Trudy Ring

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Black Gay Candidates Make History With Primary Wins in Texas

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Thanks to victories in primary runoffs Tuesday, Texas is poised to have its first Black gay male state legislators — and one Black lesbian, who won a special election just weeks ago to fill a vacancy, is likely to be elected to a full term. Before Jolanda Jones’s victory in the special election, Texas had never had a Black member of the LGBTQ+ community in the state legislature. She won the special election May 7 in the Houston-area Texas House District 147 to succeed Rep. Garnet Coleman, who retired in February; that gave her the seat through December. In the Democratic primary […]

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Kristin Crowley Is Los Angeles’s First Out, First Woman Fire Chief

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The Los Angeles City Council Tuesday unanimously confirmed Kristin Crowley as fire chief, making her the first woman and first out LGBTQ+ person to hold that post. Mayor Eric Garcetti had nominated Crowley in January. As chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, she will oversee 3,246 uniformed personnel and 353 professional support workers, the Los Angeles Blade reports. She will begin her duties as chief March 26, when predecessor Ralph Terrazas retires. Before the vote, Crowley told the council she was “truly honored” as well as “humbled and proud” to be appointed fire chief, according to L.A. TV station KABC. Her confirmation came […]

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Two Additional Trans Americans Determined to have Been Killed in 2021

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Two more violent deaths of transgender Americans have just been reported, both from December, bringing 2021’s total to 53. It was already by far the nation’s deadliest year on record for trans people. Za’niyah Williams, a 21-year-old Black trans woman, died after a hit-and-run car crash in Houston December 20, TransGriot reports. She remained unidentified for some time and was misgendered by police and media outlets. But her loved ones have come forward to identify her. “You were loved and will always be a part of me!” a cousin wrote on social media. “Fly high you beautiful butterfly.” A friend posted that Williams was “a […]

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Arnie Kantrowitz, Pioneering Activist and GLAAD Cofounder, Dead at 81

Arnie Kantrowitz, a pioneering activist for LGBTQ+ rights and founding member of GLAAD, has died at age 81. Kantrowitz died January 21 at a Manhattan rehabilitation center, his life partner, Dr. Lawrence D. Mass, told The New York Times. The cause of death was complications of COVID-19. Kantrowitz was “an early champion of gay rights and an indefatigable campaigner for fairer treatment of gay people by the media,” the Times notes. Mass, a founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, called Kantrowitz “a true sage and champion.” He became vice president of the Gay Activists Alliance, one of the first groups founded in the wake […]

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Queer Black Feminist Writer bell hooks Dies at 69

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Esteemed queer Black feminist author bell hooks has died at age 69. She died Wednesday at her home in Berea, Ky., the Lexington Herald Leader reports. She had been ill, and friends and family were with her. Her dozens of books included essays, poetry, and works for children, and she dealt with issues of intersectionality long before many others. These issues were at the core of her 1981 book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which examined the impact of sexism on Black women throughout history as well as racism within the feminist movement. All About Love: New Visions, first published in 2000, […]

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Gay Man Expected to Break Ground and Become Maine’s House Speaker

Gay Rep. Ryan Fecteau is set to become speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. Democrats nominated Fecteau as speaker Thursday, and because they hold a majority in the House, he is “all but assured” of election to the position when the House votes in December, the Portland Press Herald reports. He will be the first out member of the LGBTQ+ community to be Maine speaker and one of about two dozen to have held such leadership positions nationwide. Also, at age 28, he will be the youngest speaker of the House in Maine history. “The speaker controls the flow of action […]

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Roy Cohn and Donald Trump: Mentor and Protégé

In this election cycle, as many wonder how Donald Trump came to be Donald Trump, at least part of the answer lies in one of his early mentors and close confidantes: the widely reviled, closeted gay hatchet man of the right wing, Roy Cohn. Cohn has been dead since 1986, but the disgraced McCarthyist lawyer — immortalized in Tony Kushner’s acclaimed Angels in America, the musical and miniseries — lives on in the Republican presidential nominee in both style and substance, according to those who’ve studied the two men and their relationship. “You can see parallels with Trump,” Andy Humm, a veteran […]

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Trans Woman Alleges Harassment, Unjust Firing by Walmart

  A transgender woman in New Jersey has filed suit accusing a Walmart store and one of its managers of firing her due to anti-trans bias, after instances of harassment that saw her called “he/she” and “that fucking tranny.” The woman, Samantha Azzarano, began working at a Walmart in Deptford, N.J., in September 2012, ThinkProgress reports. The following January, she told a manager that she is transgender, and later that year she began presenting in her female identity at work, and had the name on her ID badge changed to Samantha, replacing her birth name. According to her suit, filed […]

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