Perspectives

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Meet 3 transgender student-athletes fighting for the right to play

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Despite ever-growing food and fuel prices, an ailing health care system, and violent conflicts in the U.S. and abroad, the far right has decided to continue to wage war on transgender student-athletes. And while politicians debate the topic within our nation’s highest offices, many forget about the real human beings who are affected. Becky Pepper-Jackson When West Virginia House Bill 3293, also known as the Save Women’s Sports Act, became law in 2021, Becky Pepper-Jackson, a track-and-field athlete who identifies as trans, and her family challenged the bill in court. Since then, the battle over whether schools should allow trans student athletes […]

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Anti-Trans Ex-NBA Player Ejected From WNBA Game

CBS Sports reports: Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom was ejected from his courtside seat during the Indiana Fever’s 113-90 win over the Chicago Sky on Sunday after getting into a verbal altercation with Sky guard Natasha Cloud. An official and security personnel immediately jumped in, and Cloud’s teammates arrived to pull her away from the situation. The official gestured for Kanter Freedom to be ejected and both team and arena security escorted him away from his seat. He tried to protest in an area behind the courtside seating for a short period before eventually leaving to a chorus of boos […]

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New study challenges trans ‘advantage’ argument in women’s sports

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A new scientific study is challenging one of the central arguments used to justify bans on transgender women and girls competing in women’s sports. The argument that transgender women retain an inherent physical advantageover cisgender women after undergoing hormone therapy is being challenged by researchers in Brazil who pooled the results of 52 studies involving thousands of participants to compare the physical characteristics and fitness of transgender women and cisgender women following hormone therapy in a study published this year. The researchers found that transgender women generally had greater lean muscle mass, but that difference did not translate into a clear advantage in […]

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Extreme ballot measure could force anatomy inspections for girls’ sports teams

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The debate over transgender student-athletes is heading directly to voters this November, with a surprising and extreme ballot measure in Washington state seeking to restrict trans girls from participating in school sports that align with their gender identity. IL26-638 would apply specifically to girls’ sports teams, creating certain eligibility requirements for K-12 athletes.  As a result, female students would have to prove their sex assigned at birth, and criticism has emerged regarding the enforcement provisions outlined in the bill’s literature. Under the proposal, female students would need to have their sex assigned at birth verified through genetic screening, testosterone level […]

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MAGA Trolls To Declare For WNBA Draft As Trans

The New York Post reports: Former NBA player Royce White plans to declare for the 2027 WNBA Draft — the second former pro to test the league’s policy on trans athletes. White, 35, a Republican candidate for US Senate who only played three games in his short NBA career, made the announcement on Friday on the heels of former first round draft pick and Knicks center Enes Kanter Freedom’s declaration earlier in the day. “I’m transgender. I’m a woman… I identify as sometimes identifying as a woman for purposes of… professional basketball,” White told Fox News. Earlier in the day, Freedom said […]

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The fight for trans athletes isn’t about fairness. It’s about who gets to belong

A young Rose Montoya was put in T-ball and basketball because of the gender she was assigned at birth. Her teammates were boys who spent more time bullying her than passing her the ball. Her real friends were the girls who let her play dress up. Most days, the boys made it clear she didn’t belong with them. So she got pushed into solo sports instead, and she missed out on the things sports are supposed to teach kids: teamwork, confidence, belonging. That’s what’s actually at stake in this fight. Not trophies. Belonging. This was never really about sports. Sports are the distraction, […]

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The people who called AIDS God’s punishment for gays are helping measles make a comeback

MAGA, MAHA, or whatever we’re calling a cult of people determined to drag America back to 1830, is having another banner year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last Friday that the U.S. currently has the largest number of measles cases we’ve seen in 35 years, and it comes amid a dramatic slide in childhood vaccination rates. Maybe it’s time to bring back the covered wagons and live in simpler times when 40 percent of all children failed to reach adulthood. We’re well on our way. Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, it was impossible to escape the hatred and hostility hurled […]

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LGBTQ+ families need safe spaces where they can exhale. If you can’t find one, create one.

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Creating a “safe space” looks different for everyone. It might mean being physically protected from harm or knowing that you can share your emotions openly and without judgment. But for LGBTQ+ families, there’s usually one shared quality: knowing you’re free to celebrate your loved ones while expressing your most authentic selves. And if there’s one thing the LGBTQ+ community is good at, it’s forging safe spaces. I think of bell hooks’s definition of queerness: “the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and […]

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Lonely Lindsey Graham died tethered to the man who humiliated him

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Lindsey Graham died Saturday at 71, and I have to be honest with you: in the eight years of writing for this outlet, I don’t think I’ve written about anyone more than I’ve written about him — except, of course, Donald Trump. Stay up to date with the latest in LGBTQ+ news with The Advocate’s email newsletter, in your inbox five days a week. And I’ll be upfront about something else.  Those columns were never kind, and they were never dull, because Graham was reliably good for a click. Lots of them. Every time his name went in a headline, readers showed […]

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Marriage equality didn’t threaten America. It expanded freedom

On Saturday, the United States marked its 250th anniversary, and, shortly before that, on June 26, it marked 11 years of marriage equality for all Americans. Both occasions are celebrations of freedom. We celebrate the freedom to speak our minds, build our lives, practice our faiths, and pursue happiness in our own way. Yet this year, as some far-right religious leaders renew and amplify calls to roll back marriage equality, it is worth asking one simple question: Stay up to date with the latest in LGBTQ+ news with The Advocate’s email newsletter, in your inbox five days a week. What […]

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