In 2017, Jon Hoadley came home one day to find his partner, Kris, sprawled on the bathroom floor.
“He was barely able to move, he had been throwing up for over 18 hours,” Hoadley, 37, told NBC News.
At the hospital, the couple received devastating news.
“The doctor comes in and says, ‘I think you have multiple sclerosis,’” he recalled the doctor telling Kris.
Hoadley said the constant headache of dealing with insurance companies and hospital bills since his partner’s diagnosis is a major reason he made affordable health care a priority in his campaign to represent Michigan’s 6th Congressional District.
Jon Hoadley with his husband, Kris, left.Trumpie Photography
“I’m not running to make history, I’m running to make change,” said Hoadley, a Democratic who, in addition to health care, is focusing his campaign on climate change and clean energy.
Hoadley, now in his third term as a state representative, is challenging Rep. Fred Upton, a moderate Republican who has represented the southwest Michigan district since 1986. Traditionally a conservative stronghold, the district voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. In this presidential election year, though, moderate voters have the potential swing the district, which sits on the Indiana border.
Hoadley, who grew up in South Dakota, has been an LGBTQ advocate since he was a student at Michigan State University, and he is a member of the Michigan Democrat’s LGBT and Allies Caucus. If elected, Hoadley would be Michigan’s fist openly gay member of Congress. He is one in a “rainbow” wave” of at least 850 LGBTQ people who have run for office this election cycle, up from 700 who ran in 2018, according to the Victory Fund, a group that trains, supports and advocates for LGBTQ candidates.
“This is a moment where we can show that we’re ready for some big change,” Hoadley said. “And, you know, at the end of the day, though, the fact that I would be the first LGBT member of Congress from Michigan, I think it’s an interesting footnote to history, but the thing that keeps me up at night is what’s on the line if we don’t make this historic change this year.”
“We absolutely need to get health care right,” he added. “We are in the middle of a global health pandemic and a health crisis.”
When it comes to health care, Hoadley said, it is “absolutely an issue that we need to be talking about in the LGBT community.”
“We need to be tracking the statistics, we need to be making sure there are strong protections from discrimination, and we need to make sure that we are funding appropriately interventions that will specifically help some of the challenges that our community faces more so than other communities,” he explained.
“It’s a reminder that though we’ve made progress, we have so much work to do,” he added.
In recent months, Hoadley has had to fight back controversy regarding his past. In August, the New York Post reported on 15-year-old blog posts Hoadley made when he was in college. In the since-deleted posts, Hoadley, according to the paper, “referred to women as ‘breeders,'” “discussed learning about crystal meth,” “described his sexual partners as ‘victims’” and “included a reference to a ‘four year old wearing a thong.'”
Hoadley, who publicly apologized for the posts in a Facebook videoon Aug. 10, accused the NRCC of purposely “twisting” the posts, which he described as “slang” and “jokes,” to “use homophobia to paint a powerful story that has been debunked long ago.”
“They’re trying to reach deep into these discriminatory stereotypes about gay men,” Hoadley added.
Last month, the LGBTQ Victory Fund condemned the attacks against Hoadley as homophobic.
Hoadley said he hopes voters in Michigan and beyond “realize how important their vote is this November.”
“There are so many people who will use the forces of cynicism, who will lie about the difference between the candidates on the ballot, who will tell lies through social media to distract,” he said, “and it is important that we stay focused, because we desperately need change in our country.”
With the presidential election a little more than a month away, a new poll finds 75 percent of LGBTQ voters are supporting Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
According to GLAAD’s State of LGBTQ Voters report, released Thursday, just 17 percent of the respondents said they were pulling the lever for President Donald Trump. Five percent said they plan to back another candidate and 2 percent remain undecided. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percent.
The poll, conducted by Pathfinder Opinion Research from Sept. 21-25, indicated 88 percent of the 800 LGBTQ respondents were registered voters.
Of them, 92 percent said they were “definitely or probably” voting in the presidential election — and over 80 percent said they felt more motivated to vote now than in any other recent election.
According to data from UCLA’s Williams Institute released last November, 1 in 5 LGBTQ Americans were not registered. But GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis says there’s been a surge in voter registration this year.
“LGBTQ voters are poised to make a deciding difference this election year,” Ellis said in a statement. “Our community understands how much is at stake in this election. We cannot sit this one out — our very lives are on the line.”
