Singapore has no plans to lift its ban on same-sex marriage or end its tradition of censoring LGBTQ+ content despite confirming it will decriminalise gay sex.
The country’s LGBTQ+ community rejoiced on Sunday (31 August) after prime minister Lee Hsien announced the government would repeal Section 377A, which criminalises consensual sex between men.
But at the same time, they were reminded the fight for equality is far from over.
More than 20 LGBTQ+ groups called the repeal a “hard-won victory” and a “triumph of love over fear”, but stated that it was “the first step on a long road towards full equality for LGBTQ+ people.
During his speech, prime minister Hsein said that the government would iron-clad the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
This followed suggestions from religious groups that decriminalising same-sex relations could cause so-called “reverse-discrimination” for those who do not support same-sex marriage.
Hsein’s comments came as a disappointment to the coalition of LGBTQ+ groups, who said the decision will “undermine the secular character of our constitution, codify further discrimination into supreme law and tie the hands of future parliaments”.
After his speech, the Ministry of Communication and Information (MCI) released a statement confirming its hardline approach to LGBTQ+ media would also remain in situ.
LGBTQ+ media will continue to be regulated according to in a statement after the speech as reported by CNA.
It said the repeal of Section 377A did not mean that “we are changing the tone of society”, and that content that “depicts alternative sexualities” and “non-explicit depictions of sexual activity between persons of the same gender” would still be restricted for anyone under 21.
A spokesperson from Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) said the decision was to “protect younger audiences” but let older people “make informed choices”.
It added that it would continue to “take reference from prevailing norms”.
Prime minister Lee Hsien Loong speaks during the National Day Rally 2022. (Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore/YouTube)
Singapore has been locked in debate for decades on whether Section 377A should be repealed. In 2007, Hsein said it was not being “proactively enforced”.
In his address on Sunday, the prime minister referred to his statement at the time.
“It would have been too divisive to force the issue then,” he said. “Now, 15 years later, attitudes have shifted appreciably. While we remain a broadly conservative society, gay people are now better accepted in Singapore, especially among younger Singaporeans.”
“Private sexual behaviour between consenting adults does not raise any law and order issue,” he added. “There’s no justification to prosecute people for it, nor to make it a crime… The government will repeal Section 377A and decriminalise sex between men.”
Influence of British colonial rule
Singapore inherited Section 377A while under British colonial rule, opting to keep it after gaining its independence in 1965.
Since then, the law has been used to oppress Singapore’s LGBTQ+ community and police any kind of behaviour that isn’t seen as heteronormative.
Téa Braun, chief executive of the Human Dignity Trust, said in a statement: “Section 377A is both archaic and discriminatory. Because of this announcement, gay men can look forward to no longer being presumed criminals, and Singapore has decisively moved past persecuting people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
“This decision is incredibly significant not only for Singapore but for its wider signalling effect across Asia and the world, where millions of people are still criminalised based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
A journalist for the Manchester Evening News and his companion were verbally and physically harassed last week in the city’s iconic Gay Village.
“He started to get right up in my face, pushing me, shoving me, grabbing me and kicking me in the legs quite hard, then he went to go towards my friend. He said, ‘You are in my space, you are trying to touch me, you queer.’”
Daniel McLaughlin, 28, a podcast producer at Manchester’s largest news daily, was waiting for a taxi with his nonbinary friend in the early hours of Friday morning after a night out in the city’s popular gayborhood centered around Canal Street. McLaughlin, who identifies as bisexual, was wearing a rainbow badge.
McLaughlin told the Evening News he noticed a man who appeared to be in his early 20s heading towards them from nearby Sackville Gardens.
The man was “muttering to himself,” McLaughlin said, then directed “absolute hatred” towards them. “He was calling us nonces, fa***ts, perverts, every homophobic slur under the sun. He fixated on calling us names.”
“I started saying, ‘We’re not nonces, we’re puffs, there’s a difference,’ to which he became more aggrieved, shouting the same slurs. He was clearly inebriated, clearly angry about something.”
McLaughlin recounted that as a taxi pulled up, the “aggressive drunk” pushed him onto the moving vehicle, then continued to hurl abuse and followed McLaughlin as he tried to get into the taxi on the other side.
