Daniel Villarreal

Right-wingers like Alex Jones and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have long accused LGBTQ+ people and allies of being “groomers” and pedophiles. But they’re making excuses now that former President Donald Trump may soon be unveiled as one of 200 people connected to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.  A judge has recently unsealed and uncensored previously redacted court documents that name up to 200 associates of Epstein. The documents were unsealed in a lawsuit brought by Epstein victim Virginia Guiffre. Guiffre accused Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell of forcing her to have sex with Epstein’s powerful and wealthy friends, including Britain’s […]

Flames shot through the crowded Up Stairs Lounge as bartender Buddy Rasmussen opened the front door to see who had been ringing the downstairs buzzer. Someone had lit the popular bar’s stairwell carpet on fire, and it burned its way up the wooden stairs into the bar, quickly igniting the lounge’s red wallpaper, curtains, and posters of Burt Reynolds naked on a bearskin rug and Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz wearing his seven gold medals, a star-spangled Speedo, and a smile. Some patrons saw the blaze and ran for the nearest exits or down the stairwell, emerging with their clothes on […]

The Christian anti-LGBTQ+ legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — defined as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — is hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn state bans on so-called conversion therapy for minors. Though the court hasn’t agreed to take on the case just yet, it provide insight into how ADF plans on challenging more conversion therapy bans in the future. The ADF is providing legal counsel to licensed marriage and family counselor Brian Tingley in Tingley v. Ferguson, a legal challenge to Washington state’s ban. Tingley says the ban violates his rights to free […]

Five anti-LGBTQ+ House Republicans have announced their intentions to retire. While some of them blamed their GOP colleagues’ antics for their early departures, their announcements have coincided with recent Republican losses in an off-year election and the rise of former President Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary. The representatives — Reps. Ken Buck (R-CO), Kay Granger (R-TX), Michael Burgess (R-TX), Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), and Victoria Spartz (R-IN) — all voted against the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, a law that requires the federal government to recognize legal same-sex marriages. “The Republican House is failing the American people again,” Spartz said. “[The House is] like […]

While numerous studies have shown the challenges facing LGBTQ+ Americans and the support they receive from allies and the community, several recent studies illustrate just how different life looks for queer Hispanic and Latinx Americans in particular. It turns out that nearly 20% of young adult Hispanics identify as LGBTQ+, that a majority of Christian Hispanics support LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination laws, and that over two-thirds of LGBTQ+ Hispanics feel supported by their social circles. As such, these stats provide stunning insights and hope for even greater acceptance of LGBTQ+ Hispanics, both in their own communities and in society at large. Nearly […]

The United States has scored a middling “C-level” rating in lesbian, gay, and bisexual human rights in a study of queer rights across the globe from 2011 to 2020. The 2020 “C” score for the U.S. represents a decline from its higher “B” score in 2016, ranking the U.S. 31 out of 204 world countries overall. The U.S. has also scored a consistent “F” on trans rights throughout the study’s span. These scores come from the Franklin & Marshall Global Barometers Report, an annual study that measures LGBTQ+ rights in 204 world territories and countries on five different dimensions: anti-LGBTQ+ laws, […]

Approximately 86% of all book bans across the nation have occurred in school districts with a local chapter of one of three anti-LGBTQ+ groups: Moms for Liberty, Citizens Defending Freedom (CDF), and Parents’ Rights in Education, according to a new report from the free speech organization PEN America.  According to their report, the groups have used a variety of tactics, including the promotion of state laws and rhetoric against so-called “sexually explicit,” “harmful,” and “age-inappropriate” “porn in schools”; the taking over school boards; the enlisting of parents to threaten public pressure or civic penalties against school boards, educators, and librarians; and […]

During a Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about book bans, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) read sexually explicit passages from two LGBTQ+ memoirs in order to justify censorship as a necessary way to protect children from pornography and sexual grooming. However, other experts during the hearing pointed out book bans are also being used to ban non-sexual LGBTQ+ children’s books and other books about the anti-Semitic Nazi Holocaust, Native American genocide, and Black and Latino civil rights experiences. The hearing, entitled “Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature,”featured testimony from five witnesses: two who claimed that the upset around book […]