In a memo to GLAAD, Pathfinder confirmed that LGBTQ voters “represent a highly motivated, vital Democratic voting bloc.”
“Together we’ll pass the Equality Act, protect LGBTQ youth, expand access to health care, support LGBTQ workers, win full rights for transgender Americans, recommit to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2025 [and] advance LGBT rights around the globe, not just at home.”
The results from the new report are similar to exit polls from the 2016 presidential election, which found 78 percent of LGBTQ voters backed Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, compared to 14 percent who said they voted for Trump.
“Today’s poll demonstrates a monumental lead for Vice President Biden in the race for president,” Ellis said, “and is a direct response to the incessant and capricious attacks from the Trump Administration on LGBTQ Americans since day one.”
Despite a series of anti-LGBTQ measures — including banning transgender service members from the armed forces, supporting the right of adoption agencies to reject same-sex couples, and opposing workplace protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity — the Trump campaign has publicized the president as a friend to the community.
In August, Trump tweeted a campaign video made by Richard Grenell, the openly gay former acting director of national intelligence, calling the president “the strongest ally that gay Americans have ever had in the White House.”
Grenell is part of the Trump campaign’s Trump Pride advisory board, which promotes him as “the first president to begin his presidency in support of marriage equality.”
After declining to endorse Trump in 2016, the Log Cabin Republicans, a national LGBTQ conservative organization, endorsed the president for re-election and launched OUTSpoken, a multimedia campaign designed to give gay conservatives a platform during the race.
Earlier this month, Trump retweeted an article about a survey, conducted by the gay social network Hornet, that found 45 percent of gay male respondents planned to vote for him.
Hornet cautioned its survey was unscientific and shouldn’t be taken as predictive of voter response on Nov. 3. In GLAAD’s poll, likely voters who identified as gay men favored Biden over Trump 80 percent to 18. Gay women backed Biden 83 to 11, while non-cisgender voters supported the former vice president 72 to 18.
Still, Tuesday morning on Fox & Friends, the president’s son Eric Trump said the LGBT community “come[s] out in full force for my father every single day.”
He was responding to a New York Times opinion piece Monday about a lesbian who plans to vote for his father.
“I’m part of that community, and we love the man,” he added, leading some to speculate the president’s third eldest child had come out. He later clarified his remarks in an interview with the New York Post.
But 75 percent of the LGBTQ respondents in GLAAD’s poll said they held “somewhat or very” unfavorable opinions of Trump, while 57 percent said they had somewhat or very favorable opinions of Biden.
Ellis said the results “should put to rest the misinformation from the president’s team and other unreliable sources about his record and where critical LGBTQ voters stand in this election.”
Transgender children who receive gender-affirming medical care earlier in their lives are less likely to experience mental health issues like depression and anxiety, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.
“The study highlights that timely access to gender-affirming medical care is really important for youth with gender dysphoria,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Julia C. Sorbara, a pediatric endocrinologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Gender dysphoriainvolves a conflict between an individual’s sex assigned at birth and their gender identity.
The study found that transgender youths who sought that type of care — which, for minors, most commonly includes puberty blockers, hormones or both — at a later age and further into puberty were more distressed and more likely to suffer from mental health issues.
“A major part of puberty is developing physical changes, and for youth with gender dysphoria, they begin to develop physical changes that are not in keeping with the gender they identify,” Sorbara said. “This can be very distressing for these young people.”
The study included 300 transgender minors aged 10 to 17 who were being treated at the Hospital for Sick Children. The researchers tracked their ages at the time they first sought care at the Toronto clinic and their reported difficulties with mental health.
More than three-quarters of the youths who went to Sorbara’s clinic reported mental health problems, including depression and anxiety, according to the study.
“The most common were depressive and anxiety disorders, as well as having considered suicide at some point — unfortunately not so out of keeping with what’s been reported from other clinics,” Sorbara said.
Researchers found that those issues were more likely the older the children were when they arrived at the clinic. When compared to children ages 10 to 15, children older than 15 were more likely to have reported diagnoses of depression (46 percent vs. 30 percent) and to have self-harmed (40 percent vs. 28 percent), considered suicide (52 percent vs. 40 percent), attempted suicide (17 percent vs. 9 percent) and required psychoactive medications (36 percent vs. 23 percent).
