Boston University has paused enforcement of a policy that led to the removal of Pride flags from campus offices, stepping back after weeks of escalating protests and faculty warnings that the school was suppressing free expression.
In a letter to the campus community on Monday, Boston University President Melissa Gilliam said the school would temporarily halt the removals and acknowledged the harm the policy had caused.
“Our university and our policies exist within a larger social context, one that is dynamic and complex,” Gilliam wrote. “I have heard how difficult and painful that has been. I am deeply sorry.”
Gilliam described the decision not as a reversal but as a pause.
“What began as questions regarding a long-standing, routine university policy has evolved into something that has surfaced deep questions and concerns about belonging, expression, safety, and respect,” she wrote, adding that the university needs “more time and opportunity” to consider those issues.
She also emphasized that LGBTQ+ members of the campus community “belong here and are needed here” and that the university remains committed to ensuring they “feel welcome” and “respected.”
The controversy, however, has been building for weeks.
As early as mid-March, faculty members raised alarms after Pride flags were repeatedly removed from office windows, in violation of the university’s “time, place, and manner” signage rules. Professor Nathan Phillips told Boston NPR affiliate WGBH that he rehung his flag after it was taken down, only to see it removed again days later.
“I just felt very strongly that I really had to maintain the line on freedom of expression,” Phillips said.
The policy dates to a 2024 update governing outward-facing displays, which the university has defended as content-neutral. But faculty say enforcement has not been neutral in practice and that it intensified at a particularly fraught political moment.
In a letter to Gilliam, leaders of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors warned that the policy was chilling speech and urged administrators to stop “selectively targeting” expression, according to GBH.
That concern helped transform a campus policy dispute into a broader flashpoint.
By early April, protests had spread across campus, a petition had drawn more than 2,000 signatures, and alumni, including a former plaintiff in a free speech case against the university, warned that the administration was revisiting settled legal ground.
The backlash also unfolded against a wider national backdrop. Universities have spent more than a year navigating intensifying conflicts over speech, protest, and institutional neutrality, from pro-Palestinian demonstrations in 2024 to renewed scrutiny of diversity initiatives under President Donald Trump’s second term.
That pressure has already had tangible consequences on other campuses. At Brown University, students told The Advocate last year that policy shifts tied to federal pressure left some transgender students feeling unsafe and uncertain about their privacy and place on campus, even as peers remained supportive.
At Boston University, critics said the removal of Pride flags, widely understood as symbols of safety and belonging, carried particular weight. “They symbolize inclusion, welcoming, safety, and acceptance,” sociology professor Joseph Harris toldWGBH. “When those are attacked, communities are attacked.”
The university has maintained that the policy is not about viewpoint. Administrators have said the rules apply broadly to outward-facing signage and that displays can be relocated inside offices.
Still, Gilliam’s letter suggests the administration recognizes the limits of that argument. “It is critical that we can hold these matters separate,” she wrote, distinguishing between a policy discussion and questions about “core values.”
For many faculty, that distinction remains unresolved.
Audio recorded from a hearing in New Mexico is raising serious concerns about how LGBTQ+ asylum claims are handled in US immigration courts.
According to The Advocate, Immigration Judge Samuel Williams spent nearly three hours pressing a gay Iranian asylum seeker on intimate details of his same-sex relationship during a spring 2025 hearing, questions which advocates say reflect troubling misunderstandings about how LGBTQ+ people survive in countries where being out can be deadly.
The man, who fled Iran fearing execution, described living in secrecy, maintaining a heterosexual marriage as cover while navigating a relationship with another man under constant threat.
His attorney, Rebekah Wolf of the American Immigration Council, called the case a “textbook” asylum claim, but said the judge’s line of questioning suggested an expectation that applicants must “prove” their sexuality in ways that don’t reflect real-world danger.
“The language is so atrocious,” Wolf said
Legal experts, including Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, warn that credibility assessments in these cases can be shaped by bias, particularly when judges don’t fully understand the risks of disclosure in hostile environments.
The case also highlights broader systemic issues within US immigration courts, where judges are appointed by the Justice Department and oversight is limited.
