Trudu Ring

Before the National LGBTQ Task Force, before the Human Rights Campaign, even before the Stonewall uprising, there was the Mattachine Society. The organization, formed in 1950 in Los Angeles, can’t claim to be the first gay rights group (no one used LGBTQ+ back then) — that honor goes to the short-lived, Chicago-based Society for Human Rights, founded in 1924, and an inspiration for Mattachine. But Mattachine can claim to be the first one that lasted long — into the 1970s. The founders of the Mattachine Society included labor organizer Harry Hay, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, Dale Jennings, Konrad Stevens, James Gruber, and Rudi Gernreich (the latter […]

A federal judge in Rhode Island has granted a temporary restraining order blocking conditions the Trump administration had placed on grants to organizations serving survivors of domestic and sexual violence, LGBTQ+ youth, and people experiencing homelessness. U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose issued the order Thursday in Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence v. Kennedy, which was filed just four days earlier. While the case is named for the Rhode Island group, it was brought by a nationwide coalition of organizations that serve these populations. The plaintiffs will submit a proposal for the scope of the restraining order for the court’s review, focused on the organizations […]

The LGBTQ+ Victory Institute has chosen three more 2024 inductees to its LGBTQ+ Political Hall of Fame. They are North Carolina Court of Appeals Judge John Arrowood, Virginia state Sen. Danica Roem, and Claudia López, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia. They join Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in this year’s class, as voted by the LGBTQ+ Victory Action Board of Directors. Buttigieg, who has also been mayor of South Bend, Ind., and sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, was inducted in August during the Democratic National Convention. The new honorees will be inducted December 7 during the 2024 International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C. “The 2024 nominees are not only historic firsts […]

The slate of LGBTQ+ people running for political office in the U.S. in 2024 is far more diverse than in the last presidential election year, 2020, according to a new report from the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund. The candidate pool was more diverse by gender identity, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity than in 2020, notes the organization’s “Out on the Trail” report. The proportion of candidates who are transgender, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming grew by more than seven percentage points between 2020 and 2024 — 7.9 percent to 15.2 percent. However, cisgender men still make up the majority of LGBTQ+ candidates, and cisgender men and women represent nearly 85 […]

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin will face far-right Republican Eric Hovde, a wealthy banker endorsed by Donald Trump, in the November 5 election after both won their primaries Tuesday. Baldwin, who has been a senator since 2013, was unopposed in the Democraticprimary. She served in the U.S. House from 1999 to 2013 and was a Wisconsin state legislator before that. A lesbian, she was the first member of the LGBTQ+ community to be elected to either chamber of Congress while being out from the get-go; others, such as former U.S. Reps. Barney Frank and Jim Kolbe, came out while already in office. Hovde won the […]

Roberta Kaplan, a legendary lawyer in the realm of LGBTQ+ rights and feminism, has resigned from the firm she founded “after clashing with her partners over her treatment of colleagues,” The New York Timesreports. Kaplan, who is lesbian, represented Edie Windsor in the case that brought down the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013 and more recently represented E. Jean Carroll in her successful lawsuits against Donald Trump for defamation and sexual abuse. She opened New York-based Kaplan Hecker & Fink in 2017 after 25 years with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a major corporate law firm. She once said Kaplan Hecker & Fink operated […]