Sorbara’s study follows another study, also published in Pediatrics, that found that transgender individuals who received puberty blockers during adolescence had lower risks of suicidal thoughts as adults than those who wanted the medication but could not get access to it.
Suicide is a significant problem facing transgender children and adults. The 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth crisis intervention and suicide prevention organization, found that 40 percent of LGBTQ youths said they have “seriously considered” attempting suicide in the past year.
A 2019 report from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found a connection between experiences of discrimination, including in medical care, and suicidality for transgender adults, with participants who had experienced discrimination being twice as likely to have attempted suicide compared to those who had not experienced discrimination.
Another recent study found that almost 60 percent of transgender adults were close to someone who has attempted suicide and 25 percent knew someone who had committed suicide and that such exposure has negative impacts on their mental health.
Sorbara also noted that participants in her team’s study were only those “who want to and can access care.” She said many transgender children and adolescents may want or would benefit from such care but are unable to get access to it. She said she hopes her study lends “support to efforts to ensure this care is readily available for the youth that need it.”
The ability of transgender youths to receive gender-affirming medical care has become a political issue, with several states considering measures this legislative session to block access to that type of care. Republican legislators in at least eight states have introduced proposals that would punish doctors and other medical professionals who provide the kind of gender-affirming medical care described in Sorbara’s study. Bills in Missouri and New Hampshire called such care “child abuse.”
In February, over 200 medical professionals signed a letter opposing the bills on the grounds that they “violate the rights and freedoms of transgender young people.”
“Many credible studies of trans youth populations have demonstrated that gender-affirming care is linked to significantly reduced rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse and suicide attempts,” the letter says. “To put it plainly, gender-affirming care saves lives and allows trans young people to thrive.”
We’re thrilled to introduce the gracious hosts of our virtual Gala, Peaches Christ and Marga Gomez.Join them on October 16 for Reunion: Making History, an evening of powerful performances, inspiring presentations and a heartfelt celebration of LGBTQ History Makers.
Make sure to get your tickets now for Reunion: Making History, for access to the live broadcast on October 16, as well as sneak peeks of early content along the way!
Peaches Christ is a filmmaker and cult leader living in San Francisco. Her infamous movie events are self-produced at the Castro Theatre and regularly draw over 1,000 attendees to each new production before they tour. Events have featured special guest stars John Waters, Cloris Leachman, Bruce Campbell, Barry Bostwick, Pam Grier and others. Peaches is the alter-ego of Joshua Grannell, the writer and director of the feature film All About Evil. This award-winning dark comedy gore film stars Natasha Lyonne, Thomas Dekker, Cassandra Peterson, Mink Stole and Peaches Christ herself. Peaches Christ has been featured in the films Milk, I Am Divine, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Mansfield 66/67, Scream Queen: My Nightmare on Elm Street, You Don’t Nomi and more. Her website is peacheschrist.com.
Marga Gomez is a GLAAD Award winner and one of the first out lesbians in stand-up comedy. Robin Williams called her “Amazing…a lesbian Lenny Bruce.” Armistead Maupin called her “astonishing.” Gomez’s comedy has been featured on HBO, LOGO, Showtime, Comedy Central and PBS. She has been a guest on leading comedy podcasts, including Marc Maron’s WTF and Kevin Allison’s Risk. Her comic style has been described as “deliciously cheeky and incendiary” by the New York Times and “salaciously surreal” by the San Francisco Chronicle. She is also the author/performer of 13 solo plays which have been presented off-Broadway, nationally and internationally. Gomez can be seen in season two of the Netflix series Sense8. Her website is margagomez.com.
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Timothy Ray Brown, who made history as “the Berlin patient,” the first person known to be cured of HIV infection, has died. He was 54. Brown died Tuesday at his home in Palm Springs, California, according to a social media post by his partner, Tim Hoeffgen.
The cause was a return of the cancer that originally prompted the unusual bone marrow and stem cell transplants Brown received in 2007 and 2008, which for years seemed to have eliminated both his leukemia and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
“Timothy symbolized that it is possible, under special circumstances,” to rid a patient of HIV — something that many scientists had doubted could be done, said Dr. Gero Huetter, the Berlin physician who led Brown’s historic treatment.
One other man is believed to have been cured of HIV after undergoing to same transplants in 2016.