Rep. Mike Collins in drag in his high school yearbook.Piedmont Academy yearbook in 1985.
Carter, whose real name is Earl LeRoy Carter, is seen wearing a long dress and sash in the Robert W. Groves High School yearbook for 1975, the year he graduated from the school in a suburb of Savannah. There is no caption attached to the drag photo, but there is a strong resemblance to Carter’s senior photo in the same yearbook when the two are compared. The congressman was also the subject of a Reddit thread in 2025, where a user posted another photo of Carter in drag from a different yearbook, captioned “Miss ‘Cantelope’ Carter.” The Advocate was unable to independently verify the additional photo.
Robert W. Groves High School yearbook for 1975
Critics point to the men’s hypocrisy of being scandalized by drag when LGBTQ+ people do it, but embracing gender play as harmless fun when they do it.
“Rep. Collins and Rep. Carter are running to represent every Georgian, but they’ve made it clear that they don’t believe LGBTQ+ Georgians are worthy of equal rights,” David Stacy, vice president of government affairs for the Human Rights Campaign, told The Advocate.
Carter, a self-proclaimed “MAGA warrior,” introduced the “Truth in Gender Act” in June 2025, which sought to codify Trump’s executive order that mandated that the U.S. government only recognize two biological sexes, voted in favor of the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” which proposed making it a felony to provide gender-affirming care to minors, and ran campaign ads last summer that showed his disdain for transgender women competing in sports.
“Rep. Buddy Carter introduced a bill to codify President Trump’s heinous anti-trans executive orders, he has voted to force trans youth to be outed, and he voted to allow doctors and parents to be charged with a federal felony with a ten-year penalty for best practice medical care,” Stacey said.
Collins also supported the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” calling gender-affirming care “radical woke ideology,” and has echoed the conservative talking point that transgender women should not compete in women’s sports. He has also blamed a train derailment on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
As recently as March 31, Collins posted a photo of the Trans Am car bearing a Confederate flag license plate from the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit, captioned “Happy Trans Visibility Day to all who celebrate.”
“Rep. Mike Collins has repeatedly voted to yank books out of libraries, tell parents of trans youth what kind of health care their kids may or may not receive, and said Rev. Marianne Budde — the Episcopal bishop who pleaded with President Trump for ‘mercy’ for LGBTQ+ people [at a Washington, D.C. service the day after his January 2025 inauguration] — should be added to a deportation list,” Stacy said.
In a statement to The Advocate, a spokesperson for the Ossoff campaign said that the three Republicans running in the primary are more concerned with attacking the trans community than with what voters actually care about. “Instead of working to find bipartisan solutions on issues impacting Georgians’ lives, like lowering costs at the grocery store or making health care more affordable, Mike Collins, Derek Dooley, and Buddy Carter are shamelessly using trans individuals as a prop for political division. It’s gross and wrong,” the statement said.
In response to viewing the yearbook photos in question, Collins’ communications director Emma Gibson told The Advocate that “Only people whose brains have been rotted by ill-prescribed hormones and the continual over-sexualization of life around them would view a yearbook photo of Rep. Collins and his wife 40 years ago switching clothes for a Homecoming tradition as anything more than lighthearted humor.”
Chris Crawford, a spokesperson for Carter’s office, refused to confirm or deny whether the congressman is in the photos during multiple interactions with The Advocate. Instead, in a text message, Crawford wrote, “You’re playing with fire to run a story without verification.” When asked directly whether Carter denies that the image is of him, Crawford texted, “You’d like us to do your job?”
Drag performer Taylor Alxndr, who is also the co-founder and executive director of the community organization Southern Fried Queer Pride in Georgia, is tired of hypocritical politicians who blame the LGBTQ+ community for all of the ills of society.
“There’s this big bogeyman of trans people, even though statistically, historically, and factually, trans people pose no harm to the American economy, pose no harm to cisgender people, especially cisgender women,” Alxndr told The Advocate. “This idea that trans women are following or trying to attack or harm cisgender women in restrooms, it’s all just a big distraction from the actual evil that plagues a lot of the country, and it’s these politicians and people who support them.”