As the man was shouting “Get in the f**king car right now!” McLaughlin and his friend managed to get inside and pull the door shut. The driver sped away quickly from the ugly scene.
Daniel said the “old slurs” hurled at the pair were “nothing original,” but the young man’s age and level of aggression had shocked him.
“It didn’t particularly hurt,” McLaughlin said. “He was drunk, they were not focused attacks. But the thing I found the worst was the absolute hatred in his eyes, just the aggression and hatred towards us.”
“We hadn’t done anything. We had stood outside. But there was absolute hatred towards us, and the fact this guy was our age, to come up with this vitriol.”
“My theory was, he had all this pent up aggression. I think he went to the Gay Village looking for a fight. He went there with the purpose of starting trouble. The words he was using were recycled, words he had clearly heard elsewhere. Just archaic, older insults.”
“He wasn’t making arguments, he was just using the words, he wasn’t stringing a full sentence together.”
McLaughlin says he didn’t report the incident to police, believing there was “very little they could have done.” While he didn’t suffer any major injuries from the attack, McLaughlin said it did raise concerns about the safety of the LGBTQ community away from the Village itself.
“It’s something that’s not untypical, and that’s the frightening thing really. I moved to Manchester in 2012 for university and one of the big reasons was the Gay Village — I wasn’t quite out the closet at the time, but — having this place where I could be myself.”
“That’s why so many gay people move to Manchester, but in recent years it’s not felt like a sanctuary. It’s not necessarily aggressive, but I feel that the queer community is being pushed out.”
“The village itself I think would be safe, but because we had just left the Gay Village at Sackville Gardens, just a bit further away, that’s where the protection ends. I do feel trepidation when I exit the Village.”
The state of Idaho has been ordered to pay $321,224.50 in legal fees because of an anti-transgender law it passed in 2020 that had already been ruled unconstitutional.
In 2018, U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale ruled that it was unconstitutional for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (IDHW) to completely block transgender people from correcting the gender marker on their birth certificates. That case was brought by a transgender woman who was called a “tra**y” and a “fa***t” at a Social Security office when she showed them her birth certificate.
In 2020, state Rep. Julianne Young (R) introduced a bill to ban changes to birth certificates outside of a narrow set of exemptions. She claimed that the birth certificate is a “historical document” and that allowing transgender people to have birth certificates that reflect who they are threatens women.
“There is an ongoing discussion about this, but I will tell you, as a woman who is aware of the crime statistics related to the vulnerability of females as a group, this concerns me,” Young said at the time.
Later in 2020, Judge Dale ruled that IDHW had to follow her ruling and let transgender people correct the gender markers on their birth certificates.
The plaintiffs not only succeeded in getting the state to follow the Constitution, but they asked the court to have the state pay their attorneys’ fees. Instead of getting the nearly $450,000 that they initially requested, Dale awarded them $321,224.50.
The ruling would not have surprised opponents of the 2020 bill. State Rep. John Gannon (D) said at the time that it would be “a legal disaster” that would open the state up to “an expensive losing lawsuit paid for by taxpayers” since a federal judge had already ruled against it.
A hit-and-run car crash that killed three men and injured another in front of a Black-owned gay bar early Sunday morning “appears to be intentional,” the Chicago Police Department said in a press conference Monday. Officials said the incident is not currently being investigated as a hate crime.
Police said the crash occurred after an argumentinside the Jeffrey Pub turned into a physical altercation on the street. At one point, one of the parties involved got into his car and slammed it against the group standing outside the pub. Officials said they recovered the vehicle that rammed into four men outside the bar, but they are still searching for the driver.
Brendan Deenihan, the department’s chief of detectives, is asking the public to come forward with information.
“You can’t charge a car with a crime, obviously,” Deenihan said. “We need to know who the driver was, and we know that people out there know that.”
The four male victims were taken to local hospitals, with three succumbing to their injuries, according to the police.
The deceased victims were identified as Donald Huey, 25, Jaylen Ausley, 23, and Devonta Vivetter, 27, according to Brittany Hill, a spokesperson for the Cook County Bureau of Administration. The surviving victim has not been named publicly and is still hospitalized, according to NBC Chicago.