Chicago’s LGBTQ neighborhood is dropping its longtime nickname, “Boystown,” following a petition started by a local activist claiming the moniker lacks inclusivity and promotes bigotry.
“The Castro, Greenwich Village, West Hollywood, and many more. LGBTQ neighborhoods exist for all intersections of queer identity. Chicago’s is the only gendered nickname,” said the petition, which was addressed to the Northalsted Business Alliance.
Last week, the alliance announced that it would no longer use the nickname in its marketing campaigns when referring to the neighborhood, which sits on the city’s North Side. Instead, it will revert to the name Northalsted.
“While a personal identifier cannot encompass the full diversity of our town, the name Northalsted, signifies the place, its entire community & history, inclusively,” the alliance said in a statement.
In a survey conducted by the alliance, which had nearly 8,000 respondents, 58 percent favored keeping the “Boystown” moniker, and 80 percent said they did not feel unwelcome by the nickname.
“While an overall majority neither were offended by the name nor want it changed, those identifying as Lesbian, Transgender, non-binary and queer largely do favor a name change,” the statement said. “To acknowledge and welcome all members of the LGBTQ+ community, the chamber will discontinue using the name Boystown in marketing and revert to the long standing name Northalsted.”
The Boystown nickname has been in use since the 1980s to represent what the alliance said has historically been a safe place for LGBTQ people. In 1997, then-Mayor Richard Daley officially recognized the neighborhood as a gay village, the first such designation in the country, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
When Charles Hughes and Richard Solomon began making plans in 2018 to open their own gay bar in New York’s historic Harlem neighborhood, they had no idea a pandemic would shut them down before they even opened.
“The first thing we thought was, ‘Oh, my gosh, we’re going to be out of business before we started this business,’” Hughes, 39, told NBC News.
But a global health crisis is not the only headwind their bar, Lambda Lounge, and the few remaining Black-owned gay bars in the United States are facing. Long before anyone had heard of Covid-19, these LGBTQ social spaces were dwindling across the country.
Charles Hughes, left, and Richard Solomon, owners of Lambda Lounge, one of two Black-owned gay bars remaining in NYC.Lemon Brands
For more than two decades, gay bars, especially those owned by people of color, have been disappearing. Historically, these spaces were where the LGBTQ community gathered to find romance, make long-lasting friendships and engage in community activism. Throughout the 1980s, there were more than 1,500 such bars, a number that has declined steeply since the late ‘90s, with fewer than 1,000 existing today, according to a study published last year by Oberlin College and Conservatory professor Greggor Mattson.
The closures have had a disproportionate impact on bars catering to women and people of color: Between 2007 and 2019, LGBTQ bar listings dropped by an estimated 37 percent, and those serving people of color plummeted by almost 60 percent, according to the study. Though the reasons are not entirely clear, experts suspect the overall decline in gay bars is related to decades of skyrocketing rents and gentrification, which have disproportionately impacted small, Black-owned businesses; the emergence of online dating sites and apps; and circuit parties that rotate among venues, which have become increasingly popular among younger crowds.
According to online listings, there are more than 60 LGBTQ bars across the five boroughs of New York City, one of the metropolitan areas hardest hit by the pandemic, and many of these spaces are struggling to stay open. Of the city’s dozens of remaining gay bars, just two — Lambda Lounge and Alibi Lounge, both in Harlem — are known to be Black owned. Club Langston in Brooklyn closed last year after nearly two decades in business.
Since it opened in 2015, Alibi Lounge has become a sanctuary for LGBTQ people of color. In March, under city mandates, owner Alexi Minko was forced to temporarily shutter his bar and soon began to run out of money. A former lawyer who had poured his life savings into his business, Minko frantically applied for emergency aid through the government’s overwhelmed Paycheck Protection Program application, whose website he said continuously crashed.
Owner Alexi Minko in his bar, Alibi Lounge, in Harlem.Courtesy Alibi Lounge
Desperate for assistance, Minko reluctantly set up an online fundraising campaign for his bar. He was on the brink of ending his lease, he said, when donations suddenly surged. In only a matter of weeks, the campaign raised $165,000. While Minko eventually received a small loan through the government’s emergency relief program, he said the donations “absolutely saved my business,” as well as the idea that it’s possible for a Black gay man to open his own bar.
“My fear if Alibi had gone down is to instill in the young mind that, ‘Oh, why bother? We’re Black and gay, it’s just going to fail anyway,’” said Minko, who has since reopened his bar outside at limited capacity in compliance with New York City’s rules.
