Top Stories

/ /

How 1970s Christian crusader Anita Bryant helped spawn Florida’s LGBTQ culture war

At a public hearing in Dade County, Florida, parents were enraged. The nation, they said, was in peril and children were at risk. A recent ordinance had granted gay people housing and employment protections, and that meant teachers couldn’t be fired because of their sexuality. Florida classrooms quickly became a battleground, and opponents of the ordinance said the state’s support of civil rights for homosexuals was infringing on their rights as parents.  Action had to be taken, and a campaign to limit the legal rights of LGBTQ people — all in the name of protecting children — was enacted. A […]

/ /

Tough Territory for Transgender People in the Middle East and North Africa

Transgender people, whose assigned gender at birth does not match their gender identity, face a grim reality in much of the Middle East and North Africa region, including daunting obstacles to legal gender recognition. To get a better sense of these obstacles, I reviewed existing legal frameworks and case law, and conducted interviews in Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia, talking to activists and experts as well as transgender people about their experiences. Building on existing research on violence and discrimination against transgender people in the region, this analysis summarizes what I found. Legal gender recognition for transgender people refers to the official recognition of their gender […]

/ /

Professor points out the double standard Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law misses

Uju Anya, Ph.D., is a professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Modern Languages. She researches applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics, and critical discourse studies through the lenses of race, gender, sexual, and social class identities, according to her website. And in just 45 words, she exposed the hypocrisy of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and other legislation of its ilk. Here’s Anya’s tweet from last summer, a tweet that recently got heat on Reddit’s r/lgbt forum after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the so-called “Parental Rights in Education” bill into law last month. Anya tweeted that argument in June, before Florida’s […]

/ / /

Trans women can get prostate cancer too, but they’re being failed by the healthcare system

,

Heather Peto had been feeling run down for a while before she realised there might be something wrong. At first, she blamed her recent experience with COVID for her feelings of exhaustion – but gradually, she started to notice other, more troubling symptoms creeping in. Eventually, she realised that she was exhibiting some of the signs and symptoms of prostate cancer. Getting to that realisation wasn’t easy. As a trans woman, Heather often has to fight to access the healthcare she needs. Some doctors and specialists are unaware of the specific symptoms trans women might experience when they have prostate cancer, while others don’t […]

/ /

Trolls make up fake stories of parents forcing kids to be trans to fuel moral panic

,

An internet forum where people pretending to be parents forcing their children to be transgender has gotten shut down after it was found to be full of fake stories. As the U.S. plunges even deeper into a moral panic over children who are supposedly being forced to transition, some anti-transgender people are reacting to the fact that that never happens by making up stories about it and trying to pass them off as real. Related: Why are Kentucky Republicans so afraid of a mediocre 12-year-old athlete? “Anyone else have trouble convincing your teen kids to continue transitioning?” user “Funkyduffy” wrote on […]

/ /

Half of LGBT+ sexual assaults based on identity – a quarter are ‘conversion’ attempts, report finds

,

Half of LGBT+ sexual violence survivors believe they were assaulted because of their identity, a  survey has found. In the largest report of its kind, British anti-abuse charity Galop asked nearly 1,000 LGBT+ people about their experiences of sexual violence. Those surveyed described instances of rape, penetrative sexual assault, ‘revenge porn’ and groping. Such experiences haunted them for months, with 85 per cent saying the trauma impacted their mental health and 77 per cent their relationships. In a damning indictment against the government’s sluggish approach to banning conversion therapy, nearly a quarter of survey-takers believe their attackers were trying to “convert” […]

/ /

‘Groomer,’ ‘pro-pedophile’: Old tropes find new life in anti-LGBTQ movement

The national war of words over whether students should learn about LGBTQ issues in school — ignited by a recently enacted Florida law that critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — has taken a charged, and some say dangerous, turn over the last several weeks.  In early March, the press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted that anyone who opposes the bill “is probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” Several days later, Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked her millions of viewers, “When did our public schools, any schools, become […]

/ /

‘Politics’ and ‘politician’ have become dirty words

When you study the field of politics, it is represented as “the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.” An accepted definition of a politician is “a person who is professionally involved in politics, especially as a holder of or a candidate for an elected office.” Politics, if done well and honestly, should not be thought of as dirty and neither should the politician who practices politics. One can be an activist and practice politics without being a politician. But I […]

/ /

The worst part of traveling while gay

Take a look at the pictures below. Do Michael and I look alike to you? It’s true, we’re both white, middle-aged men, fairly fit, and we wear glasses. Related: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s latest Jan 6 excuse? It only happened “one time”! But honestly? I don’t think we look anything alike. Michael has a full head of silver hair — and I’m bald. Michael is at least three inches taller than I am. And yet, as we travel, I’ve literally lost track of the number of times people have mistaken us for brothers. People often — often — even assume we’re twins! Here’s the […]

/ /

It is illegal to be LGBTQ in these countries

,

In 71 countries, being queer makes you a criminal. In 11 of them, the punishment is death. Some countries differentiate between having gay sex and actually being gay, but the result is discrimination no matter the reasoning. America’s religious right is clamoring for crackdowns on gender expression and LGBTQ rights similar to the laws enforced in less advanced countries. Some prominent Republicans and pastors have gone so far as to suggest America should be a theocracy like some countries on the list. Iran, parts of Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates proscribe the death penalty for […]

«‹ 378 379 380 381›»