LGBTQ Nation

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Trailblazing transgender psychiatrist Jeanne Hoff has died

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Jeanne Hoff, a trailblazing transgender psychiatrist, died at her home in San Francisco at the age of 85 this past October. Born to a working-class St. Louis family in 1938, Hoff received a master’s in science from Yale and a medical degree from Columbia University, the Advocatenotes. A doctorate in solid state chemistry at University College in London and training and residency as a psychiatrist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis followed, according to Gay City News. Hoff had already begun her own transition in 1976 when she took over the New York practice of Dr. Harry Benjamin, […]

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LGBTQ+ groups band together to challenge school district over Don’t Say Gay policies

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Three LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in western North Carolina have fired an opening salvo in their effort to overturn the state’s discriminatory Don’t Say Gay law. The Campaign for Southern Equality, Youth OUTright WNC, and PFLAG Asheville have joined forces to challenge the Buncombe County School District (near Asheville) over SB49, enacted in August after North Carolina Republicans overrode a veto by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper. The Don’t Say Gay legislation, also known as the Parent’s Bill of Rights, bans instruction on “gender identity, sexual activity, or sexuality” in kindergarten through fourth grade and requires parents to be notified “prior to any changes in the […]

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This gay commissioner has inspired cities across the nation to protect trans folks

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Kansas City, Missouri – the home of bebop jazz and the self-proclaimed “Barbecue Capital of the World” – also has some of the most LGBTQ+-friendly laws in the country, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). For the third consecutive year, HRC gave Kansas City a perfect 100 on its Municipal Equality Index, which measures LGBTQ+ equality in municipal laws, policies, and services. Residents have been working for LGBTQ+ equality for years and made major progress after the city’s LGBTQ Commission was created in 2020.  The commission’s current chair, a queer Black man named Justice Horn, was deeply involved in the fight to […]

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DC Comics supercharges its LGBTQ+ storytelling in a world where conservatives are banning books

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“I can feel it around me. Energy. So many different types of energy,” DC Comics’ Jules Jourdain notices as yellow, orange, and pink vibrations envelop him on a street corner, only visible thanks to their special powers. “I still look the same on the outside,” Jules considers. Even though he’s gaining a reputation as the new superhero Circuit Breaker, the trans and nonbinary character (he/they) doesn’t yet know how to control the overwhelming power coursing through his body — it mostly just makes him feel isolated, scared, and dangerous. Luckily, another well-known DC Comics superhero, The Flash, arrives and helps […]

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Lesbians make more money than straight women & it’s likely because men aren’t holding them back

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Experts have long explored what has come to be known as the “lesbian wage premium” – the fact that on average, lesbians around the world earn about 9% more than heterosexual women. The number is even higher in the United States, with lesbians earning about 20% more than straight women.  In a recent video, TikToker Aria Velz analyzed several studies to explain why this might be. “We can start at the obvious,” she said, “lesbians tend to be more educated than straight women, are less likely to have children, live more predominantly in cities, and have more professional jobs.”  Related: But she […]

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‘Bury them in fruit jars.’ A gay mass murder and the cover-up that followed

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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 […]

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Hospital forces trans teens to de-transition after caving to right-wing political pressure

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At the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), a noxious combination of political ambition, billionaire privilege, and bureaucratic cowardice led the academic hospital to cut off gender-affirming care to minor patients, including patients younger than what the institution’s right-wing detractors had demanded. In September 2022, opponents of gender-affirming care in South Carolina latched onto a parenthetical included in a medical student’s graduate research at MUSC. The parenthetical comment described the youngest transgender patient to visit the hospital’s pediatric endocrinology clinic, just 4 years old, according to a report from ProPublica. Related: That fact morphed into fiction as far-right critics inaccurately claimed […]

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Gay man murdered & mutilated in vile hate crime. Then the killers sent photos to his family.

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Police have identified three suspects in the brutal murder of a 30-year-old gay man, whose body was found in a park in Phoenix, Arizona on November 26. The alleged killers – all of whom have confessed to being involved in the murder – shot Bernardo Pantaleon multiple times before mutilating his body with a knife. According to Arizona’s Family, his body was in such bad condition that police told his family they should not see him.  Related: Court documents reveal that the crime was likely motivated by anti-gay hate. The documents stated that 21-year-old Leonardo Santiago told police he killed the victim because […]

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Jordan cracks down on LGBTQ+ activists with kidnappings, forced outings & online threats

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In Jordan, one of the few countries in the Middle East where same-sex relations do not incur a criminal penalty, the government has initiated a crackdown on LGBTQ+ activists in a coordinated campaign of intimidation. According to a report released by Human Rights Watch on Tuesday, interviews with 13 prominent LGBTQ+ activists in the country reveal tactics of intimidation and abuse forcing activists to cease their advocacy work or flee the country altogether. Russia’s Supreme Court declared all LGBTQ+ supporters as “extremists.” Now a Russian company is tracking queer-friendly businesses. In the past, Jordan has promoted itself as a modernizing influence among […]

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Gender refugees overwhelm sanctuary states & face long waitlists for gender-affirming care

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As Republican-led legislatures have limited or banned access to gender-affirming care for trans people across the country, states like New Mexico are witnessing a large influx of “gender refugees” seeking healthcare. Over the past two-plus years, nearly two dozen states have instituted limits or bans on gender-affirming health care for trans youth and adults. While trans people in red states seek out alternative sources of care and places to live, larger states and metropolitan areas like San Francisco and New York can prove prohibitively expensive. So smaller states like New Mexico, Minnesota, Colorado, Vermont, and Washington, with prohibitions on restricting gender-affirming health care and a lower […]

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