Carter and Collins are far from the first “family values” Republican politicians to dress in drag while spewing hateful rhetoric about queer people and fighting for anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Vice President JD Vance, former North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, disgraced gay former New York Rep. George Santos, and disbarred Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani have all had their pasts dressing in drag come to light.
”Drag is a centuries-old art form that is not limited to LGBTQ people, but which has an undisputed history of pride and visibility in the LGBTQ community that should be uplifted,” a GLAAD spokesperson told The Advocate. “It’s a no-brainer that anyone who participates in this part of LGBTQ culture should support basic protections for LGBTQ people. Anything less is hypocrisy.”
The GLAAD spokesperson added, “Recent attacks on family-friendly drag shows and performers are a baseless distraction from real action that will help families, like affordability and health care. Rep. Collins and Rep. Carter should shift their focus from any anti-LGBTQ animus to family-forward policies that uplift and protect all families.”
Alxndr said that these men may have originally enjoyed dressing in drag, but because of “familial pressure, religious pressure, or political pressure,” the “very simple, fun, nonsensical experience of them performing or dressing up in drag gets changed into something that’s evil or harmful,” and that’s when they tend to start targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
At 12 years old, upon returning home from school, I saw my dad sitting in the living room. I immediately knew something was wrong.
“Come here,” he said, with my computer in his lap. He proceeded to show me the pictures of men kissing that he had found in my search history.
“If you live this way, either you’re gonna kill yourself or someone’s going to go out and kill you for it,” he told me. “And neither of those things matter because God will never love you again.”
Photo courtesy of Tacher.
I couldn’t say anything. In our world, my dad was the one with the answers. He was an elder in our church, the second-highest rung in authority and the highest form of control. If he said it, it had to be true.
For the next two years, I pretended like my feelings weren’t there. I felt like I was just waiting for the rest of my life to collapse. I knew being gay wasn’t an option.
So when I found conversion therapy at 15, it felt like the answer. I didn’t know it would cause me to spend the next seven years of my life undoing myself.
I became one of the nearly 700,000 Americans who have gone through conversion therapy. Though 23 states have implemented some bans on LGBTQ kids from receiving the discredited practice, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Colorado must relegalize it.
When I learned the news, my heart sank. The Supreme Court made the decision to side lawyers from Alliance Defending Freedom, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group.
I was horrified. I understood the pain. I had experienced suicidal thoughts. And I knew that this decision would cost lives.
The Program
I was raised in Seattle in the International Churches of Christ, a high-control religious organization that was founded in the 1970s and spread to over 130 countries.
Church was not just something we did on Sundays. It was our social life, our worldview, our moral code, our hierarchy and our family reputation. It was the way we understood what was good and what was dangerous.
The messaging was constant: Church services, Bible talks, discipling times, camps, small groups, leadership meetings behind closed doors where I was told not to listen.
Everyone watched everyone. If you sinned, you confessed. Information traveled upward. Shame traveled downward.
So when a camp counselor told me in the ninth grade that he used to struggle with same-sex attraction and that he could help me, it felt like I had a way out.
He introduced me to Strength and Weakness, a conversion therapy ministry that would consume my life.
After telling my mom I had found a solution,I logged into their eerie-looking online community for people trying to resist homosexual thoughts.
Screenshot of Strength and Weakness.
In a section called “Help For All Christians,” there were articles titled “Are YOU Same Sex Attracted and Need Help? START HERE” and “HELP! My Roommate is Gay!” I paid the $55 membership fee and got going.
The expectation was up to an hour a day, sometimes alone and sometimes with other people. You read scripture. You catalogued your temptations. You prayed for strength. You reported back.
They framed homosexuality as a quick fix to a life of emptiness.
If I developed feelings for a boy, I was taught to cut the relationship off. If I found someone attractive, I was taught to confess, analyze it and shut it down. Attraction was treated like a warning flare: not yet sin, but always only one step away.
The program turned my mind into a hostile environment. I was taught that my body would betray me and that a crush was a spiritual emergency. I monitored my eyes, my thoughts, my friendships, my fantasies, my posture, my tone and my body. And because I had never been with a boy, I told myself it must be working. I was miserable and shrinking inside—but I was holding on. And in the eyes of Strength and Weakness, I was succeeding.
