Donnie McClurkin, a Grammy-winning gospel singer and pastor, sexually abused a young man over several years and wrote an apology email declaring himself a “dirty ‘old man,’” according to a new lawsuit.
Giuseppe Corletto says in the lawsuit that he was struggling to reconcile his sexuality with his faith when he sought out McClurkin in 2003. The lawsuit says Corletto, then 21, went to McClurkin’s church in Long Island, New York, after reading his autobiographical book, which described how God helped him overcome the “curse” of homosexuality.
McClurkin began to molest Corletto during “pray the gay away” spiritual sessions, the lawsuit says, and the abuse escalated over the next several years. During this period, Corletto worked as McClurkin’s assistant and regularly traveled with him, according to the lawsuit.
Corletto claims McClurkin coerced him into “further unwanted sexual acts,” from 2007 to as recently as 2015. Despite Corletto confiding in the church’s staff members about the alleged abuse, “no action was taken,” the lawsuit states.
According to Corletto, McClurkin would “coerce” him “into sexual activity” in hotel rooms, and years after Corletto resigned from the church in 2008, McClurkin allegedly tracked down his location and assaulted him twice.
Corletto “attempted to quit on multiple occasions” but was denied, according to the suit, with McClurkin allegedly “coercing him to stay” by telling Corletto “his ‘deliverance’ and ‘purpose’ were tied to” the pastor.
McClurkin has appeared here many times for his anti-LGBTQ tirades going back to 2007.
Donnie McClurkin, the supposedly “ex-gay” preacher that has been spotted having intimate dinners with “flamboyant” young men in quiet Manhattan restaurants, appeared at the Church of God In Christ’s youth conference in Memphis to babble in tongues and call gays “vampires” (among other lovely things). Take it away Rod McCullom:
In the first of three disgusting YouTube videos, McClurkin begins his rant against Tonex, the gospel star and minister who recently confirmed his long-rumored sexuality. McClurkin says Tonex is a “perversion” and must pray away the gay: “God did not call young people to such peversion. Society has failed him, his church has failed him … I would be homosexual to this day if Jesus hadn’t delivered.”
McClurkin also rails against against openly gay youth as “broken and feminine”: “I see feminine men, feminine boys, everywhere I go … No, don’t applaud ‘cuz it ain’t funny. It’s because we failed. I see them everywhere.”
In December 2009, the Black Gay Men’s Network published a full-page ad in the NYC daily newspaper Metro in reaction to attacks on the LGBTQ community by black clergy and in response to McClurkin’s hateful rantings.
Actor and rapper Will Smith is reportedly being sued by a male tour violinist over accusations of sexual harassment, wrongful termination and retaliation.
Musician Brian King Joseph, part of Smith’s Based on a True Story: 2025 Tour, claims Smith exhibited “predatory behaviour.” He also alleges Smith was “deliberately grooming and priming” him for “further sexual exploitation”.
Smith, 57, is best known as part of a hip hop duo with DJ Jazzy Jeff, as well as starring in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Men in Black.
Joseph names Smith and Treyball Studios Management as defendants in the suit, as reported by Variety. He is pursuing them for wrongful termination and retaliation in a suit filed in California’s Superior Court on Tuesday (30 December). Joseph is demanding a jury trial.
Smith allegedly told Joseph: “You and I have such a special connection that I don’t have with anyone else.”
Joseph also alleges that during a Las Vegas tour date, his bag and hotel room key went missing. He further states that his hotel room has been “unlawfully” accessed.
‘Joseph is demanding a jury trial.’
According to the lawsuit: “Among the remaining belongings were wipes, a beer bottle, a red backpack, a bottle of HIV medication with another individual’s name, an earring, and hospital discharge paperwork belonging to a person unbeknownst to Plaintiff.”
Also, he states a note read: “Brian, I’ll be back no later 5.30, just us <3 [heart symbol], Stone F.”
Joseph said he concluded that “an unknown individual would soon return to his room to engage in sexual acts.”
Joseph’s suit outlines that tour management members were “the only individuals with access” to his room. Furthermore, Joseph notified hotel security and Smith’s representatives. Also, he reported the incident to a non-emergency police line.
Joseph claims that the incident led to being“shamed” by a member of Smith’s management team. Furthermore, his contract was terminated, implying that he had fabricated the event.
Joseph’s suit claims that the termination led him to suffer from PTSD and economic loss.
‘False, baseless and reckless’
Smith’s attorney, Allen B Grodsky, denied Joseph’s allegations. Grodsky released a statement to the Daily Mail: “Mr Joseph’s allegations concerning my client are false, baseless and reckless.
