Columns

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Bill Maher falls for Trump’s charm offensive and ends up as the real sphincter

I run hot and cold with Bill Maher. Personally, I prefer John Oliver or Stephen Colbert. Yes, Maher has his moments reveling in provocation, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I remember when he tangled with National Review Editor Rich Lowry about January 6 last fall before the election and the fact that Lowry was voting for Donald Trump. It dumbfounded me, and still does, that people can condemn Trump for January 6, trash him as undemocratic, and then go out on Election Day and pull the lever for him. Maher called out Lowry’s hypocrisy. But last week Maher proved his hypocrisy and his […]

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Now is a uniquely terrible time to cut funding for HIV

Rebecca Denison expected to have a short life. She’d acquired HIV as a college student in the 1980s, she told the audience at an infectious disease conference in San Francisco earlier this month, and got an official diagnosis in 1990. “Back then,” she said matter-of-factly, “It was understood we were all going to die.” Within six years, that all changed. A new generation of drugs called protease inhibitors, when combined with other drugs, made the virus virtually undetectable in people with HIV, giving them a much greater chance of living to old age. “Your work saved my life,” Denison, now an advocate for HIV-positive women, […]

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LGBTQ Alabamians and Our History Will Not Be Erased

Freedom has never been a passive gift. It is a fight we carry forward, generation after generation. Living in Alabama, I’m aware that every right we enjoy was won by the people—not simply granted by lawmakers. Black elders in Montgomery remind us that the Montgomery Bus Boycott wasn’t just a symbolic protest—it was 381 days of relentless organizing, sacrifice, and resistance. These histories are blueprints for our movements today, and we need them now more than ever. As a volunteer for Montgomery Pride United, I have witnessed how the LGBTQ movement is sustained by elders who survived bar crackdowns, led […]

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Queer women candidates have been smashing glass ceilings across the US. Let’s help even more win.

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Each March, we have the opportunity to examine the contributions of women throughout history and honor those who inspire us. As an advocate working to get more LGBTQ+ people elected to public office, I have the privilege of supporting many incredible leaders in their campaigns and beyond, including many inspiring women.   As we look back on the milestones in our movement for equitable representation, LGBTQ+ women have much to celebrate.  The first successful out LGBTQ+ candidate in American (and possibly world) history was Kathy Kozachenko, who won local office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a third-party candidate in 1974. The first […]

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Phones, COVID, & fascism have pulled us apart. The growing queer bar scene could reconnect us.

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It’s a Thursday night or a Sunday afternoon, and you’re sitting on your couch with your phone in your hand. What are you going to do? That’s the question at the heart of a loneliness crisis that’s overwhelmed the LGBTQ+ community. The rise of social media and “the apps,” a wave of bar closings during the COVID pandemic, and a hostile political environment have conspired to produce a sense of dread for gay Americans that still has a lot of us sheltering in place — alone together. But the obstacles keeping us apart in real life are giving way to […]

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Bullies like Trump fall when good people act

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.” -Holocaust survivor, social justice writer, and activist Elie Wiesel in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on Dec. 10, 1986. Elie Wiesel’s words are as true today as they were the day he delivered them, […]

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It’s time to build a sustainable future for LGBTQ+ advocacy work. Here’s why

Pride may look different this year than those of recent memory.  With the return of the Trump presidency, companies abandoning DEI, and the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, the sociocultural wars in the U.S. are having many LGBTQ+-led nonprofits gasping for air. I see this moment as an opportunity, as hopeful as I am.  It’s time to rethink how our community interacts with the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC). The relationship between governments and private philanthropy has gradually transformed nonprofit organizations into intermediaries that manage rather than solve social issues. Far too often, this structure has created a dependency on external funding, limiting the scope of radical change […]

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In the Trump administration, cruelty is the point

Since Donald Trump took over the White House for the second time, we, the people of the United States and across the globe, have suffered a virtual whiplash compared to the policy initiatives during Joe Biden’s first week in office and throughout his presidency. During his campaign, Trump threatened to be “a dictator on day one.” Well, if the dozens of executive orders he signed in his first few days in office are any indication, he is certainly following through on that promise. On oligarchy In his farewell speech to the nation before leaving office, President Biden warned of a […]

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Why are institutions bowing to Trump’s illegal anti-trans orders?

President Donald Trump’s barrage of executive orders targeting transgender people has resulted in an immediate catastrophe for trans people, their families, and those who seek to work with them. Federal agencies have scrambled to scrub so-called “gender ideology” from websites and agency guidance, removing valuable information about HIV prevention, research into health disparities, and webpages about sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. Meanwhile, federal employees are ordered to remove pronouns in their email signatures, and agencies have banned Pride events. Trump signed his first anti-trans executive order within hours of taking office and has only continued the onslaught. The speed and scope of the orders are […]

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CALL TO ACTION: An activist’s guide to civil disobedience

Political changes often seem like a pendulum swinging back and forth in endless motion. In our current era, the pendulum is on a rightward trajectory in many “liberal democracies” like France, Germany, and of course, the United States. Many of us who believe in the democratic principles of social justice are shocked by the right-wing direction the United States has taken with the second election of Donald Trump. Many thought his first successful bid for the presidency was a mere fluke, but his recent victory shows the underlying roots of anti-liberalism, or more appropriately, the deeply embedded patriarchal Christian white […]

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