Columns

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The pain of racial injustice lingers. Here’s how you can support your Black partner

It takes a strong Black person to date a white person. For better or for worse, romantic relationships are a minefield of opportunities to explore Black/white dynamics in America. It works well when the white partner is able to reduce the harm they create and learn from their partner, but it can also be traumatizing for the Black partner to relive life-alienating societal patterns in one of their most intimate relationships.  When a white man is fascinated with my last name, I don’t expect them to know that it reminds me of how my family history has been ill-kept. In […]

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Coming out is not the serve you think it is

Coming out is undoubtedly part of the essence of contemporary queer culture. It represents a point in one’s journey to complete self-actualization where they fully accept themselves, their body, and also demand to occupy space in an insidiously cis-heternormative world.  This concept/journey has become such a treasured part of queerness, so much so that National Coming Out Day is celebrated every year on Oct. 11, not only to commemorate the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights which demanded civil rights and legislation for LGBTQ people, but to also allow queer people to be visible, unabashedly live in their […]

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Pride is more than a rainbow

Pride season is here. Tens of thousands of ATMs across the country will sport rainbow adornments, Target and H&M will devote sections of their stores to a panoply of rainbow trinkets and garments, companies from nearly every business segment in America will wish the LGBTQ community a “Happy Pride.” Rainbow flags will be festooned across storefronts nationwide and then disappear. What many companies fail to realize is this annual ritual known as ‘rainbow washing,’ can have unintended negative consequences. Pride is 24/7/365 and companies that relegate their LGBTQ outreach to one month a year are often perceived as pandering and […]

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The New York Times Doesn’t Know What Pride Is For

In her major new account of ACT UP New York, Let the Record Show, writer Sarah Schulman recalls that the infamous AIDS activist group had a special nickname for a certain paper of record: the “New York Crimes.” Though a bit goofy, the pun drew attention to the New York Times’ very serious history of institutional homophobia and, at the time, derelict coverage of the HIV epidemic that ACT UP was fighting. While the paper has improved by many measuresin the decades since, it showed a little flicker of its old self this week. After the announcement that New York City’s Pride […]

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Our Democracy Hinges on Decision in Fulton Case

Queer or non-queer, if you value democracy, civil rights and health care, nothing’s as scary as the Supreme Court. With the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, there’s the reasonable concern that the court (with a 6-3 conservative, Republican majority) might rule in favor of Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. There’s the (not unreasonable) fear that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance if the court rules in favor of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Then, there’s Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a case that hasn’t gotten much attention in the midst of the election and the pandemic. […]

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The Harm of Excluding Queer History in Schools

The majority of high school students can rattle off facts about the lives and legacies of figures like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Graham Bell, but can’t do the same for Marsha P. Johnson, Harvey Milk, or Leslie Feinberg. This is because in today’s school system, the contributions of key LGBTQ+ civil rights leaders and the movements they lead aren’t taught. This exclusion of queer history, coupled with the leaving out of LGBTQ+ inclusive sex education, affects all students in negative ways.  Being forced to seek information about people like us in the past and different sexual orientations as we figure […]

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The Sad, Closeted Hypocrisy of Lindsey Graham

Sen. Lindsey Graham returned to the national spotlight this week, overseeing the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. The irony of this appears largely lost on the mainstream media.  Graham, for years and years rumored to be gay, is rushing the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice who will likely rule on challenges to the Obergefell marriage decision that will undoubtedly curtail its scope, if not overturn it entirely, as Justices Alito and Thomas revealed last week as their goal.  The confirmed bachelor’s efforts to keep his sexual orientation a secret suffered a blow this summer, when male escorts and […]

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Key Rights at Stake in US Supreme Court Pick

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18, 2020 leaves a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court and enormous uncertainty over the court’s future role in the protection of fundamental human rights. A nominee for Justice Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court should be evaluated in terms of their likely impact on access to justice for critical human rights guarantees, including the rights to life, due process, free expression, privacy, health, freedom from arbitrary detention, and freedom from discrimination. The following areas of Supreme Court decision-making–voting rights, the right to health, the right to reproductive freedom, and […]

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LGBTQ: The Letters Republicans Didn’t Utter

Call it the convention that dared not speak our name. LGBTQ people earned not a single mention during Republicans’ pageant in red, through four nights of televised speeches last month.  This refusal to acknowledge the existence of more than 15 million LGBTQ people, 5 percent of the populace and residents of every ZIP code in America, shows a paralyzing hypocrisy. The Republican Party depends on anti-gay intolerance to rev up its base at election time but has to feign tolerance when the broader public is watching, knowing bigotry turns off a key slice of getable voters.  The GOP platform, held […]

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RNC Prove to be Racists, Anti-LGBTQ and Sleazy Charlatans

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While 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton deemed Donald Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables” during the campaign, the list of Republican National Convention speakers this week may be taking the term to a whole new level. Trump’s reelection convention will feature an extensive lineup of racists, anti-LGBTQ activists, and con men. And that doesn’t count Trump himself. Related: Budweiser trolls Donald Trump and the deplorables in new Super Bowl ad Anti-LGBTQ activist Franklin Graham will speak. He recently made news when the field hospital he operated during the height of New York’s COVID crisis refused to accept any volunteers who wouldn’t […]

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