“They are categorically denied, and we will use all legal means available to address these claims and to ensure that the truth is brought to light.”
A Minnesota woman sitting in the snow with her dog told a person filming her that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had just shot and killed her wife — now identified as Renee Nicole Good, 37 — according to newly circulating video that has intensified scrutiny of a fatal federal shooting during a sweeping immigration enforcement operation in south Minneapolis on Wednesday.
“They killed my wife. I don’t know what to do,” the woman says through sobs in the footage, with a damaged SUV visible in the distance behind her. “We stopped to videotape, and they shot her in the head,” the woman cries.
“We have a 6-year-old at school,” she says, almost unable to breathe, as a chaotic scene in which federal officers prevented at least one doctor who was on the scene from assisting the shot victim unfolds. “We’re new here,” the distraught woman says in despair.
The video emerged hours after Good was fatally shot Wednesday morning near East 34th Street and Portland Avenue during what the Department of Homeland Security has described as its largest immigration enforcement surge ever in Minnesota. Roughly 2,000 federal agents have been deployed across the state as part of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown.
Good was identified late Wednesday by her mother, Donna Ganger, who toldTheMinnesota Star Tribune that her daughter lived in the Twin Cities with her partner and was not involved in protests or any activity confronting ICE agents. Ganger said her family was notified of the death late Wednesday morning.
“She was probably terrified,” Ganger told the paper. “Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”
Good was previously married a man named Timmy Ray Mackin, who died in 2023 at age 36, and had her son with him, according to the Star Tribune.
DHS has said that “rioters began blocking ICE officers” during what it called “targeted operations,” alleging that one person “weaponized” a vehicle, prompting an agent to fire what the agency described as “defensive shots.” The department characterized the killing as an act of self-defense and labeled the incident “domestic terrorism.”
But multiple videos circulating online appear to tell a different story. Separate footage shows a dark SUV attempting to drive away from the scene when three shots ring out, sending bystanders into panic. Moments later, the vehicle crashes into a light pole and parked cars as people scream and rush toward the wreckage. Authorities have not publicly reconciled those images with DHS’s account.
In another video, a person wearing the same outfit as the distraught woman can be seen leaning over a bloodied body in the driver’s seat of the SUV.
Late Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump weighed in on his social media site, Truth Social, claiming he had “just viewed the clip” and asserting that the woman filming was “obviously, a professional agitator” and that the driver had “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer,” calling the shooting an act of self-defense and blaming what he described as a “Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate.”
Condemnation has grown from civil rights and advocacy groups nationwide.
“Today, a woman was senselessly killed in Minneapolis during an ICE action — a brutal reminder that this agency and the Trump regime put every community at risk, spreading fear instead of safety,” Robinson said. “Reports that she may have been part of the LGBTQ+ community underscore how often the most vulnerable pay the highest price. Her family and the people of Minneapolis deserve a full investigation, real accountability, and decisive action. And we must remove ICE and their terror from all our communities before even more preventable violence occurs. As Governor Walz requested, we join the nation in standing with Minneapolis.”
Los Angeles LGBT Center CEO Joe Hollendoner also released the a statement, saying, “The fatal shooting of Renee Good — an LGBTQ+ United States citizen exercising her right to protest ICE activity in Minneapolis—is a horrifying and senseless loss of life. Renee’s death lays bare the dangerous reality of an agency that continues to operate with impunity, fueled by a Trump administration that has normalized violence, cruelty, and the erosion of basic human rights. This is now the fifth known killing linked to ICE agents amid an aggressive escalation of raids and abuses. These are not isolated incidents — they are the predictable and devastating consequences of a federal agenda that treats immigrant communities, and those who stand in solidarity with them, as expendable.”
Amnesty International accused the Trump administration of “unnecessary lethal force,” of misrepresenting the circumstances, and of using militarized immigration crackdowns that have made communities unsafe.
Common Defense Executive Director Jose Vasquez said ICE’s “uninvited presence in Minneapolis is not only destabilizing, it is dangerous and deeply unjust,” calling the killing “heartbreaking and unforgivable.” He said the shooting reflects an “unnecessary escalation” and demanded ICE leave Minneapolis immediately.
Local leaders also pushed back forcefully. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told reporters, “To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here,” while Gov. Tim Walz said the state would ensure a “full, fair, and expeditious investigation.”
Minnesota State Rep. Leigh Finke, the state’s first out transgender legislator, said the killing left her “heartbroken” and warned that the federal immigration surge had created the conditions for violence long before Wednesday’s shooting.
