Uju Anya, Ph.D., is a professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Modern Languages. She researches applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics, and critical discourse studies through the lenses of race, gender, sexual, and social class identities, according to her website. And in just 45 words, she exposed the hypocrisy of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and other legislation of its ilk.
Here’s Anya’s tweet from last summer, a tweet that recently got heat on Reddit’s r/lgbt forum after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the so-called “Parental Rights in Education” bill into law last month.
Anya tweeted that argument in June, before Florida’s bill was filed but after lawmakers other states pushed for similar measures. (We’ve been covering Don’t Say Gay bills here on Queerty for more than a decade now, sadly.)
As our new favorite college professor points out, though, efforts to mute discussions of sexuality in the classroom are really just efforts to mute discussions of non-straight sexualities.
“When you say sexual orientation is too mature a topic for children, what you really mean is homosexuality,” Anya explained in follow-up tweets. “Cuz you talk to kids about heterosexuality from birth. You put ‘heartbreaker’ and ‘ladies’ man’ onesies on baby boys and ask about their ‘little girlfriend’ in preschool … So don’t say sexual orientation is private or an adult topic. You publicly announce daily you’re in heterosexual relationships with the assumption of your heterosexual orientation saying ‘my’ boyfriend, wife, husband, posting pics, etc. And you do it around children.”
Then comes Anya’s kicker: “The minute we mention any sexual orientation that isn’t the heterosexuality shoved in our faces every day, the talk immediately becomes inappropriate. Or ‘Nobody cares you’re gay!’ Well, nobody cares you’re f—king Bob either, Susan, but we still liked his picture on your desk.”
A gay Bollywood’s director has blasted the Indian government’s decision to ban his film about a gay army officer.
Onir, born Anirban Dhar, is best known for Mr Brother…Nikhil, one of the first mainstream Hindi films to explore HIV and same-sex relationships.
Inspired by the real-life story of gay retired army officer Major J Suresh, who quit the forces over his sexuality, the filmmaker has proposed the film We Are.
But India’s Ministry of Defence has allegedly blocked his efforts over its “illegal” depiction of queer soldiers, given that LGBT+ personnel cannot serve openly in India’s armed forces, NDTV reported.
For Onir, the government has exploited a requirement introduced two years ago that demands filmmakers to be granted clearance from the defence ministry to produce films concerning the armed forces.
Indian filmmaker just wanted to tell story of a ‘gay soldier who falls in love’
He told The Independentthat the government did not award his script a No Objection Certificate, having applied in December.
“Which itself is problematic,” Onir told the British newspaper, “because India has a film-certification board that should be doing this work.”
Onir received a terse email from the government agency after sending the script for approval, he claimed.
“I wanted to do something which celebrated it while also highlighting the way forward in terms of securing civil rights and changing societal perceptions [of the queer community],” the 52-year-old said.
We Are, the forthcoming sequel to Onir’s 2010 movie, I Am, is to be an anthology film of our queer romances that commemorates the Supreme Court’s milestone 2018 verdict that, at long last, decriminalised homosexuality.
Onir speaks during a press conference for movie I Am. (PEDRO UGARTE/AFP via Getty Images)
Among the four stories was Suresh, who first wrote on his weblog, Personal Blog of an Out & Proud Indian Major, in 2020, about the struggles he faced when “reconciling the military/ex-military part and the gay part” of his life.
He had long felt that the two “can’t/don’t fit together”.
“But I have slowly realized that this was an absolutely unwarranted struggle that I had subjected myself to – probably driven by lower social acceptance levels in India,” he added.
Suresh’s story, Onir said, was “interesting” and inspired the “fictional” retelling.
“I wrote about a gay army man who falls in love,” Onir explained, “realises he can’t express his love openly while serving in the army, quits and finally reaches out to his lover.
“I don’t even get into any discourse of whether it’s right or wrong.”
PinkNews reached out to the Ministry of Defence for comment.
Heather Peto had been feeling run down for a while before she realised there might be something wrong.
At first, she blamed her recent experience with COVID for her feelings of exhaustion – but gradually, she started to notice other, more troubling symptoms creeping in. Eventually, she realised that she was exhibiting some of the signs and symptoms of prostate cancer.
