John Russell

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Man sets two lesbian couples on fire in “abhorrent” potential hate crime

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One woman was killed and three others severely injured Monday when a man set fire to the room the four women were sharing in a Buenos Aires boarding house. While police have not yet specified a motive in the horrendous attack, the Buenos Aires Herald reports that the victims were two lesbian couples. In a statement, the Argentine LGBT Federation called the attack “potentially one of the most abhorrent hate crimes in recent years.” According to the Buenos Aires Herald, the woman who died has been identified as Pamela Cobas. The three others were taken to local hospitals. On Monday, one remained in critical […]

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Judy Shepard will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Judy Shepard, the longtime LGBTQ+ activist and mother of anti-gay hate crime victim Matthew Shepard, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Shepard will receive the award, the U.S.’s highest civilian honor, from President Joe Biden at the White House today along with 19 other recipients, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Vice President Al Gore, journalist and talk show host Phil Donahue, and Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. “These nineteen Americans built teams, coalitions, movements, organizations, and businesses that shaped America for the better. They are the pinnacle of leadership in their fields. They consistently demonstrated over their careers […]

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Arizona governor vetoes bill seeking to erase trans folks from public life

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Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed 13 Republican bills on Tuesday, including one that LGBTQ+ advocates say would have erased transgender people from legal recognition in the state. Senate Bill 1628, the so-called “Arizona Women’s Bill of Rights,” was introduced by state Sen. Sine Kerr (R) in February. Similar to laws introduced in other states like Indiana and Iowa, it would have removed the word “gender” from state law, replacing it with the word “sex,” which it defined strictly according to biology. The proposed law defined gendered terms like “boy,” “girl,” “man,” “woman,” “mother,” and “father” according to biological sex and would have banned trans people […]

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Community rallies for Minnesota’s oldest LGBTQ+ bar after devastating fire

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Minneapolis’s LGBTQ+ community has rallied to support Minnesota’s oldest gay bar after a fire forced it to close last month. On March 22, a garbage truck hit a utility pole near the beloved 19 Bar in the city’s Loring Park neighborhood, causing electrical wires to ignite the building’s gas supply, Minnesota Public Radio reported. While no one was hurt, damage from the blaze has caused the bar, which first opened in 1952, to close indefinitely. The loss, which 19 Bar’s management has vowed will only be temporary, has nonetheless hit the local LGBTQ+ community hard. “It’s just so weird not having […]

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Vatican declares surrogacy & gender-affirming care violations of human dignity

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The Vatican has issued a declaration listing “gender theory,” gender-affirming care, and even surrogacy as “violations of human dignity” alongside war, poverty, human trafficking, and other actual atrocities. On Monday, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department in charge of religious discipline for the Catholic Church, released its “Dignitas Infinita.” The 20-page document has been in the works for the past five years and was approved by Pope Francis in March, according to the Associated Press. It calls for unconditional respect for human dignity regardless of “the person’s ability to understand and act freely,” reiterating Catholic teachings opposing abortion […]

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Activists celebrate new Washington state law requiring LGBTQ+ history in schools

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A bill signed into law by Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee (D) will require schools in the state to teach LGBTQ+ history. First introduced in January, S.B. 5462 requires school districts to “[incorporate] inclusive curricula and [select] inclusive instructional materials that include the histories, contributions, and perspectives of historically marginalized and underrepresented groups.” That includes “people from various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, people with differing learning needs, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people … and people with various socioeconomic and immigration backgrounds,” according to the text of the bill. Under the new law, the Washington Office of the Superintendent of Public […]

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Christian actress spent 5 years in court defending her right to make anti-LGBTQ+ comments. She just lost.

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Actress Seyi Omooba has been ordered to pay £300,000 ($381,767) in legal costs after losing the religious discrimination case she brought against her former agents and a theater in Leicester, England after being fired from a production of The Color Purple for an anti-LGBTQ+ statement she made on social media. Omooba was cast to play the lead role of Celie in the Curve Theatre’s 2019 production of the musical based on out author Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel. As in Walker’s novel, Celie’s same-sex romance with blues singer Shug Avery is prominently featured in the musical adaptation. Their romance gradually empowers […]

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Anti-LGBTQ+ Senate candidate linked to gay profile on adult hook-up site

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Ahead of next Tuesday’s Ohio primary, a top anti-LGBTQ+ Republican Senate candidate is facing questions about a profile on an adult hook-up site linked to his email address. On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that in late 2008, a profile seeking “1-on-1” sexual encounters with “young guys” was set up on the Adult Friend Finder website using a work email belonging to Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno. The profile, listed under the username “nardo19672,” reportedly includes a caption reading, “Hi, looking for young guys to have fun with while traveling.” The username appears to reference Moreno’s full first name, Bernardo, and […]

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Seattle LGBTQ+ venues get a major victory as state review policy that led to bar raid

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The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) has paused enforcement of lewd conduct regulations following outcry over raids conducted late last month at multiple Seattle LGBTQ+ bars. The Stranger reports that the LCB sent a letter last Thursday to state officials informing them of the pause. The board also announced that it would not issue citations for any violations reported by officers during the raids and that it has paused its participation in the city’s Joint Enforcement Team (JET), the coalition of police, fire, and other departments that conducted the January raids. “Since LCB’s participation last week with the City of […]

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Transphobia hurts trans women’s health, new HIV research finds

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New research published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that social and economic marginalization, including employment and housing discrimination, increases transgender women’s risk of contracting HIV. The report, published Thursday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, analyzed data from a survey of more than 1,600 transgender women in seven U.S. cities from 2019 to 2020. The goal of the survey was to assess for the first time the factors that have led transgender women—and especially trans women of color—in the U.S. to have disproportionately high rates of HIV infection. Survey participants were also […]

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