But it wasn’t working.
Anxiety became a permanent condition.
The Loneliness It Created
But the hardest thing was the loneliness.
Inside the church, I was the person with the secret defect. Outside of it, I was unbearably Christian. I didn’t belong anywhere.
I spent hours on the Strength and Weakness chat room waiting for just one friend who understood me. Nobody came.
By the time I was 17, I consistently thought about killing myself. More than once, I stood on top of a parking garage looking down onto the street, wishing for a breeze to take me.
The only thing that stopped me was my family. Even then, I was thinking in terms of what burden I could spare them.
Even though my strength began to falter, I stayed with the program through college.
The leader, Guy Hammond—who founded the organization and who had “lived an active gay life until he was 24 years old”—had taken me under his wing. He was likely attracted to my clean track record of having never kissed a boy.
I was flown to conferences. I began counseling older men who were struggling and making content promoting conversion therapy on social media.
Guy sung me his praise. He referred me to Exodus International, a Christian organization that promoted conversion therapy to hundreds of local ministries. The organization shut down in 2013 and has apologized for the harm it caused.
Photo courtesy of Tacher.
Being pulled deeper into the ministry made the performance more demanding. The more Guy trusted me, the more I felt I had to live up to the image they had built around me: the disciplined one, the faithful one, the proof that this could work. So I kept counseling people even as my own life was unlivable.
The Beginning of Escape
For years, I believed that if I held on, God might make a different life for me. But eventually, reality started outrunning doctrine. I remember I was at the supermarket and I thought the guy bagging my groceries was so cute. By the time I had gotten to my car, I had fantasized an entire relationship with him. At that moment, I realized I would never be attracted to women.
I also began to understand that celibacy, which I had promoted to myself and countless others as the noble solution, would be ineffective.
At the same time, cracks were forming in my family’s faith.
Little did I know, my dad was terrified for me. He sought counsel from the church. He started reading, questioning and trying to understand what the Bible actually taught about homosexuality instead of what he had been told.
I remember the relief when the two of us were sitting in our old house, reading scripture and arriving at the same conclusion: The condemnation we had built our lives around was not as clear, or as holy, as we had been taught. The Bible didn’t condemn homosexuality like the church said it did.
“I’m so sorry,” he told me. He took full accountability. To this day, he has been the number-one advocate for my health and healing. He is my best friend.
Photo courtesy of Tacher.
For years, I lived in terror that I would destroy my family’s reputation. But in the end, the church revealed itself.
In a meeting to discuss an ongoing issue with a struggling member, my parents attempted to show them forgiveness, but the church said they were too close to see clearly. Suddenly, my folks saw the hypocrisy, the cruelty and the way power was protected and dissent was punished.
They stepped down from leadership, and over time, the church excommunicated our family, and members were told not to speak to us.
But it didn’t matter. The spell had broken and we felt free.
Shortly after, I stopped making content for Strength and Weakness.
As the distance between me and conversion therapy widened, I could finally breathe.
Leaving did not feel triumphant. It felt like standing in the ruins of my life. But I had one crucial thing before me: a future that belonged to me.
Reflection on the Supreme Court Decision
Now, I am working hard to undo the trauma I endured. I am in intensive therapy. I still live with chronic anxiety and chronic pain. And I’m still figuring out how to be myself.
What makes the Supreme Court decision so painful is that I know exactly what kind of world it protects and what kind of pain it inflicts on LGBTQ kids.
People call it free speech. But it is abuse.
Photo courtesy of Tacher.
Words taught me to hate myself. Words made me suicidal.
So when I learned that the Supreme Court ruled that this kind of messaging should be protected, that adults should be free to tell children that queerness is sickness, dangerous, shameful or sinful, I do not hear an abstract constitutional principle. I hear the beginning of a tragedy for kids like me.
And what hurts most is that I know the opposite is possible.
I’m 31 and managing a local cafe here in Denver. I have a queer community around me that is generous, visible, funny, messy, loving and alive. I look around and see LGBTQ people building ordinary, beautiful lives. I get to belong to something that once would have been described to me as a death sentence.