Getting to that realisation wasn’t easy. As a trans woman, Heather often has to fight to access the healthcare she needs. Some doctors and specialists are unaware of the specific symptoms trans women might experience when they have prostate cancer, while others don’t even know trans women can get prostate cancer.
Right now, Heather is undergoing tests to determine what’s causing her prostate issues. In the mean time, she wants to speak out about the symptoms she is experiencing so others will know what they need to watch out for.
Aside from the exhaustion, the first thing Heather noticed was that she started to experience urinary incontinence during sex.
“It was only a small amount, but that had never happened before,” Heather tells PinkNews. “It then started to happen regularly… One of the key things to get across is that if you’re noticed a change in your urinary habits, whether that’s incontinence or other things, then it’s important to get it checked out.”
Increasingly worried about her symptoms, Heather went to her GP for blood tests.
“The blood test measures something called prostate-specific antigen (PSA), and if you’ve got higher levels of that it tends to mean there’s something wrong with the prostate – it could be cancer, could be prostatitis,” Heather explains. Prostatitis refers to the inflammation of the prostate gland.
Heather Peto pictured with Keir Starmer. (Provided)
“Mine was quite high for my age,” Heather says. The tests were evidence enough that something was wrong, but that’s where Heather’s issues with the healthcare system begin. As a trans woman who has had hormone treatment, she should in general have lower PSA levels than a cis man would have.
The result is that some trans women and non-binary people with prostates can show lower levels of PSA in blood tests, but they could still have prostate cancer. According to Prostate Cancer UK, some experts believe a PSA level above 1 ng/ml in a trans woman should warrant further investigation.
Trans women can experience different symptoms of prostate cancer
Another barrier to treatment and diagnosis for trans women is that the symptoms can be different. One of the symptoms most commonly associated with prostate cancer is the need to get up and urinate frequently during the night – but that’s largely based on the experiences of cis men. Heather noticed some different symptoms.
“One of those symptoms is that there’s a form of incontinence by which you go to the toilet for a wee but you don’t expel all your wee… so you have that little residual amount that you can’t seem to expel. You know it’s there but it’s not completely gone. When it discharges, which it does, it ends up leaking all at once.”
Something else Heather experienced is that she would orgasm spontaneously during urination. “It’s very awkward,” she says. Unfortunately, Heather experienced some “disinterest” from medical professionals when she raised concerns about the symptoms she was experiencing – although she stresses that the care she has received has generally been good.
I’m left in this never-never of not knowing if it’s cancer that’s getting worse or if there’s another, more benign explanation such as prostatitis.
After noticing those symptoms, Heather went to her GP and was referred to a specialist. She was supposed to have a urine test in November 2021, but it was subsequently pushed back several times.
“I’m left in this never-never of not knowing if it’s cancer that’s getting worse or if there’s another, more benign explanation such as prostatitis, or if it could be another form of cancer that’s affecting the area. My health is getting worse, I’m OK but not OK in terms of living a normal live. So that’s my experience.”
Heather is speaking out about her experience because she wants both the medical field and the wider public to have greater awareness about the fact that trans and non-binary people with prostates are susceptible to developing prostate cancer too.
Heather Peto pictured on the left. (Provided)
“There is this list on the NHS website of symptoms that you might experience with prostate cancer, but it does seem to me to neglect certain things trans and non-binary people with prostates might experience, and it possibly neglects people who have sex with men.
“There needs to be more research and more guidance around trans people with prostate cancer,” Heather says. “I don’t want to be too alarmist, but I think we need to communicate this – there are people who are needlessly being treated further along in their prostate cancer than is necessary.”
Heather says there’s a level of ignorance in the medical field about the reality of prostate cancer for trans people. That’s not necessarily anybody’s fault, she points out – but she would like to see better education and training for GPs and other medical professionals. Right now, trans and non-binary people with prostates often have to educate healthcare professionals themselves.
“People need to talk more broadly about the problems trans people have,” she says. “We need to make sure GPs know about it, but also patients know about it so they can go to their GP in the first place… Your life is in their hands.”