Earlier this month, Alibi Lounge was one of 10 LGBTQ-owned businesses to be awarded funding through the Queer to Stayprogram, a small business initiative from Showtime and the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ advocacy group.
Access to ‘mainstream capital’
While the total economic fallout from the pandemic won’t be known for some time, August data from the business listing site Yelp found that more than 2,800 businesses had permanently closed since March in New York City alone, and a report published last month from the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit business group, said as many as a third of the city’s “230,000 small businesses that populate neighborhood commercial corridors may never reopen.”
The national picture is also grim, especially for Black business owners: A report released in August by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found the number of Black-owned businesses declined more than 40 percent across the U.S. between February and April, while white-owned businesses declined 17 percent.
In June, the Small Business Administration released a list of 661,218 organizations that received loans of $150,000 or more. It received racial and ethnic backgrounds from just 94,501 owners. Of those, 1,827 Black-owned businesses received loans.
Most of these business owners rely on personal finance and credit, and often lack relationships with banks, according to Cy Richardson, senior vice president for economics and housing programs at the National Urban League, a nonprofit that advocates for economic and social justice for Black Americans.
“Broadly, the notion of access to mainstream capital, that’s where the racial wealth gap is really exacerbated,” he said.
Those at the intersection of the Black and the LGBTQ communities have been particularly hit hard amid the pandemic, according to asurvey released last month by the Human Rights Campaign, which found Black LGBTQ respondents fared worse than both the overall Black population and the overall LGBTQ population along every economic indicator measured.
‘Envy of the wider gay community’
Scholars who study LGBTQ nightlife say the loss of Black-owned gay bars would be devastating. Historically, these bars have been havens for people of color, who have experienced discrimination in white-owned bars for generations, according to Eric Gonzaba, an assistant professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton, who is writing a book about the history of gay nightlife.
Around the 1960s, gay bars began to sprout in metropolitan areas across the U.S. At the time, closeted white people didn’t want to be seen entering a gay bar where someone they knew might recognize them, so owners had a tendency to open these bars in predominantly Black neighborhoods. They would then often enact racist policies — including unfair carding measures and dress codes — to keep Black people out, according to Gonzaba, who said even up until the 1990s, some white bar owners would require people of color to show three forms of government picture ID to enter.
“These are places that were highly segregated for much of their history and are perfect examples of the inability for the LGBTQ rights movement to have a unified coalition into the ‘70s and ‘80s,” Gonzaba explained. He said even the Stonewall Inn, the once mafia-owned New York City gay bar that has become a symbol of the LGBTQ rights movement, “didn’t let a lot of people of color into the doors” (it has long since operated under new owners who do not engage in such discrimination). Since many gay bars in the ‘80s and ‘90s were where gay activists gathered to educate the community about HIV and AIDS, he said lifesaving information about the virus often didn’t reach the Black community.
Fed up, the Black LGBTQ community began to form its own house parties and unique social clubs in cities with large Black populations. Washington, D.C., alone boasted about 20 bars, nightclubs, coffeehouses and social gatherings that catered to a Black LGBTQ clientele, according to the Rainbow History Project, though it’s unclear if all were Black-owned and operated. Black gay activist groups used these spaces to educate patrons about HIV and AIDs and to organize around issues for racial justice. Perhaps the most epic among them, the The Club House, remained a popular D.C. haunt until it shuttered in 1990.
Unlike most LGBTQ bars at the time, Black-owned bars welcomed a gender diverse crowd, including transgender and gender-nonconforming people, according to Gonzaba. He said these patrons cultivated a unique music subculture in the 1970s composed of early disco and drag, and a “more sexually expressive culture” began to flourish.
“This is music that’s founded by African American and Latinx people in inner cities, parts of Chicago and Philadelphia and Washington, and dancing becomes normalized … and this kind of style of music and this kind of style of dancing that’s highly sexualized becomes the envy of the wider gay community,” Gonzaba said of this early disco era that would later give rise to house and electronic dance music.
“It’s the ability for clubs to be places of refuge and sexual expression and sexual exploration,” he said, that still lead people today to “think of bars and nightlife as a place to not just have a drink but to explore different avenues of one’s sexuality, and that’s hugely borrowed from Black culture.”
Where are all the Black-owned gay bars?
