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LGBT National Help Center Launches The LGBT National Coming Out Support Hotline

On Tuesday, February 21, 2023, the LGBT National Help Center will officially launched its newest program, the LGBT National Coming Out Support Hotline.  The brand-new hotline focuses specifically on the concerns of those who are struggling with coming out issues (regardless of age, or how each person defines that process).  All services are free and confidential.  Staffed by all LGBTQIA+ volunteers, the dedicated toll-free phone number is 1-888-OUT-LGBT (1-888-688-5428), with a dedicated website at www.LGBTcomingOUT.org.   The new hotline is a program of the LGBT National Help Center, a non-profit organization with a 26-year history of providing coming out services.  The LGBT National Coming Out Hotline […]

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Repeal HIV Criminalization Laws to End the Epidemic & to Advance Racial Justice

On Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, we must remember the myriad ways the work to end the HIV epidemic overlaps with the work for LGBTQ justice and overlaps with the work to dismantle white supremacy. One of these overlaps is laws that criminalize HIV. HIV criminalization is when a state criminalizes otherwise legal conduct or increases the penalties for illegal conduct based on a person’s HIV status. As of 2022, there are at least 35 states with HIV criminalization laws. Each state’s laws vary. Some require the prosecution to prove the person intended to expose others to HIV, but in most states, simply […]

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EU human rights commissioner calls for end to ‘dangerous’ conversion therapy across all of Europe

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So-called “conversion therapy” has “no place in a human rights-based society”, according to the EU commissioner for human rights. Bosnian EU official Dunja Mijatović wrote in a Thursday (16 February) report that the controversial practice is “dangerous” and should end. Conversion therapy is an abusive attempt to change an LGBTQ+ person’s sexuality or gender identity through psychological manipulation, often carried out by religious or medical institutions and often following pressure from family members.  Not only does the practice not work, but it can also leave behind immense trauma and mental health issues for those subjected to it. “These interventions continue […]

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Indigenous transgender woman in Chile champions her communities

Being a transgender woman in South America is not easy when her average life expectancy in the continent is 35 years. It is even more difficult for those who are of indigenous descent. Claudia Ancapán Quilape, an indigenous trans woman with a Huilliche father and a Mapuche mother, has turned her fate around. Ancapán is 46-years-old and lives in Recoleta in the Chilean capital of Santiago. She is a midwife who works in a private clinic and recently earned a master’s degree in health. Ancapán is working on another master’s degree in gender and will soon begin a doctorate in […]

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Williams Instate Releases Report on the LGBT+ Community, 23% Live in Poverty

This brief details levels of poverty among LGBT people before and since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. When our last LGBT poverty report was released in 2019, data indicated an economic disparity between LGBT and non-LGBT people. Since that report, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and a cascade of negative economic effects were felt by large proportions of the U.S. population. Our new analyses, across multiple datasets, indicate that these disparities persist—a higher percentage of LGBT than non-LGBT people have incomes below the federal poverty level (FPL). We see consistency in the relevance of LGBT status over time, […]

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7.2% of U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ, Gallup Poll finds

The percentage of adults in the U.S. who identify as LGBTQ increased slightly year over year, to 7.2% last year, according to a Gallup Poll released Wednesday.  While that’s just a slight increase from 7.1% in 2021, it’s more than double what it was a decade ago, when Gallup found just 3.5% of the U.S. population identified as something other than heterosexual in 2012. Gallup asked more than 10,000 adults nationwide how they identify in telephone interviews last year.  For the first time, the organization recorded the identities of LGBTQ people who said they are something other than lesbian, gay, bisexual […]

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Hungary Court Closes Door on Transgender Legal Recognition

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In the latest blow to trans people in Hungary, the country’s Constitutional Court issued a ruling that will continue to block new applications from transgender people for legal gender recognition. The judgment effectively creates two categories of trans people in Hungary: those who applied early enough to pursue gender recognition and those who did not. In 2020, Hungary’s parliament passed a law banning transgender or intersex people from legally changing their gender, putting them at risk of harassment, discrimination, and even violence when they need to use identity documents. In 2021, the Constitutional Court ruled the ban on legal gender recognition does not apply retroactively, so […]

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American Bar Association Backs Intersex Autonomy

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The American Bar Association (ABA), a membership organization for attorneys in the United States that develops professional ethics codes, has issued a resolution supporting the rights of children with intersex traits to consent to surgeries. The ABA’s resolution follows years of legal and policy progress recognizing that “normalizing” surgeries on people with variations in their sex characteristics should be chosen by the individual, not their parents or doctors. Around the world, since the 1950s, people born with variations in their sex characteristics, sometimes called “intersex,” have been subjected to harmful medically unnecessary “normalizing” surgeries. Surgeons popularized these cosmetic surgeries on infants to remove gonads, […]

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What does the queer movement look like from under a desk?

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During the recent Speaker voting chaos, the world had an unprecedented view of the House Chamber through uncensored camera footage. Self-described citizen journalist V Speharsays being in the room where it happens reveals the true colors of elected officials and how their personal and political agendas may impact our country’s future. Spehar, 40, spent the early part of their career in the hospitality industry in New York City, Tampa, and eventually as an event planner with one of Washington D.C.’s most prominent caterers.  “People speak so honestly in front of you when they don’t think you’re ‘that’ kind of smart — when they […]

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Ben LaBolt to become first gay White House communications director

Ben LaBolt will become the first openly gay White House communications director, succeeding Kate Bedingfield, who is expected to leave at the end of February, advisors to President Joe Biden announced on Friday.  Bedingfield is expected to work on Biden’s reelection campaign. LaBolt has worked for the president since the Obama administration, most recently leading communications around matters like the nomination and confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the American Rescue Plan, and the Inflation Reduction Act.  The move comes shortly after Biden’s Chief of Staff Ron Klain and top economic advisor Brian Deese announced their departures […]

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