Dashcam footage of the incident obtained by NBC Chicago shows several people on the street when a physical altercation broke out. The video also shows the moments just before the car is about to hit the men but does not show the actual hit-and-run incident.
A woman who witnessed the crash said she saw a car speeding down the street before “a lot of chaos” ensued.
“I was standing outside the bar talking to one of the victims,” she said. “I took like three steps, and a car came and hit him, and he flew over the car.”
The Jeffrey Pub shared a message on Facebook about the sad episode, offering condolences to the victims’ families and encouraging anyone with information to come forward.
“Our hearts heavy this morning that such tragic event has occurred,” the post stated. “And to those that lost a loved one or friend we stand with you.”
Taiwan on Friday blamed “political considerations” for the cancellation of WorldPride 2025 Taiwan after it said the organizers had insisted the word “Taiwan” be removed.
Taiwan participates in global organizations like the Olympics as “Chinese Taipei,” to avoid political problems with China which views the democratically-governed island as its own territory and bristles at anything that suggests it is a separate country.
Taiwan’s southern city of Kaohsiung had been due to host WorldPride 2025 Taiwan, after winning the right from global LGBTQ rights group InterPride.
Last year, after an outcry in Taiwan, it dropped a reference to the island as a “region,” wording that suggests it is not a country.
But the Kaohsiung organizers said InterPride had recently “suddenly” asked them to change the name of the event to “Kaohsiung,” removing the word “Taiwan.”
“After careful evaluation, it is believed that if the event continues, it may harm the interests of Taiwan and the Taiwan gay community. Therefore, it is decided to terminate the project before signing the contract,” said the Kaohsiung organizers.
InterPride did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Residents of a small town in western Michigan helped raise almost $100,000 for their local library after it was defunded over the inclusion of LGBTQ books.
Primary voters in Jamestown Township, a community 20 miles east of Lake Michigan, rejected a proposal last week to renew tax funds to support the Patmos Library in nearby Hudsonville that serves Jamestown and the surrounding area. The rejection, which passed with nearly two-thirds voter approval, eliminates 84% of the public library’s annual budget, or $245,000.
Larry Walton, the library’s board president, told local news site Bridge Michigan that he was not expecting the loss of funds and that the library would likely run out of money late next year without those tax dollars.
“The library is the center of the community,” he said. “For individuals to be short-sighted to close that down over opposing LGBTQ is very disappointing.”
Walton did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
Two days after the vote, Jesse Dillman, a Jamestown resident and father of two, launched an online fundraiser to help raise the $245,000 to keep the library open.
“I am very passionate about this, and I have people that are behind me to do this,” he said in an interview. “I think I have to do it now, because the iron is hot. If this is going to happen, it’s going to happen now.”
As of Thursday morning, approximately 1,800 people had contributed more than $90,000. While many of those donors are local, people from as far away as Australia have contributed, Dillman said.
One donor, Michigan librarian Beth Pierson, wrote on the fundraising page: “I’m saddened and scared by what I’m seeing across the country regarding the attempts to limit freedom of access to information. Thank you for stepping up to do the right thing for the Patmos Library!”
Another donor, Georgia resident Shereen Mendelson, wrote, “People who ban books are never written well in history. You have my support from Georgia!”
More support came from a second donation page created by Michelle Barrows, also a resident of Jamestown. As of Thursday morning, she had raised almost $5,000.
Efforts to discontinue funding for the library can also be found on social media. In May, a private Facebook group called Jamestown Conservatives was launched. The group, which as of Thursday morning had 158 members, states that it was “created to help others of the community to be aware of the pushed agenda of explicit sexual content that is being infiltrated into our local libraries aiming toward our children.” The page also states that it stands to “keep our children safe” and “keep the nuclear family intact as God designed.”
The page administrator, Lauren Elyse, did not respond to a request for comment.
The controversy in Jamestown is part of a larger national debate over access to LGBTQ books in public libraries and schools. This debate has accelerated over the past year, with the American Library Association issuing a statement in November warning of a “dramatic uptick in book challenges and outright removal of books from libraries.” The association said LGBTQ books and books by Black authors were being targeted in particular. In 2021, five of the 10 most challenged and banned books in the United States were flagged because of their LGBTQ content, according to the group’s annual Top 10 Most Challenged Books list.