“My reaction is one of great sadness,” Finke told The Advocate. “For those of us here in Minnesota who’ve been seeing what these federal agents — ICE, CBP, others — have been doing and how they’ve been treating our communities and our neighbors, something like this felt very possible. But we’ve just had so many tragedies here. Waking up to this news was heartbreaking. It’s terrible. It’s one too many of these things.”
Finke said the sudden influx of roughly 2,000 federal agents announced earlier this week created an inherently volatile situation.
“That kind of influx of law enforcement, often untrained young people coming in with a mandate to kidnap neighbors and abduct people and deport them, violence is the only way that something like that can go at some point or another,” she said, adding that what happened to Good was “devastating” and “the kind of violence being bred by our federal government.”
Finke also called for accountability, saying state law enforcement must “arrest the killer and prosecute that person to the fullest extent of the law,” even as legislative options are constrained by Minnesota’s divided legislature.
And in a message to Minnesotans shaken by the shooting, Finke urged solidarity, noting that immigrant, transgender, and LGBTQ+ communities are bearing the brunt of the federal crackdown.
“We all need to remember that we are in this together,” she said. “We are going to continue to fight for it. We are going to stand up nonviolently with peace and love and fight for our communities no matter what.”
The Advocate has contacted Walz and Minneapolis city officials, including Frey and the police department, for comment.
Wednesday evening, hundreds of protesters gathered in Good’s neighborhood for a vigil and march. “She was peaceful, she did the right thing,” Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of CAIR-MN, said at the event, the Star Tribunereports. “She died because she loved her neighbors.”
Another speaker at the event, identified only as Noah, denounced those who called Good a domestic terrorist. Instead, he said, Good was watching the terrorists.
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 most famous as a fashion designer). The group took its name from the Societé Mattachine, a satirical dance and theater troupe in medieval France.
At first the Mattachine Society was secretive, with its leaders’ names unknown to members. It functioned as a support group for gay people — the membership was mostly men — and served to educate them about fighting for equal rights in conservative post-World War II America.
Hay, who had been a member of the Communist Party, soon ran afoul of that conservatism. He was called before the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, but the committee members decided he was insignificant, so he did not face any punishment. However, he had already split from the Mattachine Society two years earlier, as the other leaders feared his presence would bring the attention of politicians who were out to purge Communists. Mattachine did get investigated by the FBI between 1953 and 1956. After Hay’s departure, the group became public, and in the 1950s and ’60s it could claim thousands of members in chapters in cities throughout the nation, including San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
Generally, the Mattachine Society worked within the political and legal system to advance gay rights, rather than taking to the streets. Members discussed how to avoid entrapment by police and how to fight any criminal charges. They talked about how to resist the pathologization of homosexuality by organized religion and mental health groups. They held “sip-ins” in bars to make their presence known. They published ONE Magazine, the first widely distributed gay publication, and several chapters had newsletters.
Some considered the Mattachine Society hostile to women, but certain chapters had women members. Eva Freund, for instance, was one of the first women in the D.C. chapter, where Frank Kameny, now legendary, was president. She found some of the men patronizing, but she stood up to them, she told The Washington Postin 2019. “I did not act in a meek and subservient fashion, which was what I was expected to do,” Freund said. She eventually turned her attention to the D.C. chapter of the National Organization for Women, becoming its first out lesbian member.
One of her memories of Mattachine was coediting and distributing the D.C. chapter’s newsletter, the Insider. It was mostly distributed in bars, and when one bar owner turned her and another Mattachine member away, fearing the newsletter would call unwanted attention to the nightclub, Freund and her colleague sneaked copies into the restrooms. “We figured they’d get found eventually,” she told the Post. “Perhaps it was our attempts to keep pushing this that helped people rethink what they were doing on a personal level.”
Most Mattachine chapters disbanded by the 1970s, when there was a new, post-Stonewall style of activism. Some members joined the Gay Liberation Front, founded in the wake of Stonewall, and others even denounced the Stonewall uprising because they worried it would set the movement back. New York Mattachine members posted a sign on a window at the Stonewall Inn urging “peaceful and quiet conduct.”
Harry Hay, however, praised those who rose up at Stonewall. “The importance of Stonewall is that it changed the pronoun from I to we,” Hay once told the Associated Press. “When I told them at Stonewall that I had been thrown out of the Mattachine Society because I insisted that we were a cultural minority and not individuals, they couldn’t believe that. By the time of Stonewall they thought we had always been a cultural minority.” Hay went on to found the Radical Faeries and lived to be 90, dying in 2002. There was a failed attempt to make his L.A. home a historic landmark, but the stairs leading to it — the Mattachine Steps — have been given that distinction by the city.