There is nothing dangerous about this community. What was dangerous was the lie I was told about it. Ignorance made my world small. Education and compassion made life livable. And love gave me back a future.
That is why the SCOTUS decision feels so devastating. While LGBTQ people are some of the most resilient folks I know, I’m also acutely aware of how strong a child has to be to survive after being told, over and over, that who they are is unlovable.
Uncloseted Media reached out to Sami’s dad. In an email, he wrote that his past comments are “rough to read.”
“I don’t remember saying the specific words, but I completely trust Sami, and trust that the words would be painfully and accurately remembered,” he wrote. He added that it was shame and fear that drove his remarks and that it’s “hard to describe the gratitude” he has for Sami’s willingness to forgive him. “Sami has allowed for our relationship to continue to heal, grow, blossom and flourish. I told Sami on the phone yesterday that I’m the president of their fan club.”
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta rose on the Pennsylvania House floor and offered a line that cut through hours of legislative debate and decades of legal inertia. “God did not make me to hate me,” he said. Minutes later, the chamber voted to move Pennsylvania closer to matching its laws to that principle.
The Pennsylvania House passed legislation Wednesday to codify marriage equality into state law, approving the measure in a 127–72 vote with bipartisan support, according to NBC affiliate WPXI in Pittsburgh. The bill would redefine marriage in state statute as a union between “two individuals,” replacing language dating back to the 1990s that limits marriage to “one man and one woman.” It would also repeal provisions that invalidate same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.
The vote does not change who can marry in Pennsylvania. That question was settled more than a decade ago by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. But it does address something quieter and, in this political moment, more urgent: whether states will rely on federal precedent alone, or take steps to insulate those rights within their own laws.
Pennsylvania, like many states, never fully updated its statutes after Obergefell. The result is a legal code that still contains a ban on same-sex marriage enacted in 1996. It’s unenforceable, but not erased. The legislation approved Wednesday would finally bring the state’s written law into alignment with the reality already lived by thousands of couples.
Kenyatta, a gayDemocrat from Philadelphia and the bill’s sponsor, described the effort as both a legal correction and a deeply personal imperative. “I know some folks in this building have never had to refresh a computer screen to see if a court has given you access to a fundamental right, but that’s where I was when Obergefell v. Hodges ruling came up, and the court voted correctly,” he said in a statement after the vote.
“Because of this vote, I got to marry my best friend, Dr. Matthew Kenyatta,” he added. “As important as this vote is to me, my family and people across the commonwealth who are in loving same-sex marriages, it’s equally as important that this law is passed to ensure our state law reflects the law of the land held in Obergefell.”
Public opinion has shifted dramatically since Pennsylvania first enacted its ban nearly 30 years ago. About 67 percent of Americans now support same-sex marriage, up from 54 percent in 2014, according to the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2024 American Values Atlas. A majority now supports marriage equality in every state.
Even so, the legal landscape remains more complicated than the House vote might suggest.
In 2022, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, and President Joe Biden signed it into law. It requires the federal government and all states to recognize valid same-sex and interracial marriages performed elsewhere. The law was designed as a backstop in case Obergefell were overturned, ensuring that couples would not lose federal recognition or see their marriages erased when crossing state lines.
But the Respect for Marriage Act does not require states to issue new marriage licenses to same-sex couples if the Supreme Court were to reverse Obergefell. In that scenario, states with bans still on the books, like Pennsylvania’s 1996 statute, could once again be in a position to deny marriages, even while recognizing those performed elsewhere.
That gap has driven a wave of state-level efforts to codify marriage equality in recent years, as lawmakers seek to close the distance between federal recognition and state authority.
In a statement following the vote, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, endorsed the House’s action in explicit terms. “Here in Pennsylvania, we believe in your freedom to marry who you love,” Shapiro said, adding that lawmakers had “stepped up to protect that right,” according to a post from the governor’s office.
The bill now heads to the Republican-controlled state Senate, where similar efforts have stalled in previous sessions. Across the country, Democratic-led chambers have increasingly moved to codify LGBTQ+ protections at the state level, even as those efforts run into resistance in more conservative legislatures.