During a two-hour-long Patmos Library board meeting Monday, residents spoke both in favor of and against funding the library, WOOD-TV reported that most of the speakers were in favor.
Among the speakers was a former library employee.
“The purpose of a public library is to serve the public,” she said. “That includes everyone of all backgrounds, beliefs and interests. That means having material available from all viewpoints and topics, not what just makes some people comfortable. If you don’t agree with something, don’t check it out. That’s the beauty of a library. You have the choice to come in by yourself or your family and make the selections that best fit you.”
At the conclusion of the meeting, the board voted unanimously to place the issue of funding on the town’s November ballot.
Following Monday’s meeting, Dillman said he’s optimistic that the library will be able to get its funding back. In addition to continuing his fundraising efforts, he said he signed up to be on an independent town committee to help secure tax dollars for the library.
Anti-LGBTQ hate surged onlinefollowing the passage of a Florida law thatlimits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, a new report found.
This particular surge involves rhetoric implying that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people are “grooming” childrenand includes such slurs as “groomer,” “pedophile” and “predator” in relation to the LGBTQ community.
The month after the Florida Senate passed the Parental Rights in Education bill, or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, on March 8, tweets mentioning the LGBTQ community alongside these slurs increased 406%, according to the report, which was conducted by the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign and the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The law, which took effect July 1, bans instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity “in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
To evaluate the increase in rhetoric related to “grooming”, researchers collected a sample of 989,547 tweets that were posted between Jan. 1 and July 27 and that mentioned the LGBTQ community alongside words including “groomer” and “pedophile.” They found that an average of 6,607 tweets a day used such rhetoric in the month after the bill passed, a significant increase from 1,307 tweets the month before.
On March 28, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the bill into law, there was also a marked increase in the use of the “#OKGroomer” hashtag, which the report said was often used as a derogatory response to tweets from LGBTQ educators, organizations and health care providers, among others. On the day after DeSantis signed the bill, “OK groomer” tweets peaked with 9,219 total, or about one every nine seconds, the report found.
“Grooming” rhetoric was spread by a “small group of radical extremists as part of a coordinated and concerted effort to attack LGBTQ+ kids to rile up extreme members of their base,” the report said.
Tweets from just 10 people — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’ press secretary — were viewed an estimated 48 million times and were “responsible for driving” the “grooming” narrative, researchers found.
“We’re in the middle of a growing wave of hate and demonization targeting LGBTQ+ people — often distributed digitally by opportunistic politicians and so-called ‘influencers’ for personal gain,” Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said in a statement, according to a press release. “Online hate and lies reflect and reinforce offline violence and hate. The normalization of anti-LGBTQ+ narratives in digital spaces puts LGBTQ+ people in danger.”
In an emailed statement, Pushaw stressed that Florida’s new law affects those in “kindergarten through third grade.” However, critics of the law argue the language can be applied to those beyond grade 3.
“By definition, then, opponents of the law support adults talking to young children about sex and gender behind their parents’ backs. If you know a politically correct word for such behavior, I’ll gladly use it instead,” she said. “There are groomers of all sexual orientations and gender identities. My tweets did not mention LGBTQ people at all. Florida’s parental rights law likewise does not single out any identity or orientation.”
Pushaw added, “The only side playing into the hands of bigots, are the progressive activists who pretend that ‘grooming’ is somehow unique to the ‘LGBTQ community.’ It is not, and I do not understand why the Human Rights Campaign would want the public to think otherwise.”
A spokesperson for Greene did not answer questions about the report’s findings but encouraged NBC News to “be objective” and shared several links to the congresswoman’s Twitter posts and articles from the conservative news site Washington Examiner.
Boebert did not immediately return a request for comment.
Ahmed said Facebook and Twitter claim in their rules that they prohibit the use of “grooming” rhetoric to target LGBTQ people, but the report found that the platforms don’t always enforce those rules.
Researchers used Twitter’s “Report an issue” feature to report the 100 most-viewed tweets that used “grooming” rhetoric after July 21, when Twitter told the Daily Dot that calling transgender people “groomers” violates its policy against hateful conduct.