Some have carried on the Mattachine name. Mattachine Midwest was founded in Chicago in 1965 as an independent organization after the demise of at least two chapters affiliated with the national group. It endured until 1986, providing support groups, a crisis hotline, and other services in addition to its political activism.
In 2011, Charles Francis founded a reimagined Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., which does what he calls “archive activism — identifying, conserving and interpreting the LGBTQ historical record.”
The history of the Mattachine Society and those associated with it has been chronicled in books, plays, and films. The Trouble With Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement, a biography by Stuart Timmons, was published in 1990. Behind the Mask of the Mattachine by James T.T. Sears came out in 2007. The Temperamentals by Jon Marans, a play dealing with the society’s founding, premiered off-Broadway in 2009. The documentary Hope Along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay,directed by Eric Slade, was released in 2002. And the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project recently hosted a Zoom discussion titled “Homosexuals Are Different”: Mattachine Society & LGBTQ Rights in the 1950s,which was recorded and can be viewed below.
2025 began with the Trump administration keeping its promise to escalate federal attacks against the LGBTQ community. Within the first 100 days, we were bombarded with a barrage of anti-LGBTQ executive orders, rule changes, and policy rescissions targeting the most vulnerable, and hateful rhetoric that inspired similar efforts at the state and local levels.In 2025 alone, over 700 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in 49 states, the most prevalent of which deliberately target the transgender community and LGBTQ youth. However, despite these major attempts to erase LGBTQ people, by the end of the legislative sessions our community defeated at least 88% of the anti-LGBTQ bills introduced, challenged harmful state and federal actions via litigation efforts, successfully organized massive demonstrations across the country, and most importantly activated voters to turnout for this year’s general election. After notable wins in the November elections, it is clear that the tides are turning and pro-equality candidates, advocates, and activists are feeling especially energized as we head into 2026.
Highlighting Key Wins in 2025
“Shield” or “refuge” laws protecting transgender health careSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here. May 12: Washington state expanded its existing shield law, adding new privacy protections. Read more details here.
May 13: Vermont expanded its existing shield law in multiple ways. Read more details here.
May 16 and May 23: Colorado enacted two new bills, expanding existing protections in multiple ways, including new privacy protections related to testosterone prescriptions.
June 20: Delaware’s governor issued an executive order to protect both patients and providers of medically necessary care for transgender people. Delaware is now one of three states with a “shield” executive order that protects access to transgender health care.
As of December 15, 14 states and D.C. have a “shield” law protecting access to transgender health care.
Conversion “therapy” lawsSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.
February 19: Westerville, Ohio, became the 13th city in the state to ban conversion “therapy” practices at the local level.July 8: The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled, after a multi-year battle between the governor and the legislature, that the state’s regulatory protections against conversion “therapy” can go into effect. Read more about this multi-year effort here.
August 19: Whitehall, Ohio, enacted a new ordinance protecting LGBTQ youth from conversion “therapy,” becoming the 14th municipality in Ohio with such an ordinance. Whitehall’s new ordinance also prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ people in employment, housing, and public accommodations. While the state lacks similar statewide protections, Whitehall is the 40th municipality in Ohio with fully inclusive, local-level nondiscrimination protections.
As of December 15, 23 states and D.C. prohibit licensed health care providers from subjecting minors to conversion “therapy.”
February 7: Illinois enacted a new law eliminating the publication requirement for name changes, a move that helps protect the privacy and safety of transgender people. The new law also reduced the residency requirement from six to three months, allowing faster access for those who have recently relocated to the state
.September 30: Arizona began issuing amended birth certificates to transgender people, regardless of whether they’ve undergone surgery to change their appearance. The ruling permanently struck the word “operation” from an Arizona law that required people to go through a “sex change operation” before they can be issued a new birth certificate that aligns with their gender identity.
March 21: New Mexico became the ninth state to offer confirmatory adoptions, offering another accessible pathway to establish a legal relationship between parent and child.
April 7: Colorado repealed its legislative ban on marriage equality, following its repeal of its constitutional amendment ban in November 2024. Now there are no remaining bans in Colorado.
May 23: Vermont became the 10th state with a confirmatory adoption process. Read more details here.June 3: Nevada became the 11th state to offer confirmatory adoption.
July 7: Hawaii modernized their parentage laws, making the voluntary acknowledgement of parentage (VAP) process explicitly available to non-genetic and LGBTQ parents.