A Texas man was arrested Tuesday (24 March) after repainting rainbow Pride crosswalks in Dallas that were removed Monday (23 March) under a state mandate.
Mason Whiteside was detained shortly before 3:30 AM Tuesday, after police officers saw him using chalk and spray paint to restore the designs in areas like Oak Lawn, a historic LGBTQ+ neighbourhood.
The removals began earlier this week after the Texas Department of Transportation enforced an October 2025 directive from Governor Greg Abbott requiring cities to remove non-standard road markings, arguing they could pose safety risks.
Whiteside was taken into custody over an unrelated, years-old traffic violation and paid to be released the following morning.
Speaking with The Dallas Morning News on 24 March after his arrest, he criticised the broader crackdown on LGBTQ+ and racial justice symbols, warning “How much longer until it’s not just crosswalks? Until they take our spaces, our actual spaces? There are a series of dominoes that could fall.”
The incident comes amid a wider national push to remove Pride and Black Lives Matter street art, with similar actions taking place in cities across the US.
Despite the risks, Whiteside made clear he has no intention of backing down. “Every single time they try to take it away,” he said, “I’m going to put it right back.”
A transgender woman is suing a Michigan homeless shelter, alleging that coworkers harassed her and that management’s insufficient interventions left her unable to return to work.
Devion Morgan filed a claim at the Washtenaw County 22nd Circuit Court against the Washtenaw County Shelter Association for alleged workplace harassment and discrimination based on how she identifies. She’s seeking $25,000 plus legal costs. The association runs the Robert J. Delonis Center, where she worked.
Morgan filed the lawsuit at the beginning of March, emphasizing discriminatory remarks allegedly made by her coworkers regarding her gender identity, MLive reports. The complaint includes claims regarding how the shelter management responded to her work situation and her use of paid time off.
According to the outlet, she became a full-time operational specialist at the downtown Ann Arbor shelter in May 2025 after working there for seven months as a seasonal and part-time employee.
Morgan claims that during her time there, some of the other employees used derogatory language against her, outed her as trans to other employees, and refused to acknowledge or properly use her preferred pronouns. Morgan says she reported the behavior to managers and higher management, but claims her complaints went unanswered and that managers did not remedy the situation. Morgan also alleges that taking paid time off resulted in harassment, leading eventually to the involvement of a union representative.
According to MLive, she says that a few months after starting her position, a coworker alerted her to an email circulating that contained accusations against her and discussed her identity. According to the complaint, she brought the allegations to the facility’s board’s attention in December, telling them she “feared for her safety.”
The complaint states that the board took some action, including an investigation into the email, employee training, and an apology to Morgan.
According to Morgan, she “has not been able to return to her job and has experienced elevated blood pressure, PTSD, and depression,” the lawsuit states.
Morgan claims the shelter acted in violation of Michigan’s Civil Rights Act by discriminating against her gender identity.
The shelter’s executive director responded to the lawsuit with a statement. “We don’t tolerate any kind of harassment or discrimination at the shelter association,” said Nicole Adelman. “We will engage in the court process as required by the court rules.”
Morgan’s attorney did not respond to MLive’s request for comment.
City leaders in San Antonio plans will unveil new rainbow sidewalks as part of a Pride celebration this week. The act comes even as Texas cracks down on other decorated walkways across the Lone Star State.
The sidewalks will be unveiled in San Antonio’s Pride Cultural Heritage District, which encompasses the North Main Avenue corridor and includes several historically significant establishments serving the LGBTQ+ community.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the removal of crosswalks at the intersection of Main Avenue and Evergreen Street. But officials have since completed repairs to the walkways and expanded the design to include the colors of the transgenderflag, according to San Antonio CBS affiliate KENS.
Michael Rendon, chairman of San Antonio’s LGBTQIA advisory board, spoke to the news station and said it remained vital to visibly represent the city’s diversity.
“In 2026, there’s certain individuals, certain people of our community that still feel unwelcome and unsafe,” Rendon said. “This strip represents a place where people can come from the LGBTQ community and our allies and come and celebrate, build community. It’s a space where we can come together, be ourselves, and welcome everyone from our community.”
