LGBTQ Nation

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Bar targeted with drive-by shooting after conservatives rage about drag & queer bingo events

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A Seattle-area pub was hit by gunfire yesterday, days before a scheduled drag queen story hour and bingo night. The Brewmaster’s Taproom in Renton, Washington, just south of Seattle, was hit a single gunshot to their front window in a drive-by shooting around noon on Wednesday. The pub’s monthly Drag Queen Storytime and Rainbow Bingo events will go on as planned on Saturday. Brewmaster’s owner Marley Rall told LGBTQ Nation she was working at home when she got a text from an employee at the coffee stand next door to the pub. “They just texted me and said, ‘Hey, I just watched […]

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Louisiana asks people to report teachers & librarians who “sexualize children” with books

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Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) has launched an online form encouraging state residents to report the “taxpayer-subsided sexualization of children” by librarians, their supervisors, teachers, school board members, and district superintendents. “Librarians and teachers are neither empowering nor liberating our children by connecting them with books that contain extremely graphic sexual content that is far from age appropriate for young audiences,” the form, entitled “Protect Minors,” reads. “If this type of taxpayer-subsided sexualization of children has impacted you or your family, tell us about it.” Landry, who recently launched a bid for governor, has a history of anti-LGBTQ+ policy positions. […]

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Justice Neil Gorsuch angrily calls anti-discrimination training a “reeducation program”

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During heated arguments at the Supreme Court yesterday in the case of 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis – about a web designer who doesn’t want to make websites for same-sex couples – Justice Neil Gorsuch appeared angry and even suggested that a Colorado baker had been forced into a “reeducation training program” after he discriminated against a gay couple. The case is about a web designer named Lori Smith, who says that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law might make her make websites for same-sex couples even though she wants to make them only for opposite-sex couples. Her complaint, which cites the Bible as well […]

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Russian libraries remove LGBTQ+ books from their shelves after Putin signs harsh anti-LGBTQ+ law

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Russian libraries are removing LGBTQ+-themed books from their shelves after the country’s President Vladimir Putin signed a law yesterday expanding the prohibition on LGBTQ+ “propaganda.” The newly signed law effectively outlaws any public expression of LGBTQ+ life in Russia by banning “any action or the spreading of any information that is considered an attempt to promote homosexuality in public, online, or in films, books or advertising,” Reuters reported. Four Moscow libraries have already taken action in the wake of the new law, according to Russian media. The libraries reportedly received a list of authors whose books they needed to make completely unavailable on shelves and online. […]

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The upcoming generation makes this lesbian teacher feel hopeful for the future of LGBTQ+ equality

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Jere Chang’s talented and gifted students in Atlanta, Georgia are growing up in a world very different from the one she grew up in. When she was a student during the 1980s, she and her queer peers largely stayed closeted, trying to fit in to avoid being bullied or outed. There wasn’t much LGBTQ+ representation in the media. Instead, she constantly heard about how people like her were “abominations” who “live in sin.” She worried that her own family might disown her if she ever came out, and she never imagined she’d be able to live authentically as a lesbian. […]

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Anti-LGBTQ org launches alert system to protest drag shows

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Texas Family Project — an anti-LGBTQ organization that wants to stop “the Left” from “indoctrinating kids,” “confusing children about changing their gender,” and “undermining parents’ ability to protect their children’s innocence” — has launched Defend Our Kids Texas, a website where people can report live drag queen performances. “Our mission is to expose attacks on our children’s innocence by uncovering and highlighting the left’s public displays of sexual degeneracy,” the website reads. The site’s lead face is Sara Gonzalez, a host for the conservative broadcast Blaze TV. Gonzales has called drag performers “pedophiles,” directed her social media followers to shut down drag performances […]

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Taliban publicly whips Afghan men accused of gay sex amid Sharia crackdown on LGBTQ life

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Islamic extremist Taliban officials in Afghanistan publicly whipped 12 people in a public soccer stadium, including individuals accused of gay sex. The whipping occurred as thousands watched in the eastern Logar province, BBC reported. The punished individuals were allegedly guilty of “moral crimes” including adultery, robbery, and gay sex, a Taliban official told the publication. Each person received between 21 and 39 lashes; 39 is the maximum number that Taliban authorities reportedly inflict upon convicts. Some of the individuals were jailed afterward. The incident was similar to a public flogging of 19 people that took place in the northern Afghan province of […]

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M&S hits back at new attack on gender neutral changing rooms

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Marks & Spencer has defended yet another attempt by ‘gender critical’ activists to troll the store’s gender-neutral changing rooms. The British retailer – which sells food, clothes and home goods – informed customers on social media in August they are welcome to use any changing room in stores as they are inclusive of all genders. This has, however, been company policy for several years. The move, predictably, outraged people online who claim to be concerned about women’s safety and used the move to share anti-trans rhetoric about changing rooms.  A group calling itself “Women’s Rights Network” posted about the trans-inclusive […]

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‘It’s easier to die than live in Russia’: Queer artist flees Putin’s LGBTQ+ ‘propaganda’ crackdown

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After Russia voted to extend its LGBTQ+ propaganda law to adults, artist and activist Yulia Tsvetkova has been forced to flee. Tsvetkova was acquitted of distributing pornography and so-called LGBTQ+ “propaganda” by the Komsomolsk-on-Amur court in July, in a rare win for the queer community in Russia. Tsvetkova was arrested and charged with distributing pornography in 2019 after she posted drawings of vaginas on social media in a bid to combat societal body norms. She was also charged over the same drawings in 2020 after Russian officials claimed she violated the country’s LGBTQ+ “propaganda” law. After the acquittal, prosecutors attempted to relaunch proceedings against Tsvetkova, but on […]

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Brittney Griner faces violence, bigotry and threat of torture in Russian penal colony, experts say

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The 32-year-old was sentenced in August to nine years in a Russian penal colony after pleading guilty to drug charges. She was reportedly found at an airport with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil.  At her sentencing, Griner told the court she had made “an honest mistake” and she “never meant to break any laws”.  In early November, Griner was moved from a detention centre to the IK-2 penal colony in Yavas, Mordovia – some 480 kilometres southeast of Moscow.  University of Helsinki sociologist Olga Zeveleva told The Guardian prisons in the area “are notoriously terrible, even by Russian standards”.  “It is a place any […]

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