Twitter didn’t act on 99% of the 100 tweets, the report found.
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Twitter confirmed that use of the term “groomer” is prohibited under the site’s policy when it is used as a descriptor “in the context of gender identity.” The spokesperson said Twitter remains committed to combating abuse motivated by hatred or intolerance.
Researchers identified a similar problem on Facebook, whose parent company, Meta, also told the Daily Dot that calling LGBTQ people “groomers” violates existing policy.
Researchers identified 59 paid ads on Facebook and Instagram that promote the narrative that the LGBTQ community and its allies are “grooming” children. After researchers reported them, Meta removed only one of the ads and has continued to accept and run other similar ads since, the report said.
The report also found that Meta profited off the ads. According to statistics from Meta’s Ad Library, the company accepted up to $24,987 in payment for the 59 ads, which received more than 2.1 million impressions, the report said.
“The clear message from social media giants is that they are willing to turn a blind eye,” Ahmed said. “LGTBQ+ rights have been transformed after decades of hard-won progress, but progress is fragile unless you continue to defend it.”
A Meta spokesperson said in an email, “We reviewed the ads flagged in the report and have taken action on any content that violates our policies.”
Joni Madison, interim president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement that the rise of online vitriol “doesn’t just have political implications — there are deadly, real world consequences as violent rhetoric leads to stigma, radicalization, and ultimately violence.”
The report provides recommendations to Facebook and Twitter, including that they hire, train and support moderators to remove hate and enforce their community standards, act on hashtags that fuel anti-LGBTQ hate, and be liable for harm when they fail to enforce their community standards.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order Tuesday to ban conversion therapy, a discredited form of therapy that seeks to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, for minors.
The executive order directs state agencies to discourage conversion therapy for people of all ages, and to instead promote evidence-based practices for supporting LGBTQ people. The order also directs the Department of Human Services, among other agencies, to ensure that state funds are not being used to provide or reimburse for conversion therapy.
“Conversion therapy is a traumatic practice based on junk science that actively harms the people it supposedly seeks to treat,” Wolf, a Democrat, said in a statement. “This discriminatory practice is widely rejected by medical and scientific professionals and has been proven to lead to worse mental health outcomes for LGBTQIA+ youth subjected to it. This is about keeping our children safe from bullying and extreme practices that harm them.”
Survivors of conversion therapy have said that it can include talk therapy and being urged to take on traditional gender roles. A 2020 United Nations report found that it can also include more extreme practices such as aversion therapy, which can involve administering electric shock or medication to induce nausea while exposing the patient to same-sex erotic images.
The executive order makes Pennsylvania the 26th state to at least partially bar the practice for minors, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Twenty other states and Washington, D.C., completely ban the practice, while five states partially ban conversion therapy for minors. A federal court has barred three states — Alabama, Georgia and Florida — from enforcing conversion therapy bans. The remaining 21 states have no law or policy on conversion therapy.
Mathew Shurka, a conversion therapy survivor and co-founder of Born Perfect, a national campaign to end conversion therapy, said Wolf is “taking a critical step to protect LGBTQ minors” in Pennsylvania.
“LGBTQ kids and their families are targeted by so-called therapists causing lifelong harm,” Shurka said in a statement. “This executive order demonstrates that our political offices have the power to protect our youth and it is their responsibility to do so.”
The governor’s executive order cited research that has found conversion therapy contributes to negative mental health outcomes among LGBTQ youth.
A national survey published in March by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that 13% of all LGBTQ respondents ages 13-24 reported being subjected to conversion therapy, and 83% of those reported being subjected to it before they turned 18. The number was higher for transgender and nonbinary young people, 18% of whom reported being subjected to conversion therapy.
A 2020 peer-reviewed study published by The Trevor Project in the American Journal of Public Health found that LGBTQ youth who experienced conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report having attempted suicide than youth who had not experienced it, and more than 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the past year.
“Taxpayers’ dollars must never again be spent on the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion ‘therapy’ — which has been consistently associated with increased suicide risk and an estimated $9.23 billion economic burden in the U.S.,” Troy Stevenson, senior campaign manager for advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, said in a statement citing the research the group published in March.