But Abbott’s administration hasn’t let up on its anti-color crackdown. Just this week, Dallas removed a rainbow crosswalk at Cedar Springs Road and Oak Lawn Avenue, in the heart of the city’s LGBTQ+ district, following demands by the Texas Department of Transportation. Shortly after, police arrested a man who attempted to repaint the rainbow patterns in the roadway.
The elimination of that crosswalk was the first step in removing 30 Pride or Black Lives Matter-themed crosswalks in South Dallas.
Texas’ actions followed directives issued last year by U.S. Transportation Secretary and former Real World cast member Sean Duffy, who has insisteddecorated sidewalks represent road hazards. Shortly after being appointed to his Cabinet post by President Donald Trump, Duffy sent a letter to governors in every state urging the removal of certain “distractions” from non-arterial roadways.
Several Republican governors whose states include large LGBTQ communities proved eager to start painting over the multi-colored walkways. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis even ordered the removal of a memorial crosswalk at the site of the 2016 Pulse massacre.
In Miami Beach, city officials recently rebuilt a rainbow crosswalk inside a public park after the state forced the removal of a roadway version, relocating the symbol to a space under local control rather than abandoning it altogether, WPLG reports.
The new installation repurposes materials from the original Ocean Drive crosswalk, which state crews dismantled as part of a broader crackdown on street art. Rather than scrap the landmark entirely, Miami Beach leaders opted to preserve it as a permanent feature in a park setting.
The original crosswalk had become a widely recognized symbol of the city’s LGBTQ+ community before its sudden removal, which drew backlash from residents and local officials who said it erased a piece of cultural history.
In St. Petersburg, city leaders installed a series of rainbow-colored bike racks after being forced to remove Pride crosswalks, using other forms of public art to comply with state rules while maintaining a visible show of support.
Other localities have also fought back across the country. Atlanta leaders, for example, affirmed it would leave a prominent rainbow crosswalk in place in Georgia.
The San Antonio crosswalks will be unveiled in a special ceremony on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. CDT.
Members of the Ohio House voted Wednesday to advance the state’s ban on public drag and gender performance.
Ohio House Bill (HB) 249 – which received three committee hearings rife with anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-transgender disinformation – will now head to the Senate. The bill passed the House by a vote of 63-30, largely along party lines: Rep. Jamie Callender (R-Concord) broke ranks to vote against the bill.
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Public performances that meet the definition of obscenity are already banned under Ohio law.
Anti-LGBTQ+ language in the bill would disproportionately affect LGBTQ+ performers, heavily restricting “performers or entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performer’s or entertainer’s biological sex using clothing, makeup, prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts, or other physical markers …”
Additionally, a separate section of the bill that substitutes the phrase “private part” for “private area” would also help criminalize trans and gender non-conforming people who use gendered public facilities during daily life.
HB 249’s primary sponsor – conservative Christian Rep. Josh Williams (R-Oregon) – said the bill would stop transgender Ohioans from using gendered public facilities like locker rooms to change their clothing.
Williams repeatedly referenced an anti-transgender incident that occurred at a YMCA in Xenia, Ohio, in which a transgender person was sued after she attempted to change her clothing in a gendered communal locker room.
The incident was not part of a drag or gender performance.
Ultimately, a judge found the transgender person not guilty of public indecency. However, both Williams and David Mahan – policy executive director for Columbus-based anti-LGBTQ+ hate group the Center for Christian Virtue (CCV)– said the bill would prevent judges from ruling that way in future cases.
The bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Angie King (R-Celina), discussed the lawsuit at length ahead of the full House vote.
Brown Piccolantonio told lawmakers the removal of the language would “[clarify] that the bill is not meant to target anyone with an appearance that does not match their sex assigned at birth by simply removing the language about dressing in a manner inconsistent with ‘biological sex.’”
In 2023, lawmakers in Arkansas gutted a similar drag ban bill, heavily amending it to exclude language targeting performers who exhibit gender identities different from the sex assigned to them at birth “using clothing, makeup, or other accessories that are traditionally worn by members of and are meant to exaggerate the gender identity of the performer’s opposite sex.”
