Sydney Bauer

A new initiative backed by a coalition of right-wing organizations is courting lawmakers and parents in an effort to stop the passage of the Equality Act — a federal LGBTQ rights bill — and promote policies targeting transgender Americans at the federal and state levels. Backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Policy Alliance, Heritage Foundation and other national and local groups, the Promise to America’s Children coalition says it is fighting “a culture – and sadly, a government – around us seek to sexualize our children for the sake of a political agenda.” “It’s no surprise that the ugly […]

When news organizations projected that Democrat Raphael Warnock had won one of Georgia’s two critical Senate runoffs on Tuesday, Ian Webb sat in his Atlanta apartment and cried. “I’ve grown up believing that Georgia is a red state, and that I was a blue dot,” Webb, 24, told NBC News. “Since I turned 18, I’ve been volunteering on Democratic campaigns at every level of government, and to be quite frank, I became accustomed to losing and essentially being told that as a queer individual, I don’t deserve the same rights as my straight brothers and sisters.” Warnock and fellow Democrat […]

Photographers around the world now have access to new guidelines aimed at helping them more accurately capture transgender subjects in their stock and commercial imagery. The guidelines were released Wednesday by Getty Images, one of the world’s largest stock photo agencies, and GLAAD, a national LGBTQ advocacy organization. Stock images are photos that are licensed for use in a variety of places — from corporate websites to advertising campaigns and even on news sites. Examples could range from an image of child models playing with a toy for a retail company’s catalog to a photo of Hong Kong’s skyline for a news article about […]

Kimberly Jackson, an Episcopal church leader in Atlanta, made history last week when she was the first Black lesbian elected to Georgia’s state Senate. She was excited about winning — and doing so with 80 percent of the vote — as well as making history. Then her election win got even sweeter. Shortly after Election Day, a constituent approached Jackson at the gym and informed her that part of her district intersects with one represented by Karla Drenner, Georgia’s first openly gay state representative, who has been in the state House of Representatives for nearly 20 years. “People are excited […]

Anthropologist Mary Gray, who said her research focusing on queer and other underrepresented communities often was seen as a “marginal topic” in some academic circles, never thought she would have access to a grant that would give her over half a million dollars with no strings attached. All that changed when Gray was chosen as one of this year’s MacArthur Fellows, which will provide her with a $625,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation that she can use in any way she chooses. The fellowship, commonly referred to as the MacArthur “genius grant,” counts essayist Susan Sontag, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, filmmaker Errol […]