August 8: Oregon also extended the VAP process to non-genetic and LGBTQ parents.
October 30: Illinois passed comprehensive legislation updating their parentage laws, including expanding the VAP process and establishing a uniform and streamlined confirmatory adoption provision throughout the state for children born through assisted reproduction.As we move into the 2026 legislative session and prepare for what lies ahead, we are also acutely aware of the power and strength of the LGBTQ community and the strategic efforts of our movement partners to shift to a more proactive stance. While maintaining a focus on policy proposals in particularly active states, such as MAP will also continue tracking over 50 different LGBTQ-related laws and policies through our Equality Maps, which are updated in real time. Stay tuned for our legislative session forecast in January 2026.
NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has named Lillian Bonsignore commissioner of the Fire Department of New York, making her the second woman and first out gay person in that post.
Mamdani made the announcement at a press conference Tuesday afternoon in Queens. “[The FDNY] deserves a leader who cares about their work, because she did it herself,” he said, as reported by Newsweek “She is the kind of leader I’m so proud to have in my administration.”
“My goal is to ensure that every member of [the FDNY] has the resources and environment they need to perform their role safely and effectively,” Bonsignore said at the press conference.
Bonsignore was born in the Bronx. She joined the FDNY in 1991 as an emergency medical technician and served 31 years, retiring in 2022. The 56-year-old was named chief of the FDNY’s Emergency Medical Services division in 2019, becoming the first woman to head the division and first uniformed woman to be a four-star chief in the department. During her tenure, she was a first responder in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and led the EMS division during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Bonsignore’s calm, decisive leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic — when EMS professionals were more vital than ever — is exactly the kind of leadership our city needs in moments of uncertainty,” Mamdani said in a statement to City & State New Yorkbefore the formal announcement.
Upon her 2019 promotion, she told the New York Daily News, “It’s kind of odd that the thing I get celebrated for the most — people are always like, ‘Wow, you’re a woman and you’re gay’ — are the two things I put the least work into.”
Laura Kavanagh, appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in 2022, was the first woman FDNY commissioner. She had not served in uniform but had been a civilian employee of the department. She told City & State that Bonsignore is “one of the strongest leaders I have ever worked alongside. Nobody knows the FDNY and what the department means to our city better than Chief Bonsignore. I saw firsthand Chief Bonsignore’s lifelong dedication to the FDNY, including her work on the front lines of COVID and in advocating for a long-overdue EMS pay raises.” Kavanagh resigned in 2024.
“I know what the firefighters need, and I can translate that to this administration, who’s willing to listen,” she said, according to local station WNYW. “I know what EMS needs. I have been EMS for 30-plus years. And now you have a commissioner that could start an IV.”
Until Mamdani is sworn in January 1, First Deputy Commissioner Mark Guerra will be New York’s acting FDNY commissioner. Current NYC Mayor Eric Adams made the announcement shortly before Mamdani made his. Some criticized Adams for the move.
“Lillian’s light is one that can’t be dimmed by anything else that takes place,” Mamdani said after Adams’s announcement. “The mayor is free to continue to be the mayor until the end of this year and make decisions as such.”
Jessica Tisch is expected to stay in her post as police commissioner when Mamdani takes office, so this will be the first time women have led both the NYC fire and police departments.
A veteran Washington State Patrol trooper claims he’s faced discrimination and hostility in the agency due to his sexual orientation — issues that reportedly reached a breaking point when WSP personnel created and circulated a demeaning video of him generated by artificial intelligence.
Collin Overend Pearson, who’s a Pierce County resident and gay, alleges that he’s been subjected to “repeated instances of discriminatory and unconstitutional conduct by WSP and its officers” during nearly two decades of employment, according to a lawsuit filed Dec. 19 in Pierce County Superior Court.
In December, WSP personnel created an AI-generated video that depicted Pearson and another uniformed, male trooper kissing on a roadside, the lawsuit claims. A voiceover in the video states, “this is SWAT training, no homo,” — using a derogatory phrase that insinuates “homosexuality is inferior or insulting,” according to the suit.
Read the full article. Per Pearson, the video was the “final straw” in a prolonged campaign of anti-gay harassment unaddressed by his superiors. In the 2010 video below, he receives a “Law Enforcement Award of Merit.”
Patel felt a wave of grief wash over her. “I [have] to give up my South Asian-ness in order to be in a queer relationship,” she remembers thinking.
Patel and her girlfriend had been dating for some time and were sketching out a future together, even starting sentences with, “When we get married.” But as they built a foundation, she continued to feel marginalized because of her Indo-African heritage.