He added, “We urge the state legislature to pass comprehensive state-wide protections and for governors across the nation to follow the Keystone State’s lead in ending this abusive practice.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
Mariah Hanson has always loved throwing parties to create a feel-good environment that was easy for people to meet new friends, celebrate their lives and go home with a few extra awesome memories. Under the Club Skirts Marquis, Mariah created the world famous Dinah Shore Weekend in 1991 with just that intention in mind – to create an exciting, community building, life affirming, unimaginably stellar experience for her customers.
She choose the world-renowned Palm Springs Modern Art Museum to host her first Dinah. Mariah knew an event inside this spectacular museum, surrounded by priceless artwork, was just the kind of statement she was trying to make – that our community is worth the very best and she was going to offer it. Mariah’s first Dinah was sold out, packing every room of the museum, where partygoers drank martini’s while surrounded by tens of millions of dollars worth of art.
Mariah wanted Dinah goers to feel safe, and inclusive, so she booked entire hotels so that they were 100% The Dinah occupied, brought in national sponsors, popular national recording artists, and kept all events in walking distance to create our very own world within a world. These simple but daring concepts, creating an empowering lesbian world within the city, catapulted the Dinah to international fame. Today, The Dinah is considered the largest lesbian/queer women event in the world.
The Dinah 2022 happens September 21 – 25 with the new Margaritaville Palm Springs serving as host hotel and the location of most of the parties. The overflow Hotel, The Doubletree, is booking now. Go to: www.thedinah.com to see the full schedule and purchase ticket.
Gary Carnivele: What is the history of The Dinah (formerly The Dinah Shore Weekend), which you started in 1991 and how it’s evolved over the years?
Mariah Hanson: I think it’s evolved a lot. I started it when I was thirty-ish and I really had no idea what I was getting into and I thought I’m going to try this. I booked the Palm Springs Museum, which was the state-o- the-art modern art museum. I figured out if you were a corporate member of the museum, you could, for $2500, host a cocktail reception in the art museum. Afterwards the board changed the guidelines to make sure that I could never host another event there. I’m 31 years older and I had the coolest job in the world. I got to drink for free. Now, that I’m older I realized that I need to do something substantial with it. At this stage, The Dinah really reflects my own personal journey which and reflects mine. My desire and commitment to create not only an open platform for LGBTQI+ but an inspiring place that tells stories. One that really speaks to women empowerment in every aspect. Attendees are noticing that the artist I booked prove there are no glass ceiling other than the ones we imagine. At the end of the weekend, people really get the up-lifting vibe that we all have. I feel like people leave the event feeling incredible and I just got an experience all to myself. And that was by design.
GC: What do you have in store for your attendees this year?
MH: it’s a really, special year. The 31st anniversary and so proud of the fact that we have produced a music festival event. People are so ready to get out and enjoy themselves and they belong to this community. We have been denied for 2 years and so I feel like people are really bringing it. There’s also issues that have come to the forefront that we know we won’t necessarily be too we will bet you it’s not but is there and so turn on slot right now that is so in our faces. I think it’s always been there with a certain function of our society and the state but this anti-misogynist, anti-women platform that the far right puts forward where women should be seen and not heard is so mind-boggling to me. It really came to the surface during the Trump administration. He is – in my opinion – very hateful individual and he really helped a lot of the hate come to the surface. He and the GOP stacked the Supreme Court who overturned a woman’s right to reproductive rights. Justice Thomas intimated that he’s going after marriage equality next. What are we do about that? I think when people come together with a kind of commonality we can fight oppression. It’s also a wonderful option to see how powerful we are when we collectively say no more answer
GC: Do you think there will be a political element at The Dinah?
MH: How can you not be political right now as a woman or a member of the queer community. it’s a scary time for all of us but I think it’s especially scary for women, women of color, women od lower social economic status. It’s a really frightening and we must stand up, be strong and say ‘no.’ We’ve done it before and we’re going to do it again. I think that that this time around we have so many more male supporters because we need you! It’s one thing for us to be doing this but we need our male allies more than ever. It’s an awesome opportunity for men to really show up and stand up and I know that they will because those hateful voices that we’re hearing are in the minority and that’s what we should remember.