Heather still doesn’t know what her symptoms mean, but she’s trying to remain optimistic while she waits on a firm answer.
“There’s always that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that it’s something worse that’s not being tackled, that I’ll end up dying from it, or that I’ll end up being more seriously ill than I need to be.”
What’s worse is that Heather knows she will likely experience transphobic abuse online because she’s daring to speak out about her experience. She has received brutal, cruel messages on social media over the years – all because she’s a trans woman. Some of those have wished cancer on her.
This culture of abuse only further silences trans people and makes them less likely to seek the support they need.
There needs to be greater awareness in the medical field about trans women’s medical needs
Heather’s experience is echoed by Suzanna Hopwood, also a trans woman. She developed prostatitis a number of years ago – she went to her GP and was referred to a consultant. The care she received was excellent.
“They don’t want to do any surgery on me, they’re just treating it with drugs. They didn’t think there was anything sinister lurking in my prostate and it wasn’t hugely big. That’s the process that I went through and I came out the other side reasonably satisfied,” Suzanna says.
“On the other side, you can fall into a bit of a hole really and not get properly diagnosed.”
Heather Peto. (Provided)
That’s why Suzanna worked with Prostate Cancer UK to help help bring its information on prostate cancer in trans and non-binary people up to date. She reached out to the charity when she started having issues with prostatitis and learned that the charity was already working on updating its information to make it more inclusive.
Today, Prostate Cancer UK provides in-depth information about the realities facing trans women and non-binary people with prostates. Worryingly, the charity points out that many people don’t even know that trans women and some non-binary people have prostates, meaning they’re less likely to seek and access the right supports.
For Heather and Suzanna, the path forward is education – both for medical professionals and for trans and non-binary people. Without that, lives could continue to be needlessly lost.
If you’re trans or non-binary and are worried about prostate cancer or prostatitis, you can visit the Prostate Cancer UK website to find out more.
An internet forum where people pretending to be parents forcing their children to be transgender has gotten shut down after it was found to be full of fake stories.
As the U.S. plunges even deeper into a moral panic over children who are supposedly being forced to transition, some anti-transgender people are reacting to the fact that that never happens by making up stories about it and trying to pass them off as real.
“Anyone else have trouble convincing your teen kids to continue transitioning?” user “Funkyduffy” wrote on the subreddit r/TransParentTransKid. “My 15-year-old daughter (AMAB) has started refusing her estradiol so I’ve been crushing the pills and putting it in her cereal in the morning.”
Reddit is a largely anonymous internet platform where most users create unidentifiable handles and connections between users aren’t the focus, a contrast to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This makes it easier and more accepted for people to create temporary profiles to say whatever they want on various forums called subreddits.
One such subreddit, r/TransParentTransKid, was started last August when some users decided to post fake stories to it to promote the negative stereotype that parents and schools are forcing kids to be transgender. In reality it is common for schools and parents to be obstacles to trans kids expressing their identities while it’s unheard of for schools and parents to impede cisgender kids the same way.
The user who called for the subreddit’s creation said that it would be “filled with stories about how our real/adoptive children magically learned they were also trans after finding out about their parents,” according to Reuters.
According to another subreddit, r/AgainstHateSubreddits, r/TransParentTransKid was shut down for violating Reddit’s rules because they were “engaged in promoting hatred of transgender people, as well as targeted harassment.”
But the stories still spread outside of Reddit to rightwingers who were all too willing to believe them.
“This is fucking child abuse and I’ll die on this Hill,” wrote libertarian author Justin O’Donnell on Twitter, posting a picture of Funkyduffy’s fake story. He got almost 46,000 likes for it.
Ian Miles Cheong – who has a history of posting misinformation about trans people online and even riling Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) up – shared the story with the words “Good parenting.”
The story comes as conservative politicians and activists are claiming that there is a massive effort by schools and parents to turn children transgender.
For example, Rep. Greene said in February that there are “these mothers that think [having a trans child] is like having a handbag. They need to have a boy, a girl, and a trans child like as if they’re some kind of accessory.”
Funkyduffy’s story may have been one that pushed her to believe that such parents exist.