“I remember I was in [my girlfriend’s] household, and her father made a comment that was racist to brown people,” Patel told Uncloseted Media. When her girlfriend called him out, Patel remembers him responding by saying, “You were racist before you started dating a brown girl.”
Alyy Patel promoting her nonprofit, Queer South Asian Women’s Network, at Toronto Pride in 2024. Courtesy of Patel.
Patel, a 29-year-old researcher and LGBTQ activist living in Vancouver, Canada, says comments from girlfriends and society kept popping up. So she began investigating them academically and went on to create the Queer South Asian Women’s Network.
In a 2019 study she published in the Journal of Lesbian Studies, Patel conducted in-depth narrative interviews with nine queer South Asian women in Toronto. She found that these women routinely experienced microaggressions, erasure and pressure to conform to white, Western queer norms, with one participant being told her queerness wasn’t that important during a conversation with her partner. Another said she was advised by friends and family to stick to other people of color when it came to dating.
This discrimination is often compounded in many conservative South Asian cultures where homosexuality is still stigmatized and viewed as a violation of religious or family values. In addition, women are expected to uphold family honor through modesty, heterosexual marriage and self-sacrifice.
A 2019 Pew Research Center survey found that only 37% of Indians believe homosexuality should be accepted by society, compared to majorities in most Western nations.
In Patel’s experiences in queer circles, she believes that what often felt like a visceral sense of South Asian identity loss was actually enforced assimilation. “I had no language or framework to understand that this was racism. I grew up in a white town. … People were very openly racist and okay with it,” she says. She adds that in addition to facing racism in LGBTQ spaces, South Asian women face rejection for being queer at home.
“Our families are like, ‘Haha no, you’re not gay,’” she says.
Coming Out
Patel says coming out poses unique challenges for South Asian women compared to women of other ethnicities.
In a 2025 study in the Canadian Review of Sociology, Patel interviewed 40 queer South Asian women in Canada and found that staying closeted can protect them from judgment from family and community.
This leaves these women vulnerable to contrasting pressures where their LGBTQ circles want them to come out.
“There was a participant who [was told by another] queer woman who was white that she just needs to ‘try harder to come out to [her] family,’” says Patel. “But that’s not how it works. [She] did try coming out to them, [but] they didn’t listen.” When she did come out, she was told by her family, “You’re not really gay.”
“Our culture prizes silence, sacrifice and family reputation over individual truth, so falling in love with a woman isn’t just about your personal life,” Suja Vairavanathan, a life coach in Essex, England, who works with South Asian women, told Uncloseted Media. “It feels like you’re challenging an entire system.”
Vairavanathan, who grew up in a traditional Indian family, came out later in life.
“For me, it wasn’t a typical ‘I always knew’ story. I didn’t grow up identifying as gay or even questioning my sexuality,” she says. “I spent 20 years in a marriage, raising kids, living what looked like the ‘right’ Tamil woman’s life. Then I fell in love with my best friend, who happened to be a woman.”
After Vairavanathan left her marriage, she came out in a TikTok video where she is smiling ear-to-ear with on-screen text reading: “You’d have to be a little delulu to think that a 42-year-old Tamil divorcee, mum of 2 sons, eldest daughter, recently turned gay woman had the audacity to show up on social media and live life unapologetically.” Her caption added: “Yet here I am.”
While there were many positive comments on the video, Vairavanathan says the backlash from many folks in the South Asian community was intense: “I had comments calling me ‘a disgrace,’ saying I’d ‘ruined my family’s name,’ even messages telling me I was ‘corrupting Tamil culture’ or that I must have been ‘brainwashed by the West.’ People reduced my whole life to a scandal just because I chose to live honestly.”
Internalized Shame
This community rejection can be painful. “It wasn’t strangers attacking me. It was my own people, speaking the same language I grew up with, who decided I didn’t deserve respect anymore. And that hurts in a way racism from outsiders never could, because it feels like rejection from your own bloodline,” says Vairavanathan.
Mental health professionals who work with South Asian clients say that collectivist traditions, where family reputation is often prioritized over individual expression, can lead to the stigmatization of LGBTQ identities.
On the AAHNA South Asian therapy website, they write that understanding taboos associated with sexual orientation “is crucial for effective therapeutic practice, as they can significantly influence mental health and well-being.”
Balancing Dual Identities
Patel was the first South Asian speaker at Pride Toronto’s Dyke March. Courtesy of Patel.