We all need to stand up, speak up and vote in. The voting blocks that really can swing votes in a national election are all across the Midwestern states. We’re hoping to galvanize younger people, we didn’t the year before. We have been experiencing a certain kind of circumvention of our democracy one where it’s state governments versus the federal government. This is a test about how you can run a country our founding fathers never imagined. Because of technology it’s easier than ever to destroy what is a democratic institution. Trump was very close to becoming a dictator just like all the horrible people he admires so much.
GC: Let’s get back to The Dinah. Tell us about the schedule.
It’s jubilant pool parties and exciting evening events. The Dinah schedule is always very consistent. We start on Wednesday with The Official Dinah Pre- Party to which we’re inviting w the locals who we really appreciate. This year, that happens at Chill Bar, 8 p.m. – 2 a.m. World-class DJ’s, dancing poolside, and cocktails.
It’s the first time we’ve done it in the morning so we’re starting out wild and crazy right from the get-go.
Thursday is our opening party that’s happening at AsiaSF Palm Springs, which is a beautiful location. At midnight there will be a performance by the winner of our ‘Emerging Artist Contest.’
Friday kicks off at Noon with ‘The G(irl) Spot” a pool party, hosted by “The Real L Word’s’ Rose Garcia. DJ’s will provide great music.
Friday night we are at the ballroom at Margaritaville, our host hotel, for ‘The Black and White Ball,’ where Taylor Dayne will perform. Taylor gave me this great deal so that she can bring her band and not just sing to a track. I really appreciate it and Taylor is very supportive of our community. Also, Canada hip-hop artist Haviah Mighty, who is a really a powerful force.
Saturday is our big ‘The L Word Pool Party,’ which includes a ‘Celebrity Meet and Greet.’ ‘Battle of the DJs,’ and a vendor fair. IV4 and Cassidy King will perform. This all happens at Margaritaville Resort 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Saturday night we have ‘The Hollywood Party,’ in the Grand Ballroom at the resort. There will be fabulous 11 p.m. performance by Fletcher, an up-and-coming artist who about to bust out into stardom as a recording artist. She’s amazing and I’m so excited we were able to book her.
‘The Sunday Funday Pool Party’ happens at the resort 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. The will be fun games, exciting contests, and daring antics where you can win The Dinah 2023 tickets. Rubber Duck Dive, Best Dyke-ini, Guzzling a Beer Contest are all fun crowd-pleasers.
The Dinah 2022 ends with ‘The Dinah Official Closing Party’ 9 p.m. – 2 a.m. where the nation’s hottest DJs will spin and the winner or our ‘Emerging Artist’ will entertain us with an encore, midnight performance.
GC: Tell us more about the performing artists and how you go about booking them?
Cassidy King is our sleeper hit. I think she’s someone that we’ll all come to know sooner rather than later. She’s so amazing. She’s doing videos that she directs herself that portray our narrative, our stories. She’s all about queer romance, queer friendship, break ups. The videos are interesting because we are normalized in them. Just as we are now in the music industry. Sunday night I love our lineup mostly because for the first time ever it is all queer. And that really speaks to how queer people are willing to be out and front runners now in the music industry. We are breaking so many barriers and changing minds. It’s wonderful because I will tell you it was very hard to book queer acts throughout my career. I would approach big names, that we knew were queer, but they would decline because they didn’t want to be identified with a big, queer event like The Dinah. Her people or her record label would be squeamish. Thankfully, that has changed over these 31 years.
GC: Talk about the host hotel the Margaritaville
MH: Margaritaville, formally the Riviera, has been one of my favorite hotels in Palm Springs, just iconoclastic. Margaritaville changed the decor but has maintained all those beautiful bones. It’s an incredible 5-star hotel with two big, beautiful pools, this fantastic Grand Ballroom, and an inside garden – it’s just very upscale. Now it’s got a more of a Margaritaville theme but it’s still a great hotel with 400 remodeled rooms.
GC: Who attends The Dinah?
