Hope Pisoni

/ /

Campus Conservatives See Resurgence in the Aftermath of Charlie Kirk

,

It was a quiet Thursday ahead of Thanksgiving break at the University at Buffalo (UB) when Maria B. Quagliana received an email from the school that said campus police had confiscated several firearms from a student in response to reports of a “concerning conversation.” That student was Jacob Cassidy, the president of UB’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), a right-wing student group. Cassidy had been overheard threatening to shoot up the school, allegedly telling his friend that he had “a foldable AR in [his] bag,” adding: “I’ll shoot them in the foot and knee so they can’t get away.” Quagliana, […]

/ /

6 LGBTQ Minnesotans Speak Out Amid ICE Crackdowns

, , , ,

Since the start of December, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, have been under the thumb of an extremely heavy presence of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). During the crackdown, which the agency refers to as “Operation Metro Surge,” at least 3,000 people—mostly undocumented immigrants—have been arrested so far. Tensions came to a boil in January when federal immigration enforcement agents shot and killed poet Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti on separate occasions. In response, Minneapolis-area residents have started to push back: On Jan. 23, Minnesotans organized the first citywide general strike in the U.S. in nearly 80 years, with tens of thousands protesting and over 700 […]

/ /

Liberty Counsel’s Deep Network of Far Right Faith and Influence

,

Liberty Counsel, the legal group representing Kim Davis’ latest push for the Supreme Court to overturn gay marriage, wants to reshape American society in a far-right Christian image—one in which LGBTQ people are excluded. They’ve been fighting LGBTQ rights for years, from Lawrence v. Texas to Proposition 8 to Obergefell. Along the way, they’ve claimed that gay people “know intuitively that what they are doing is immoral, unnatural, and self-destructive” and that they are “not controlled by reason,” but rather by “lust.” While the brunt of their work focuses on right-wing litigation, their efforts don’t stop there.  An Uncloseted Media investigation has uncovered that Liberty Counsel operates […]

/ /

Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA’s Complete Track Record on LGBTQ Issues: What You Need to Know

, , ,

Following the assassination of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) co-founder Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, there’s been significant posthumous discussion about who he was and what he left behind. President Trump and the Republican Party have described him as a martyr, making his funeral into a 200,000-person event comparable to those of deceased presidents, while calling for retribution against the “radical left” and trans people, despite the fact that the man who killed him is cisgender and his political affiliation is unclear. Some liberals have mourned Kirk, casting him as a champion of civil dialogue. Meanwhile, critics of his often hateful beliefs have faced repercussions, with retaliatory firings of educators, writers and reporters. In the midst […]

/ /

More Than HIV: Trump’s Cuts Shatter Kenya’s Health Care System

,

After two years of living with tuberculosis (TB), 38-year-old Selina Kimuto’s condition is worse than ever. A single mother living in Kibera—Nairobi’s biggest slum—Kimuto had been receiving medication to treat her infection. But in June, her hospital told her that they wouldn’t be able to give her any more until October, due to severe shortages caused by the sudden pull-out of U.S. foreign aid. Since then, Kimuto’s condition has rapidly deteriorated. “I’ve really tried, but I can’t do it alone, to wash even my own clothes by myself,” Kimuto told Uncloseted Media. “Even the housework, I’m not doing it by […]

/ /

Why Anti-Trans Hate Makes a Toxic Environment for Women Athletes

,

Earlier this year, 16-year-old AB Hernandez became the target of nationwide hate and harassment when the president of a local school board publicly doxxed the track and field athlete and outed her as transgender. Right-wing activists misgendered her and called her mom “evil;” swarms of adults showed up to heckle her at games; Charlie Kirk pushed state governor Gavin Newsom to condemn her; and President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California over her participation. While transgender athletes are very rare, this type of harassment towards them is playing out across the country and internationally. A trans girl was harassedat a soccer game in Bow, New Hampshire, by […]

/ /

A Philosophy Professor Is the Only Known Author of Trump’s Big Trans Health Care Report. Why?

,

In a family friend’s front yard at around 11 years old, Elle Setiya remembers listening in on her dad’s conversation with Alex Byrne, a philosophy professor at MIT. She recalls Byrne airing his grievances to her dad—who heads up the philosophy department—about the growing trans rights movement. “Can someone really just say they’re a woman and that’s it? Whatever happened to biological sex?” she remembers Byrne saying. “I felt it personally in a way that I wasn’t expecting to, because it brought up the feelings of discomfort around my presentation,” Setiya, now 18, told Uncloseted Media. “It did make [transitioning] […]

/ /

The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s War on HIV funding

,

Since 1989, the LGBT Life Center in Norfolk, Virginia, has built up what CEO Stacie Walls calls a “test and treat” model. For every patient that walked through the doors of their HIV clinic after working up the courage to get tested, there had been the promise that, if they tested positive, all they’d need to do to get treatment was walk down the hallway. But since the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to HIV funding took place earlier this year, that’s no longer the case. “The grant money that pays for people who are uninsured is the grant money that […]

/ /

The Staggering Scale of Trump’s ‘War on HIV’

,

Since 1989, the LGBT Life Center in Norfolk, VA has built up what CEO Stacie Walls calls a “test and treat” model. For every patient that walked through the doors of their HIV clinic after working up the courage to get tested, there had been the promise that, if they tested positive, all they’d need to do to get treatment is walk down the hallway. But since the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to HIV funding took place earlier this year, that’s no longer the case. “The grant money that pays for people who are uninsured is the grant money that […]

1 2