“I have never – not once – heard of a child being forced to transition,” said the ACLU’s Gillian Branstetter. “The exception is intersex children who are frequently forced into surgeries, yet every effort to ban gender-affirming care exempts those surgeries.”
Half of LGBT+ sexual violence survivors believe they were assaulted because of their identity, a survey has found.
In the largest report of its kind, British anti-abuse charity Galop asked nearly 1,000 LGBT+ people about their experiences of sexual violence.
Those surveyed described instances of rape, penetrative sexual assault, ‘revenge porn’ and groping. Such experiences haunted them for months, with 85 per cent saying the trauma impacted their mental health and 77 per cent their relationships.
Galop CEO Leni Morris told PinkNews that some LGBT+ people had experienced so-called “corrective” rape. Others said their assailants “fetishised” their sexuality or gender identity – 53 per cent believed they were attacked because of their identity.
Galop also found that “corrective” sexual assault was more common among trans and non-binary people, who are being excluded from the government’s conversion therapy ban altogether.
“I feel like being raped robbed me of years,” said one participant, “it meant I didn’t transition until now and I cannot put into words how angry that makes me.”
Morris said: “These findings provide further evidence for the need for a full and complete ban on so-called conversion therapy in all its forms.
“This is abuse, and LGBT+ people in this country are being put through it simply because of who they are. We need this ban. We need it for the whole community.”
One in five people surveyed by Galop have never told anyone about the sexual violence they faced. (Getty Images)
One in five respondents said they had never told anyone about their ordeal, according to the report released Wednesday afternoon (20 April).
Of the 82 per cent who did open up about the violence they experienced, just one third had done so within six months of the incident taking place.
Two-thirds of respondents reported an increase in suicidal thoughts after the violence, while six in 10 engaged in self-harm.
The NHS offers support for people who have experienced sexual violence through specialised sexual assault referral centres, or SARCs. But LGBT+ respondents said they were hesitant to seek out support, which includes being connected to police offers to report the incident. Many were wary of being “outed” or fearful of the discrimination and disbelief they would be met with for being LGBT+.
“This is an important reflection of the way LGBT+ people in this country are still othered, and how anti-LGBT+ prejudice is still an active part of the life experience of many LGBT+ people in the UK,” said Morris.
“Services set up to support sexual violence survivors often don’t feel inclusive of our community, and there is a real lack of services, like ours, which are run by and for LGBT+ people to provide that safe space in the wake of sexual violence.”
Rape Crisis England and Wales works towards the elimination of sexual violence. If you’ve been affected by the issues raised in this story, you can access more information ontheir website or by calling the National Rape Crisis Helpline on 0808 802 9999.Rape Crisis Scotland’s helpline number is 08088 01 03 02.
Readers in the US are encouraged to contactRAINN, or the National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800-656-4673.
The national war of words over whether students should learn about LGBTQ issues in school — ignited by a recently enacted Florida law that critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — has taken a charged, and some say dangerous, turn over the last several weeks.
In early March, the press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted that anyone who opposes the bill “is probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” Several days later, Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked her millions of viewers, “When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?”
On Wednesday, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., took things a step further, tweeting that “Democrats are the party of killing babies, grooming and transitioning children, and pro-pedophile politics,” in reference to the legislation. That same day, in a since-deleted tweetaccessed by NBC News through the Wayback Machine Internet Archive, the conservative podcast host Jack Posobiec urged his 1.7 million followers to buy T-shirts that say “Boycott Groomers, bring ammo” and incorporate the famous Disney castle logo and signature font. (The company, which has a large footprint in Florida, has become a frequent target of conservative politicians and pundits for denouncing the state’s legislation.)
Disney parody T-shirt.Bring Ammo LLC
This type of language — which had, at least in the past decade, appeared to be relegated to the margins of the far-right movement — has even made its way beyond politicians and political pundits. During a Fox News interview on Sunday, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet saidthat children are “not only being indoctrinated but groomed” and that “teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia.”
Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law’s Cyber Law Clinic and a transgender-rights advocate, said using such language is “an attempt at the dehumanization and delegitimization of queer people’s identities by associating them with pedophilia and child grooming.”
