LGBTQ Nation

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Sen. Kim Jackson gets real on anti-trans legislation: “It is killing kids”

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State Senator Kim Jackson of Georgia was sworn into office in January 2021, becoming the state’s first openly LGBTQ+ senator. She’s running for a second term this year. Jackson, 39, also serves as Vicar at the Episcopal Church of the Common Ground, where she “co-creates Church” with people who are unhoused in downtown Atlanta. Her wife is an imam at her local mosque. The couple lives on a small farm on the outskirts of Atlanta with their three-year-old son, whose current obsession is trucks. “The boy could say excavator before he could say, like, ‘Hello, my name is Rhys,’” Jackson […]

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This smalltown LGBTQ+ group was building goodwill, until unhinged conservatives copied their act

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A group called Love Lives in Seekonk (LLIS) sought to educate their small Massachusetts town about LGBTQ+ issues while building support for queer youth in schools. But soon after the group formed, another resident established a similarly named group to mock them. That resident has since accused LLIS and its supporters of being pedophiles and suggested that violence awaits them if they continue their advocacy. Some residents of Seekonk, Massachusetts (population 15,700), were angered in late March 2023 when Mildred H. Aitken Elementary School advertised its annual Boy’s Choice mother-son dance with an ad welcoming all boys, students who identify […]

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Conservatives say boycott over trans-inclusive policies cost Planet Fitness millions. It’s a lie.

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Chaya Raichik, who goes by Libs of TikTok online, believes Planet Fitness is currently facing the “most successful boycott since Bud Light” because the gym chain allows trans women to use women’s locker rooms.  But while Raichik and right-wing media outlets have claimed that the boycott caused the gym to lose “$400 million in value” — something Raichik called “a bloodbath” — there’s no proof, either of the boycott or its alleged financial harm to the gym. In fact, Planet Fitness has stood by its trans-inclusive policies and LGBTQ+ support for years despite right-wing backlash. Raichik alleges that the boycott started […]

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Trans darts star faces “insane” backlash after winning titles against both men & women in same week

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Dutch darts sensation Noa-Lyn van Leuven is facing backlash after historic back-to-back victories against both men and women in the same week. Last week, the 27-year-old won the mixed PDC Challenge Tour in Germany, defeating several past male winners. She’s the first woman to win an event in the series, one level below the sport’s top tier. Van Leuven then played a women’s event in the UK on Saturday, defeating two highly placed veteran players, including the current No. 1 woman, Beau Greaves. After that quarter-final victory, van Leuven went on to dispatch Ireland’s Katie Sheldon in the final. Controversy […]

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Meet the 12 out gay players in Major League and minor league baseball history

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Pro baseball, including Major League Baseball, has been played for about 175 years in the U.S. and during that time there have been only three gay or bi players in MLB who have come out, and nine in the minor leagues, including one woman. It’s a weak legacy for a sport that did not accept Black players until 1947 and has always had a more conservative bent institutionally, so no one should have expected the sport to be welcoming to openly gay players. In contrast, the NFL has had 16 players who came out, including one who did so while active. Yet […]

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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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Antiquated HIV laws excessively target Black men for actions that don’t even transmit the virus

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Ohio activists are arming themselves with new data in the battle to repeal antiquated laws across the country that criminalize people with HIV. Two reports, one released by Equality Ohio with the Ohio Health Modernization Movement, and another from The Williams Institute at UCLA, look at the criminalization of HIV in the Buckeye State. They discovered that over half of prosecutions for so-called “HIV crimes” were for acts statistically unlikely to transmit HIV.   Ohio has six laws on the books that either criminalize certain acts by people living with HIV or substantially increase sentences for them compared to other people in the criminal […]

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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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Haters attacked an inclusive public library. So its director made the whole city a book sanctuary.

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Last June, the Hoboken Public Library in New Jersey hosted a Banned Books Read-A-Thon event in honor of Pride Month. Library director Jennie Pu described the event as “very simple” and “almost boring,” where participants merely read excerpts from books out loud.  But that didn’t stop the right-wing outrage machine from stirring up trouble. It started when Internet troll Chaya Raichik disparaged the event on her Libs of TikTok social media account, which has been known to inspire threats of violence against the facilities it targets. Raichik claimed the Read-A-Thon books “promote[d] kink and sex apps” and her followers proceeded to flood the library […]

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