MH: Women of all ages really, but it does trend younger. The Dinah is a music festival and so we book performers and our DJs spin music for all ages. It’s also a right of passage and a bucket list item for the queer community. Go to The Dinah at least once in your life. What I love about older women attending is that they get to see how free society has become and how many inroads we’ve made. We can finally get to the point where we could be at 5-star hotel, which is completely booked. The Dinah is considered a legacy event in Palm Springs it’s the cities top 10 events. The whole city welcoming The Dinah’s attendees illustrates who important it is to their community. It’s important that we showcase how much work we’ve done to gain our civil rights because this wasn’t the case 31 years ago. I think queer women love to see how much freedom there is today. Now I can send mailing advertisements in The Dinah envelopes because so many people are out even in small towns across the states. IN the early days some women would chastise me: I can’t believe you didn’t put this in a plain envelope. My mailman now knows that I’m gay. It was heartbreaking. We’ve come a long way baby so h
GC: How many how many women do you expect to attend The Dinah 2022?
MH: I’d say this year we will have 7,000 – 10,000. I think it’s going to be a big year. A lot of local women come but the majority like 95% of the people coming out of all over, many from California but 50% from out of the state. We get a small percentage from out of the country.
GC: I would imagine COVID-19 has really impacted The Dinah.
Last year, I had to cancel it and then I dealt with the nightmare of having to refund as much as I could. My customers were very understanding – kind and patient. I was able to transfer 600 of ticket buyers to this year. The year before, we had zero transmission. I wanted everyone to understand that we need to show the world that we are conscientious and we care about each other. We’re asking people to test themselves before the event breakthrough cases vaccine is no guarantee that you’re Covid-free. We don’t want to be spreading it and we don’t want anyone else to get sick. The tests are 70% accurate and The Dinah needs to follow city, state, and CDC guidelines. We are asking people to please get tested.
GC: Talk about the people that work with you to produce a really amazing event.
There are many amazing women working with me the last couple months. I have about 40 people in Palm Springs that are familiar with the city, its vendors and services. Light and sound is another group of 30 hard-working people. Very mom-and-pop. We love it because we get to do it our way without the bureaucracy of a corporation. There’s a real leaning into what is needed at the time, where is our community is at the time, so we speak every year to what we think needs to be said. I think it’s really important for messaging to lead the way and so we like to do that every year and help inspire people to live bigger and brighter and better lives. And that includes everyone, that includes trans, non-binary, queer, lesbian. I’ve worked with transfolk who really helped me understand that some people are born in the wrong bodies and want to be authentically who they are. I have been very pro-trans in my career. I don’t believe in separatism. I don’t believe in keeping our world so small that people don’t fit in. I think that everybody needs to be invited to the table so when we are producing The Dinah we keep that in mind. You can’t just say: I’m inviting everyone. I want everyone to feel safe at The Dinah. We keep those things in mind because they are important, critical. I’m proud of the fact that we have in that messaging. There are too many people in our community who don’t live in really inclusive parts of our country. We want The Dinah to be the place where we invite you to just come on in let all your isms, all your differences, and all your fears melt away. This is a world where I can live for five days out loud, together being the beautiful people that we are and experience really cool, powerful people. We were together for five days and got to meet people from different backgrounds, from different ways of identifying. We all got along, we enjoyed each other. We found all these commonalities to take that home with us.
GC: Have you ever thought about doing a similar event here in Sonoma County?
MH: Yes, I have. I love what Gary Saperstein is doing with Gay Wine Weekend and I think there’s room for a women’s event. There’s not a lot of convention space here but I think the Renaissance is probably your best bet. We’ve been talking about it recently because this is the first time that I have been here permanently. I bought my grandfather’s house here in Sonoma in 1999 where my mother lived for her final years. I finally came back and feel settled. It’s an opportunity for me to really start thinking seriously about producing a Dinah event here where everyone is invited. Personally think we should always feel comfortable bringing our best guy friends.
GC: How can folks find out more about The Dinah 2022 and purchase tickets
MH: The website in thedinah.com and it is the best way to see the complete schedule and purchase tickets. Although I will say that our social media platforms are also a lot of fun.
GC: Thank you for taking the time to tell us all about The Dinah 2022. Best wishes for a successful event. We’ll wait to hear from you about the exciting event you’ll produce here.
MH: Thank you Gary and we hope to see all your readers at The Dinah.
