Greg Owen

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These queer seniors organized for visibility & connection

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or Chicagoan David Zak, a longtime LGBTQ+ activist and veteran of community and arts programming in the Windy City, “visibility itself can be a form of activism, especially when it gives voice to people or experiences that haven’t always been represented.” Take, for instance, the trolley ride that his social club, Chicago PrimeTimers, takes every year in the city’s Pride Parade. “I think there’s something especially moving for people about seeing older LGBTQ+ adults proudly participating in Pride,” Zak tells LGBTQ Nation of the annual ride. “Sometimes, younger people along the route will stop cheering and suddenly become emotional when they realize […]

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63 years ago, the Quakers stood up for gay dignity & they’re still fighting for our LGBTQ+ rights

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Quakers, like most Protestant denominations, hold differing views of homosexuality within their ranks. But no other mainstream Protestant religion has embraced LGBTQ+ identity like the Quakers, known officially as the Religious Society of Friends. The clearest example is a text promulgated over seven years in meetings by a group of Quaker writers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and teachers, assembled to consider issues surrounding homosexuality. Published in 1963, “Towards a Quaker View of Sex” asserted, “An act which expresses true affection between two individuals and gives pleasure to them both, does not seem to us to be sinful by reason alone of the fact that […]

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13-year-old Russian kid prosecuted for “LGBT propaganda” after he shared a video he found online

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Police in Russia charged a 13-year-old schoolboy for “LGBT propaganda” and displaying “extremist” symbols in May, after he shared an unidentified video with his classmates, and their parents complained, Mediazona reports. His identity was withheld to protect his privacy. Any number of symbols associated with LGBTQ+ identity are now classified as “extremist” in Russia, including rainbows. The designation came into effect with the Russian Supreme Court’s determination in 2023 that the so-called “international LGBT movement” is an “extremist” organization and now banned in the country. “He wasn’t trying to spread propaganda. He doesn’t even know what that is,” a lawyer representing the schoolboy told Mediazona. […]

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Whistleblower reveals how gay Trump appointee turned Kennedy Center into corrupt “playground”

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An ex-staffer at the Kennedy Center who refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement after he was fired in March is now adding his insider knowledge of the corruption of the renowned arts center to an investigation by U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Josef Palermo, hired by ousted Kennedy Center President Ric Grenell in April as curator of visual arts and special programming for the arts center, says he saw “cronyism, incompetence, and a series of bizarre moves that would lead to the Kennedy Center going dark.”   Amid “cancellations, shrinking audiences, firings of old staffers and influxes of new ones,” there was […]

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New report shows affirming adults are critical to the success of LGBTQ+ students

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Glisten, the LGBTQ+ education advocacy group, has a new report out detailing what it’s like to be an LGBTQ+ student today, “at a time when their identities are being weaponized against them.” Those identities “are being debated and restricted,” said the group’s CEO, Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, and “this study speaks truth to a menacing power.” Speaking the truth in this year’s report were the students themselves; for the first time, Glisten conducted focus groups to hear the kids describe their answers in their own words. Key findings paint a layered portrait of LGBTQ+ youth who “are whole people with complex lives that defy the […]

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Trump adds anti-trans provisions to voter ID bill that could disenfranchise millions of Americans

For months now, President Trump has been pushing legislation that would federally mandate voter ID nationwide, baselessly claiming elections are rife with fraud, non-citizens are voting in extraordinary numbers, and Democrats “want to cheat,” as he put it at a news conference from his Doral golf resort in Florida on Tuesday. House Republicans passed the bill in February, and it’s now in the Senate, where it faces long odds overcoming a 60-vote threshold in the face of united Democratic opposition. Over the last week, however — at the same time he’s taken America into war with Iran — Trump has added demands […]

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Qatar’s only out gay citizen says seeking asylum in the US is a “rough” & “intrusive” process

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Dr. Nasser Mohamed is the first person from Qatar to publicly come out as gay, after being granted asylum in the U.S. based on the likely prospect he’d be persecuted for his sexual orientation at home. He’s currently a physician in San Francisco serving a primarily LGBTQ+ clientele. Mohamed, 38, went public in 2022 at the start of the World Cup in Qatar, to highlight LGBTQ+ rights abuses in the wealthy Gulf State. Many of those have been documented by the Alwan Foundation, an advocacy group founded by Mohamed to collect evidence-based data that “accurately reflects the circumstances and living […]

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2 celebrities among 12 people arrested in anti-gay sweep in Senegal

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Two of Senegal’s highest-profile celebrities were among 12 people rounded up and charged with committing “unnatural,” or homosexual, acts, among other crimes, police in the capital of Dakar announced Sunday. Pape Cheikh Diallo, a widely admired TV and radio presenter, and Djiby Dramé, a popular musician, were two of the men charged in the case linked to an individual who has admitted to knowingly spreading HIV, according to The New York Times. An HIV-positive individual “confessed to knowingly infecting about ten people he had contacted, primarily through WhatsApp groups,” authorities said. Police didn’t elaborate on who the individual is or his […]

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Jail workers mocked a gay guard & threatened his life. Now he’s getting his payback.

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Sgt. Deon Jones, a gay, 24-year veteran officer with the Department of Corrections (DOC) in Washington, D.C. got a big payout with the district’s decision last week to award him $500,000 to resign, effectively immediately. The city admitted no fault in a lawsuit Jones brought that accused department and city officials of anti-gay discrimination. It’s the third lawsuit Jones has filed against the same parties over his long tenure with the department, and the latest to yield a settlement. He previously sued in 2006 for discrimination and harassment, with the city settling in 2011. They settled another dispute over his […]

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Wyoming sorority members who harassed a trans sister are back in court, with a Trump ally’s help

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The case of the Wyoming sorority that admitted a transgender member several years ago — which was twice dismissed — keeps on giving, now in an Ohio federal court. An aggrieved and dissident group of sisters in the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) first made headlines in 2023 when they sued the Greek organization for offering membership to a transgender student at the University of Wyoming. The vicious complaint — which a judge later said devoted about 95% of its text to simply maligning the trans student, and the rest making its dubious legal argument — was written by May Mailman, a lawyer who later went […]

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