“What terrifies me is that when you start labeling groups with that, the calls for violence are inevitable,” she said.
The recent rhetoric mirrors that of a QAnon conspiracy theory — known as “pizzagate” — which claimed that a Washington, D.C., pizzeria was harboring a child sex-trafficking ring with connections to Hillary Clinton. The conspiracy theory, which was debunked by the FBI and Washington police, prompted a North Carolina manto fire a rifle in the pizzeria. He was ultimately sentenced to four years behind bars.
The word “grooming” — which has long beenassociated with mischaracterizing LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and transgender women, as child sex abusers — was mentioned on Twitter 7,959 times on March 29, the day after Florida’s education bill was signed into law, compared with just 40 times on the first day of this year, Caraballo found through data she pulled from Twitter.
The legislation,officially titled the Parental Rights in Education bill, bans teaching about sexual orientation or 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.”
Proponents of the measure have contended that it gives parents more discretion over what their children learn in school and say LGBTQ issues are “not age-appropriate” for young students.
At the Florida bill-signing ceremony, DeSantis, who is widely believed to be considering a run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, said that opponents of the measure “support sexualizing kids in kindergarten” and “camouflage their true intentions.” He added that the law would ensure “that parents can send their kids to school to get an education, not an indoctrination.”
Tiffany Justice, an ardent supporter of the measures limiting LGBTQ instruction in schools and the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a national network of about 80,000 parents whose mission is to defend parental rights in schools, said that the LGBTQ community is “a part of the fabric of America.”
Simultaneously, she said that “we have reached a point now where we need to call this what this is,” referring to the rhetoric surrounding the law.
“If you want to talk to my first grader about sex and sexual identity and gender identity and sexual orientation, and I don’t want you to and you’re doing it anyway, you’re grooming my child without my permission,” Justice, who is also a mother of four school-age children, said to NBC News. “And if anyone says that they don’t like that label, then I say stop messing with our kids.”
Scott Hadland, the chief of adolescent and young adult medicine at MassGeneral Hospital for Children and Harvard Medical School, called the law and the recent rhetoric surrounding it “fear-based.”
“I’ve cared for, in my more than a decade of clinical practice, hundreds of kids who identify as LGBTQ and the number of times that somebody has shared with me that they came to understand their development because they were convinced to become LGBTQ by a teacher, or another community member, or a physician is exactly zero,” Hadland said. “This does not happen. This is not how young people establish their identities.”
The tactic of labeling one’s political adversaries as “groomers,” or insinuating that they are trying to prime children for sexual abuse, is nothing new, said Michael Bronski, a professor of women and gender studies at Harvard University and author of “A Queer History of the United States for Young People.”
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“There’s a long tradition of making accusations against a minority group, potentially an unpopular one, using the notion of violating childhood innocence, which is seen as the worst possible thing that you could do — to abuse the child sexually,” Bronski said.
“Overwhelmingly, they were never about the children,” he added, referring to the accusations. “They were about mobilizing power within the culture and doing political organizing around it.”
Bronski recalled former beauty queen Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign in 1977, which painted gays and lesbians as a threat to the country’s youth. That year, her campaign was successful in overturning a newly passed Miami-Dade County law that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing, employment and public services.
“Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit. And to freshen their ranks, they must recruit the youth of America,” Bryant famously declared.
Decades after Bryant fortified a reputation as one of the countries most notorious anti-LGBTQ activists, her granddaughter came out as a lesbian during an episode of Slate’s “One Year” podcast and revealed that she was engaged to a woman.
Singer turned political activist Anita Bryant speaks during a press event in Miami Beach, Fla. on Jun. 7, 1977.Bettmann via Getty Images file
When asked why these old tropes, popular in Bryant’s day, have resurfaced now, Bronski pointedto several LGBTQ policy wins in recent years — most notably the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, and the 2020 Supreme Court decision that won LGBTQ people nationwide protection from workplace discrimination — and greater numbers of Americans identifying as part of the LGBTQ community.
The percent of U.S. adults who identify as something other than heterosexual has doubled over the last 10 years, from 3.5 percent in 2012 to 7.1 percent, according to a Gallup poll released in February.
