hate crimes based on sexual orientation. The Metropolitan Police Service tallied 3,794 homophobic hate crimes in 2021-22, an increase of 28 per cent from the previous year.
Derbyshire, Humberside, Northamptonshire, South Yorkshire and Suffolk were the only regions that saw hate crimes dip compared to the previous year. But the stats are still higher than five years ago.
England’s capital saw 434 transphobic hate crimes in the past year – once again the highest number recorded by any police force. Manchester followed with 320 hate crimes fuelled by hatred for a person’s gender identity.
“In recent years, we’ve seen a disproportionate rise in official hate crime figures in the UK, but we know we’re still not seeing the full picture,” Leni Morris, the CEO of LGBTQ+ anti-abuse charity Galop, told PinkNews.
Morris added: “This year, in particular, we’ve seen a significant rise in hate crime experienced by the LGBT+ community. The narrative around monkeypox and continuing transphobia in the media contribute to a hostile environment for LGBT+ people.
“These things also make our community more visible in the eyes of the public – and when we are more visible, this often leads to a rise in attacks.”
Yet as alarming as the police figures are, Morris said they actually understate the problem. Galop’s 2021 Hate Crime report showed that only one in eight queer victims of hate crime reported what had happened to them.
Only 14 per cent of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes are resolved by the police, the investigative journalism unit Liberty Investigates found.
The police need to do more to protect LGBTQ+ Brits, said Nancy Kelley, the CEO of Stonewall. “As a society, we all need to do more to combat anti-LGBTQ+ violence and call out abuse, harassment and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment wherever we see it, but we also need a greater commitment from the police to take decisive action to follow up and prosecute these offences.
“Hate crime has real and lasting impacts on victims and survivors, and it is important to remember that each of these reports represents a real person,” Morris added.
“There’s still significant work to be done to improve the response to anti-LGBT+ abuse and ensure that LGBT+ victims are given the same level of support as everyone else.”