Jiya Rajput, a British Indian content creator and founder of the QPOC Project, says the balancing act of her sexual and racial identity can be tough: “Being both South Asian and queer sometimes feels like having two vastly different identities,” Rajput told Uncloseted Media. “I have tried my best to blend my queerness with my desi identity. However, it is not often easy, with stereotypes and prejudice sometimes making me feel out of place.”
This balancing act may involve navigating stereotypes and racism inside queer spaces, which can have negative mental health outcomes. A 2022 survey of LGBTQ Asian Americans found that discomfort with one’s race or ethnicity within queer communities was associated with lower psychological well-being for those who consider their racial identity important.
Dating as a Queer South Asian Woman
Balancing this dynamic can make dating challenging. A 2023 study revealed that queer Asian American women are frequently subject to rigid racial dating preferences, with most preferring to date within their own racial group, often as a reaction to feeling fetishized or rejected from white queer spaces.
And even dating within communities of color presents its own set of challenges. “Racism is not exclusively a white people’s issue,” Patel says, noting that she experienced subtle discrimination with another girlfriend who was neither white nor South Asian.
“[She] was genuinely trying to relate with me, she just couldn’t,” she says.
Patel remembers her girlfriend holding many assumptions, such as the belief that all South Asians share the same cultural traditions, such as Bhangra, a lively Punjabi dance, or Garba, a traditional Gujarati folk dance performed during festivals.
“It comes from a place of just wanting to be seen for their own culture,” Patel says, noting that many people of color aren’t accustomed to being truly heard or understood. “There’s so much excitement in dating someone from a different background that sometimes you forget to actually listen and receive the culture through their lens.”
When South Asian women do decide to date white women, Patel says it can feel like one “should just assimilate … and try to keep the pressures of being brown [and] growing up in a stricter, possibly patriarchal, culture at bay.”
These pressures in queer spaces caused Lavina Sabnani to leave her culture behind in an effort to feel accepted.
“It felt wrong to push away everything my ancestors carried with them for so long,” Sabnani told Uncloseted Media. “There’s a standard of whiteness at Pride, at lesbian parties, at cultural and social clubs. … Me and the other brown girls never get noticed. It was like you’re invisible within a community where you’re supposed to be counted in.”
“Being a lesbian South Asian means breaking the mold in every possible way,” says Hubiba Ali, a first-generation Pakistani American, self-described “butch lesbian” and food scientist from Chicago. “Pakistani women I was raised around don’t wear boyish clothes, have short, cropped hair, thick muscles, and hairy legs. They do not eat with gusto, laugh and joke boisterously, or take up space. I gave up a lot of my birthright participation in my culture in order to live free.”
Underrepresented and Under Researched
Alyy Patel presenting her work on the lack of media representation of queer South Asian women. Courtesy of Patel.
To make change, Sabnani says South Asian representation in queer spaces is essential. But it’s not happening yet. According to GLAAD’s “Where We Are on TV” 2024-2025 study, Asian Pacific Islanders represented only 11% of LGBTQ characters on broadcast, 2% on cable and 14% on streaming.
Even shows that strive for diversity, like “The L Word: Generation Q,” fail to include South Asian characters. “They had everyone—Black, Latinx, East Asian—but not a single South Asian woman,” says Patel.
She recalls a dating app called Her that featured an image of two white women kissing—one of whom had a tattoo of a Hindu deity.
“They’ll use our gods, but not our faces,” she says.
Outside of Patel’s research, little information exists about racism and homophobia toward queer South Asian women.
And even in queer nightlife, Ali describes feeling sidelined. She says that while there are a few South Asian LGBTQ organizations in Chicago, finding meaningful representation is hard even in those scenes.
“They tend to be hosted in a part of town colloquially known as ‘Boystown,’ which semantically already does not center women or lesbians,” she says. “The events are usually held at gay bars for gay men.”
Finding Acceptance
Alyy Patel (right) and her current girlfriend, Lavanneya P (left). Courtesy of Patel.
Patel says that to make spaces truly inclusive, folks need to “start by listening to queer brown women, understanding our unique challenges, and amplifying our voices.”
And despite all of these challenges, many queer South Asian women are still surviving and building a more inclusive future.
Artists like MANI JNX, a British Punjabi indie musician, are using music to explore queer South Asian love, trauma and joy. And visual creators like Mina Manzar are building online communities through art. “Funnily enough, here in NYC, so far from Pakistan, is where I’ve found the most vibrant and beautiful South Asian queer community,” Manzar told Uncloseted Media.