Williams told fellow lawmakers the portion of the legislation that targets LGBTQ+ Ohioans is an important part of the bill’s purpose.
“I’m in opposition to the amendment,” Williams said. “This amendment subverts the intentions of the bill’s sponsors. It undermines the specific obscene and child endangerment acts we are trying to legislate out.”
The House Judiciary Committee passed the bill, delivering it to the Ohio House for a full vote the same afternoon. Later – before the full House – Williams seemingly called transgender people who use communal public facilities to change their clothing “perverts” while discussing the Xenia lawsuit a second time.
“As long as I’m alive, I’m going to prevent perverts from exposing kids to obscene material,” Williams said.
“This bill takes regular, everyday activities and turns them into potential crimes, based on whether somebody else might be offended by what other people are wearing,” Steward said via a written statement. “This bill gives government the unacceptable power to police what people wear.”
“Drag is just the beginning,” Steward added. “Attacks against drag performers and transgender people, like so many bills that restrict LGBTQ+ visibility, have multiple consequences that endanger fundamental freedoms and safety.”
Rep. Dontavious L. Jarrells (D-Columbus) rose in stark opposition to the bill, noting his own experience navigating anti-Black legislation.
“This bill is not about children,” Jarrells said. “This is about the dehumanization of people who do not look like me.”
“This bill literally singles out people who are trans, those who are gender non-conforming, and basically calls into question, ‘Should you exist in the public eye?’ That is the reality of this bill,” he added. “When you talk about what this bill really is, it is an attack on human lives.”
The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund on Monday endorsed 35 candidates across 19 states, expanding its push to build LGBTQ+ political power as rights face renewed challenges in the 2026 election cycle.
At a glance, the list reads like a catalog of local and state races, city councils, county commissions, statehouses, and a mayoral bid in Reno. But taken together, it sketches a deliberate effort to seed LGBTQ+ representation throughout the machinery of the American government at a moment when that presence is being tested and, in some places, rolled back.
The March endorsements bring the group’s total for the 2026 cycle to 163 candidates nationwide, an expanding bench that reflects years of investment in building a pipeline from local office to national influence.
That long-game approach has taken on new urgency. Evan Low, in a recent interview with The Advocate, described the coming elections as a stress test for LGBTQ+ political power, unfolding amid a climate of fear, distortion, and an unprecedented wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
He has been making that case for months. In December, at the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute’s International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference, where former President Joe Biden was honored for what organizers called his administration’s “historic leadership” on LGBTQ+ equality, Low described the moment as one of “urgency and hope,” even as the community faces “laser-focused” efforts to “legislate us out of existence.”
In Connecticut, State Treasurer Erick Russell, the first out gay Black man elected to statewide office in the United States, is seeking to continue a tenure the Victory Fund describes as steady and fiscally grounded. In Illinois, Precious Brady-Davis, the first Black out trans woman elected to public office in Cook County history, is running for reelection as a commissioner on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago after building a profile around environmental policy and public health.
Elsewhere, the races are more local, but no less telling. Nevadan Devon Reese, a Reno city councilmember, is running for mayor on a platform rooted in downtown revitalization, community policing, and addressing the high cost of living. In North Carolina, State Rep. Deb Butler remains a fixture in legislative fights over equality measures. And in Wisconsin, Madison Common Councilmember Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford is running for the State Assembly’s 76th District, a race that, if she wins, would make her the first transgender person elected to the Wisconsin Legislature.
The geography is as notable as the candidates. The slate stretches across states where LGBTQ+ rights are broadly protected and those where they are actively contested, with Texas and Tennessee alongside California and New York.
To earn the Victory Fund’s endorsement, candidates must be out as LGBTQ+, support equality and bodily autonomy, and demonstrate a viable path to victory. Founded in 1991, the Victory Fund has helped elect thousands of LGBTQ+ candidates. That success has reshaped American politics in ways that now feel almost taken for granted.
And yet, as Low suggested in both his interview and at the December gathering, the question facing 2026 is not simply how many candidates run, but whether the political conditions that made their rise possible are beginning to erode.