“If you have visibility for anything, whether it be for Black Lives Matter, whether it be for feminism, whether it be for LGBTQ identities, you are in fact creating a cultural space for people to learn about it and consider it,” Bronski said. “Any form of social progress engenders backlash.”
The backlash is what worries Caraballo. She notes that June 12 will be the sixth anniversary of the mass shooting that killed 49 at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Hate crimes against LGBTQ people across the country are down overall, according to FBI data released last year, but have risen for incidents motivated by gender identity within the past two years. Late last year, LGBTQ Americans were spooked when federal prosecutors arrested a man who they said threatened to attack this year’s New York City Pride March with “firepower” that would “make the 2016 Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting look like a cakewalk.” And this month, a man walked into a New York City gay bar, Rash Bar, with a bottle of flammable liquid, poured it on the bar’s floor, lit a match and set the venue on fire.
Caraballo said that social media companies like Twitter have a responsibility to curtail the rhetoric from proliferating online and thus stem the threats of violence.
“What worries me is that it’s going to take people getting killed for them to finally crack down,” Caraballo said. “I fear we’re going to end up with another Pulse.”
“My message to social media companies is,” she added, “‘Don’t wait till you have blood on your hands.’”
Twitter did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment concerning several of the more high-profile tweets mentioning the word “grooming” in association with the new law.
One of the tweets came from DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, on March 4: “The bill that liberals inaccurately call ‘Don’t Say Gay’ would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill.”
In an email to NBC News, Pushaw elaborated, saying that “the assumption that criticism of grooming is criticism of the LGBTQ community equates LGBTQ people to groomers, which is both bigoted and inaccurate.”
Saturday May 21 @ 7:30 pm. Guitar Master Claude Bourbon at Occidental Center for the Arts. OCA is pleased to welcome back internationally acclaimed guitarist Claude Bourbon: Medieval, Spanish and Progressive Blues. On tour once again from the U.K., the French born guitar virtuoso has crafted a compelling acoustic fusion of blues, jazz, folk, classical and Spanish guitar, with his unique vocals. Don’t miss this remarkable performer as he returns to our acoustic sweet spot once again!$25 General/$20 for OCA Members at www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org. OCA is following current Sonoma County Public Health guidelines. Fine refreshments including wine and beer for sale. Art Gallery exhibit will be open for viewing. OCA is a non profit performing and fine arts center accessible to persons with disabilities. Become an OCA Member and get discounts/free admission. Occidental Center for the Arts, 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental,CA. 95465
When you study the field of politics, it is represented as “the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.” An accepted definition of a politician is “a person who is professionally involved in politics, especially as a holder of or a candidate for an elected office.”
Politics, if done well and honestly, should not be thought of as dirty and neither should the politician who practices politics. One can be an activist and practice politics without being a politician. But I find it amusing when a candidate running for office says they are not a politician. They may not have been one before they announced their candidacy, but once they have, they are a politician. I believe the majority of politicians in office, or running for office, are doing it for the right reasons.
It is because the term politician has become a dirty word that people are running for office declaring they are not really politicians. An example is the new Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The headline in the New York Times is “Alvin Bragg Says He’s Not a Politician, Is That the Root of His Trouble?” In fairness Bragg says he shouldn’t act like a politician, which indicates he thinks being a politician is a bad thing.
Bragg, who ran in a primary and then in a general election and now holds office, is by any definition a politician and there is nothing wrong with that. Decisions he makes will be both political in nature and have political ramifications. Whether it is to prosecute, or not prosecute, Donald Trump; or whether his office will cease to seek jail and prison time for all but the most serious crimes, those are in many ways political decisions. They can be political even if based on the facts as he sees them at the time. The reality is on what appeared to be his initial views on both of these issues, he is now vacillating based on the political winds he is facing. He is entitled to change his mind, as can any politician, as long as they don’t give up their principles.
I keep hearing U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland say he will decide what to do about Trump and his acolytes involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection without regard to any politics. Anyone who actually believes that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you can buy.
We often only hear about sleazy politics or sleazy politicians. They make for great click-bait journalism. But in reality, they are in the minority.