As for Patel, she has found a relationship with a Tamil woman that is grounded in mutual respect and cultural exchange. “I’ve learned how to make Tamil food, I’m learning the language, and she comes to Garba with me and dances every year,” she says. Their shared commitment to honoring each other’s traditions illustrates the importance of genuine cultural understanding in queer relationships that goes beyond surface-level acceptance or stereotypes.
Her hope is that the commitment to understanding that she has developed with her partner can become more reflective of how society tries to understand the experiences of queer South Asian women.
“Let’s just address each racialized group as a different racialized group and give them some damn visibility,” Patel says. “It’s not that hard.”
MAGA infighting erupted at Turning Point USA’s America Fest in Phoenix, Arizona, as conservative broadcaster Ben Shapiro blasted Candace Owens for spreading conspiracy theories about the murder of Turning Point’s founder Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson for platforming neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, and Steve Bannon for aiding the president’s poor handling of files related to convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
“The conservative movement is in serious danger… from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty,” Shapiro said, according to Politico.
Elsewhere, both ex-gay provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos said that Fuentes is gay and MAGA broadcaster Benny Johnson “gets trashed and has sex with young boys in the latter’s hotel rooms at Turning Point conferences, leaving his wife weeping in the arms of other men downstairs amid the AIPAC leaflets and trestle tables,” gay journalist Michaelangelo Signorile noted.
“One of the most distinctive things about the right wing in this country is its homosexual overtones,” Yiannopoulos said while speaking to MAGA podcaster Tim Pool. “Benny Johnson posts pictures of his children every two days—it’s weird. And everybody knows what went on with Benny Johnson in those lobbies and those hotel rooms at SAS [Student Action Summit, at Turning Point USA]. Everybody knows.”
Yiannopoulos also told Pool that he thinks Kirk was gay too and was planning to divorce his wife, Erika Kirk, who delivered the opening address at Turning Point USA’s America Fest.
Judge Dianne Hensley has filed a lawsuit asking courts to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, in the latest attack on gay marriage in the US.
Judge Hensley filed the lawsuit on Friday (19 December), according to The Texas Tribune. The document asks for an overturn of Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that established same-sex marriage nationwide.
The lawsuit continues the ongoing legal dispute between Hensley and the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, an independent Texas state agency responsible for investigating allegations of judicial misconduct.
This all began when Hensley wanted to be allowed to perform marriages for opposite-sex couples, but not same-sex couples.
Who is Judge Dianne Hensley?
Judge Hensley, a justice of the peace in Waco, Texas, is leading the latest push to reverse same-sex marriage. Hensley has been a Waco-based judge since 2015 and is among about 800 justices of the peace in Texas.
In 2018, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct opened an inquiry into Hensley’s conduct.
In 2019, Hensley was publicly sanctioned for refusing to officiate at same-sex weddings. They alleged that Hensley violated a canon of judicial conduct, which prohibits judges from engaging in conduct outside their judicial role that could compromise their impartiality.
The judicial commission said in its warning that Hensley’s conduct cast doubt “on her capacity to act impartially to persons appearing before her as a judge due to the person’s sexual orientation.”
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As a result, Hensley began a lawsuit. She alleged that the State Commission on Judicial Conduct had violated her religious rights as a Christian.
Then, the Texas Supreme Court amended the judicial canon to note that “it is not a violation of these canons for a judge to publicly refrain from performing a wedding ceremony based upon a sincerely held religious belief.”
How is Judge Dianne Hensley trying to overturn same-sex marriage?
In her attempt to reverse same-sex marriage, Hensley has asserted that the original Obergefell v. Hodges ruling was “unconstitutional.”
Hensley’s case asserts it “subordinat[ed] state law to the policy preferences of unelected judges.”
Hensley is being represented by conservative attorney Jonathan Mitchell, known for building the 2021 abortion ban surrounding the legal protections of Roe v. Wade.
“The federal judiciary has no authority to recognize or invent ‘fundamental’ constitutional rights,” Mitchell wrote.
The attorney also acknowledged that “a lower court does not have the authority to overturn a Supreme Court precedent, [but] he indicated in the filing that he was introducing this argument now with the hopes of the case eventually reaching the high court.”
Furthermore, Michell wrote the court should throw Obergefell v. Hodges back to the states, as they did with the abortion case.
“The Commission’s bullying of Judge Hensley and its menacing behavior toward other Christian judges is the direct result of the Supreme Court’s pronouncement in Obergefell that homosexual marriage is a constitutional right,” Mitchell wrote. “There is nothing in the language of the Constitution that even remotely suggests that homosexual marriage is a constitutional right.”