The number of Black-owned gay bars, currently and historically, is unknown, since there is no resource that specifically tracks them, and Gonzaba said many bars frequented by LGBTQ people of color have historically been white-owned. But business listings suggest there may not be many of them left.
In addition to Lambda Lounge and Alibi Lounge in New York, at least three others — Jeffery Pub in Chicago, Metro 2.0 in Jackson, Mississippi, and Jocks PHL in Philadelphia — are still in business.https://www.instagram.com/p/BzWSKlLBq7l/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=8&wp=1116&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com&rp=%2Ffeature%2Fnbc-out%2Fblack-owned-gay-bars-are-dwindling-can-they-survive-covid-n1241100#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A877%2C%22ls%22%3A852%2C%22le%22%3A873%7D
In Chicago, the pandemic is threatening to shut down what might be the country’s oldest Black-owned gay bar. Jeffery Pub opened in the 1960s and has gone through multiple owners, according to the current owner, Jamal Junior. The businessman, who purchased the bar in the mid-2000s, was forced to temporarily close the pub in March under a city ordinance as the pandemic swept through the Midwest. He said the pub has not been able to reopen in compliance with city mandates because it lacks outdoor space.
“I’m just praying and hoping that we can survive,” Junior, 46, told NBC News.
Metro 2.0 owner Temica Morton is currently trying to hold on to what might be the only Black-owned gay bar in the South. Morton, a Jackson-based LGBTQ advocate, acquired the lease to the bar in February just as the pandemic struck the U.S. She invested her entire savings into Metro 2.0, which she said has been a popular venue for LGBTQ people of color of all genders since it opened in the late 1990s. But a seesawing series of shutdown orders from state and city officials left the businesswoman in “panic mode” as she struggled to figure out how to keep the bar alive. The bar temporarily shut down Aug. 5, and reopened in September at limited capacity after the shutdown lifted. Morton, 44, said she’s now “taking it one day at a time.”
Jewel Catch One Disco on West Pico Blvd on Sept. 13, 2000 in Los Angeles.Jason Kirk / Newsmakers / Getty Images file
Many Black-owned bars whose clientele was composed largely of people of color have shuttered in the past decade, including several in New York City alone, like Starlite Lounge, No Parking and Club Langston. Perhaps the most famous of the shuttered bars was Jewel’s Catch One, a Los Angeles venue known for its Black disco scene that operated between 1973 and 2015 under the ownership of lesbian Jewel Thais-Williams. And a decade before that, the community lost beloved bar Knob Hill in Washington, D.C., which operated between 1957 and 2004.
In 1990, after dealing with decades of discrimination at gay bars in San Francisco, where he moved in 1969, Rodney Barnette, a Vietnam War veteran, former member of the Black Panther Party and gay rights activist, opened his own bar. The New Eagle Creek Saloon, which operated under the slogan “A friendly place with a funky base for every race,” was forced to shut down after only three years due to rent increases that Barnette said he could not afford. But before it shuttered, he said the saloon served as a refuge for San Francisco’s LGBTQ people of color. Activist groups like Lesbians and Gays of African Descent for Democratic Action (LAGADDA) gathered there to organize against racist carding policies in San Francisco and to educate the Black community about HIV prevention, he said.
Rodney Barnette on The New Eagle Creek Saloon float, San Francisco Pride Parade, 2019.Sadie Barnette
“I call it a community center that served alcohol, that’s the way I describe it,” said Barnette, whose bar has been memorialized by his daughter, artist Sadie Barnette, in an exhibit commissioned by The Lab in San Francisco.
“People felt good,” he said of the saloon’s patrons. “You could walk in the bar, and know there wouldn’t be any discrimination against you, that you were welcome, that everybody was welcome.”
‘Everybody should be treated equal’
By the 1990s, Black LGBTQ activists and allies had successfully fought to end racist carding policies. However, a number of recent incidents indicate that racism still plagues gay nightlife.
In 2016, fury erupted in Philadelphia after a video shared widely on social media showed the owner of a popular gay bar using the N-word. A 2017 report issued by the city’s Commission on Human Rights found that women, minorities and transgender people felt unwelcome and unsafe in Philadelphia’s gay neighborhood for decades. The report recommended establishments and organizations in the so-called gayborhood undergo training for racial bias and hire more diverse staff.