Just consider the politics of fighting for equal justice and economic equality, and the politicians fighting to make them both a reality. We have moved far from what the framers of our constitution wrote to make our country more equal for all. That was accomplished through war in one case, but it was also done through politics and by politicians. Do we have a long way to go? Of course. But we must take heart when we hear Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, now the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, talk about her family and saying, “My family went from segregation to the Supreme Court in one generation.” That, of course is a tribute to her family, but also to politics and politicians.
There have been many times I disagreed with the politics of some groups and the politicians who seem to represent them. But I must accept some people have legitimate views, in their own eyes, different from mine. While I nearly always disagree with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Ala.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) it must be recognized they not only voted for Judge Jackson but made strong and resonating statements in support of her.
So it will be important, if we are to move our country back on the track many want to see it on, not to ascribe a negative implication to all politics and politicians we disagree with. We will never agree with all that is done in the name of politics or by every politician. However, we must accept decent people can disagree and the other side is not always being sleazy. We need to learn to respect each other and try to treat each other with dignity.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.
But honestly? I don’t think we look anything alike. Michael has a full head of silver hair — and I’m bald. Michael is at least three inches taller than I am.
And yet, as we travel, I’ve literally lost track of the number of times people have mistaken us for brothers. People often — often — even assume we’re twins!
Here’s the explanation I’ve come up with for why this happens: it’s unusual for two middle-aged men to be traveling together, especially if we’re sharing a room. If we’re in a country or culture where out same-sex couples are unusual or non-existent, people search for a label to apply to us. “Brothers” is the best explanation they can come up with that makes sense to them.
Plus, we act very comfortable and familiar together, like, well, brothers.
Truthfully, if this is the worst thing that ever happens to us on our travels, we’ll be very lucky. And so far, it is the worst thing, at least when it comes to our being gay.
In fact, we’ve found the world to be far more gay-tolerant than we expected, even in countries known for LGBTQ bigotry.
Then again, we’re relatively wealthy Westerners, and the locals in most countries have a financial interest in treating us well. Things are often very different for resident LGBTQ people.
We’re also men, who don’t have to deal with sexism, and we’re conventionally masculine, which means we can easily maneuver in cultures with more traditional gender roles.
We also try to do our due diligence before going anywhere, and we always approach travel with the idea that we’re guests in the places that we visit. That means we try to learn about and respect local customs and values — within reason, of course.
Surprisingly, we haven’t seen much of the homophobia monster in our travels.
But this doesn’t mean there aren’t still challenges to travel while being LGBTQ.
For one thing, something serious probably will go wrong at some point in our travels, and we’ll have to deal with the local authorities and/or police.
If it’s obvious we’re a gay couple, and there’s some kind of dispute, will the authorities take our side? If the problem involves homophobia, might the authorities even take the side of the bigot?
It’s a scary thought.
Then there’s the general discomfort of constantly having to decide whether or not to come out — and exactly how “out” we want to be in any given situation.
When we were living in Tbilisi, Georgia, we decided to hire a driver to take us and some friends on a road trip into neighboring Armenia for three days. The deal was the driver would supply the car and his expertise, and we would pay him a fee — and also pay for his food and lodging along the way.
But when Michael was making the arrangements via text, he asked me, “Do you think I should tell the driver we’re gay?”
“Why would you do that?” I responded.
“Well, we’re all going to be together in his car for three days. If he’s got an issue, I’d rather know now than once we’re in Armenia.”
“Don’t tell him,” I said. “That seems weird. ‘By the way, we’re gay’? He’ll probably be more freaked out by that than anything.”
“But if I don’t tell him, then it’ll come up during the trip. And how weird would that be? We’re all staying in the same hotels. He’ll see you and I are sharing a bed.”
This was a very familiar conversation — the kind of thing Michael and I discuss all the time. I’m generally more cautious than he is. And in this particular case, the driver had come with a very reasonable price and a strong recommendation from someone we knew. I really didn’t want to lose him, and I said so.
“What if he asks us directly?” Michael asked me.
“If we’re gay?” I said. “Please. He won’t ask. And if he does, we can always lie.”
I could tell Michael didn’t agree with me, but he went ahead and booked the driver without mentioning our being a couple.