In 2018, a group of Atlanta drag performers, all trans women of color, collectively quit their jobs at a popular gay club, Burkhart’s, after its white owner made racist posts on his Facebook page.
Last year, an email from a manager at Progress Bar, a gay bar in Chicago’s “gayborhood,” ordered DJs to stop playing rap music at the bar. “Anything vulgar, aggressive or considered mumble rap (including certain Cardi B tracks and newer Nicki Minaj) is off limits,” the manager wrote in a leaked message.
In June, activists gathered in front of 941 Saloon, a Pittsburgh gay bar, to protest dress codes they said discriminated against Black people.
In July, a picture circulating on Facebook showed a bartender at Number Nine, a popular gay bar in Washington, D.C., apparently wearing a “black face” Covid-19 mask. The management later posted an apology, claiming the bartender didn’t know the mask was racist.
Over the years, as wealth in the U.S. has become more concentrated, Gonzaba said it is not uncommon for multiple gay bars to be managed under a single owner.
“These bars are owned by wealthy, white men who often have many different establishments in the cities,” he explained.
Some bars, even if they don’t engage in discriminatory practices within their establishment, try to cultivate loyalty among white clientele through their branding, according to Gonzaba. For example, in 2012, a leaked email from a gay bar owner in Washington, D.C., revealed that he had requested an advertisement for the bar, which displayed a Black man, be replaced with “a hot white guy,” stating it was “more our clientele.”
Barnette, who now resides in Los Angeles, said that despite progress made by activists, LGBTQ nightlife still caters predominantly to white men.
“The overall gay white male community has not reformed into making it a point that everybody should be treated equal,” he said.
‘A responsibility to queer people of color’
In New York City, where Covid-19 cases have plummeted, bars and restaurants have been allowed to slowly reopen outdoors at limited capacity. Starting Sept. 30, restaurants will be allowed to reopen their indoor space at 25 percent capacity, though bar service will not be permitted.
In July, Lambda Lounge celebrated its grand opening with a “nice turnout” despite restrictions, according to Hughes and Solomon, 38, who set up their lounge outdoors.
“It was so nice,” Hughes said. “We had to literally stop people coming in so we could be compliant with Covid rules.”
While the couple said they did receive a small loan through the emergency relief program, they are unsure how long they will remain open without more assistance, especially as the weather cools and a possible second wave of Covid-19 could force the city to shut down bars and restaurants later this year. So far, they’ve raised nearly $6,000 through a GoFundMe campaign for their lounge.
Hughes said the ongoing stress is giving him migraines, and Solomon said it has been “hard to find optimism right now.” Their insurance premium has already increased by $1,000 a month due to the pandemic, they said, and they are not currently bringing in enough money to cover their rent and other expenses. Still, the men vow to stay open as long as they can.
“We have a responsibility to queer people of color to make sure that this place lasts, and it’s extremely difficult when we run into obstacles,” Solomon said, “but the glass is half full.”
A man in New York City is believed to have been violently hacked to death with a machete during a Grindr hook-up.
Juan Alonso, 50, has been charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon after police were called to an apartment in the Bronx on Sunday evening.
Alonso’s flatmate had returned home to discover the victim’s naked body and Alonso, machete in hand, standing over him, police say.
The victim, whose name is not yet public, is believed to have met the alleged killer on Grindr.
A police spokesperson said that officials “are investigating whether there was a dispute over not liking certain sex activities and it escalated”.
Alonso has been hospitalised for a psychiatric evaluation, according to reports.
Building superintendent John Gonzalez told the New York Daily News the victim was “cut up” and left “on the floor in pieces”.
He added: “I asked [Alonso] what happened when they were putting him in the squad car.
“He said he was trying to defend himself. He said he was in the bed sleeping — and when he woke up, there was someone was on top of him trying to rape him… he was out of it.”
Gonzalez added: “He was a good guy. I always talked to him. He always was calm. He didn’t look like the type of guy who would do something like that.”
Lesbian, gay and bisexual people are significantly more likely to get migraines than straight people, and scientists believe the stress of bigotry could be one reason why.
A survey of 10,000 Americans aged 31-42 by San Francisco’s University of California found that almost a third of LGB people experienced migraines, a figure 58 per cent higher than in heterosexual participants.
And although the researchers were unable to pinpoint the exact reason behind the painful and disabling headaches, we can only assume that the constant strain of dealing with cis straight nonsense is a contributing factor.