And a few weeks later, when we finally met the driver in person, literally the first thing he said, once we were all settled into his car, was, “So, Michael, are you married?”
I was sitting in the back seat with our two friends, which was a good thing because I was pretty sure Michael wanted to strangle me. He lied and told the driver he wasn’t married, just like I had instructed, but even that didn’t help matters. For the next three days, our driver repeatedly peppered Michael — and only Michael — with questions about his love life.
During those three days, I was also very aware how often LGBTQ issues — or details about Michael’s and my relationship — came up in casual conversations with our friends.
In Armenia with friends, during a brief moment when Michael didn’t want to strangle me.
By the time we returned to Tbilisi, our driver must have figured out we were a couple. But whether he had or hadn’t, Michael was right: we should have told him in advance.
Still, who needs all that stress?
Then there’s the fact that, safety issues aside, we genuinely want to be out. It’s undignified and humiliating to have to pretend you’re someone you’re not.
And, frankly, we’re from a generation where we’ve always seen our being out as a political act — about yourself but also about a greater “cause”; younger generations seem to see it as more about individual expression, but that’s cool too.
Either way, visibility matters. In homophobic countries, it matters even more. By being out and proud, we can act as role models for younger LGBTQ folks, and we can confound the stereotypes or misinformation that straight people might have about us.
But that’s complicated too. When we lived in Istanbul, Michael got to know the man who ran the bakery near our apartment.
In his regular chats with the man, Michael revealed the details of his and my travels, and the two of them shared social media profiles. But Michael was always unsure how this traditional Muslim family man might react if Michael specifically referred to me as his “husband.”
Which is precisely the point. For me, the best part of our travels has been the connections I’ve made with all the people I’ve met along the way.
But in more conservative countries, being gay — and feeling anxious how people might react to that fact — makes those connections more difficult. How close can you get to someone if you can’t be honest about something so basic about yourself?
On the other hand, sometimes being gay has made those connections even deeper.
That Turkish baker Michael met? Not long after we left town, the baker “liked” a picture of Michael and me being affectionate on social media.
An ever better example came in Vietnam, where we lived several years ago. Michael and I joined a local co-working space, which was run by a Vietnamese woman.
Michael does the grocery shopping in our family, and he also knows that I liked the fruit smoothies made by a vendor there. So every time he made a trip to the local market, he would pick up a mango smoothie for me and stop by the co-working space on his bike to drop it off on his way home.
Not Vietnam, alas.
Before long, the Vietnamese woman began to notice, and she would smile every time Michael delivered me another mango smoothie.
Finally, one day the woman said to me, “You two are a couple, yes?”
I was surprised she’d said this out of the blue, and it made me a little nervous. I knew this woman hadn’t traveled much, and I suspected she didn’t know many out gay people.
But I nodded and said, “Yes. We’ve been together twenty-five years now.”
“He is very loving,” she said. “You are very lucky. You are both loving to each other.”
At that, I couldn’t help but blush. I wasn’t so sure about my always being loving to Michael, but I could absolutely agree with the other part.
And so I laughed and said that. “Well, you’re definitely right about Michael.”
She shook her head. “No. I watch, and I see. You are one of the best couples I’ve ever met.”
I loved that she’d been observing us and had come to such a nice conclusion. Now, more than anything, I felt seen. “Well, thank you very much. That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to us.”
“I am just saying the truth.”
It was another one of those elusive but wonderful travel connections. And if I wasn’t gay — and if Michael wasn’t such a thoughtful person — it might never have happened at all.
Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author, and one half of Brent and Michael Are Going Places, a couple of traveling gay digital nomads. Subscribe to their free travel newsletter here.
In 71 countries, being queer makes you a criminal. In 11 of them, the punishment is death. Some countries differentiate between having gay sex and actually being gay, but the result is discrimination no matter the reasoning.
America’s religious right is clamoring for crackdowns on gender expression and LGBTQ rights similar to the laws enforced in less advanced countries. Some prominent Republicans and pastors have gone so far as to suggest America should be a theocracy like some countries on the list.
Iran, parts of Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates proscribe the death penalty for anyone proven to be homosexual.