“There might be a higher rate of migraines in LGB people because of discrimination, stigma or prejudice, which may lead to stress and trigger a migraine,” the study’s lead author Dr Jason Nagata told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“Physicians should be aware that migraines are quite common in LGB individuals and assess for migraine symptoms.”
Migraines can be accompanied by sensitivity to light and sound as well as blurred vision, nausea and vomiting. The throbbing headaches are the most common reason for emergency room visits in the US, and while there are many different triggers, the cause is still unclear.
The study found that the increased risk of migraines was seen even in those who identified as “mostly heterosexual but with some same-sex attractions”.
It’s possible that the prevalence in the queer population is connected to the rise in hate crimes, which have reached the highest levels in a decade in the US. LGBT+ people are among the most frequently targeted groups, alongside Jews and Black people.
Dr Nagata also considered that another reason LGB people may be more likely to get migraines could be the barriers of receiving healthcare.
Other studies have shown that women are much more likely to experience migraines than men, and up to 85 per cent of American migraine sufferers are female.
Migraines also appear to be more common among Black Americans and Americans with lower socioeconomic status, according to the National Headache Foundation.
A Republican has urged other conservatives to back Amy Coney Barrett as the new Supreme Court justice so that LGBT+ rights “will no longer see the light of day”.
Brian Brown, head of the anti-gay National Organisation for Marriage, told his followers that it is “absolutely imperative” that Barrett be appointed to the Supreme Court in an email.×
Brown, who once compared himself to Jesus and has fought to reverse progress on LGBT+ rights, told followers that they must launch an “unprecedented effort to ensure that this justice confirmed without delay”.
“I’m asking you to make a sacrificial financial gift to [National Organisation for Marriage] right now so that we can immediately deploy a comprehensive pressure campaign aimed at holding Republican Senate votes to confirm president Trump’s pick to the Supreme Court,” Brown wrote, according to an email published by JMG.
“This is a moment that could pay decades of dividends for all the issues we care about,” he added.ADVERTISING
“We’ve never had a bigger opportunity to advance our cause. Will you be with us at this historic moment?”
Republican Brian Brown wants Amy Coney Barrett appointed to the Supreme Court so they can roll back LGBT+ rights.
Brown went on to claim that the left “has gone absolutely berserk” since Trump announced the staunchly anti-LGBT+ Roman Catholic as his nominee to the Supreme Court, following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“This is the Supreme Court nomination that could finally bring us a reversal of Roe v Wade and usher in a pro-life majority on the court,” he added.
“It could pave the way for the restoration of marriage to our laws and scrapping the illegitimate, anti-constitutional imposition of same-sex ‘marriage’ on the nation.
“It will mean that religious liberty will be restored to its rightful place as a foundational constitutional right, and that the fake ‘rights’ that are constantly demanded by the left – including special rules for homosexuals and the so-called transgendered – will no longer see the light of day.”
Brown said “LGBT extremists” will do “everything in their power to block” Barrett’s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice.
“It’s imperative that we be on the front lines fighting for control of the Supreme Court by demanding that Republicans support president Trump’s nominee.”
The Roman Catholic Supreme Court nominee has expressed her opposition to same-sex marriage in the past.
Trump officially announced Barrett as his nominee to the Supreme Court on Saturday (26 September).https://lockerdome.com/lad/13296932562903654?pubid=ld-5883-3439&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinknews.co.uk&rid=www.pinknews.co.uk&width=572
LGBT+ organisations and advocates have expressed concern over the nomination because of Barrett’s anti-gay beliefs, as well as her membership of a religious group that declares that husbands are the leaders of their wives.
In 2015, Barrett signed a letter to the Ordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family, declaring support for “the Church’s teachings… on the meaning of human sexuality, the significance of sexual difference and the complementarity of men and women; on openness to life… and on marriage and family founded on the indissoluble commitment of a man and a woman”.
In 2017, Barrett was grilled by Democratic senators during her confirmation hearing to become a United States circuit judge on whether her staunch Catholic beliefs would affect her judgement on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion.
Senator Dianne Feinstein told Barrett: “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.”
At the time, 27 LGBT+ rights groups opposed Barrett’s confirmation in an open letter, expressing concern that “her religiously-infused moral beliefs would inform her judicial decision-making”.
