The pioneering journalist Monica Roberts, whose influential blog TransGriot reports on the murders of trans women alongside other news of importance to the trans community, has died, according to multiple sources on social media and news outlets. The award winning Roberts was an inspiration to many LGBTQ activists, campaigners and journalists, who took to Twitter and Facebook to express their grief and shock Thursday night. In a Facebook post, the Black Trans Advocacy Coalition wrote: “It is with great sadness that the BTAC family has received notice of the passing of Monica Roberts, our sister, aunt, and friend. We should have […]
LGBT rights in the United States
15 posts
If you think same-sex marriage isn’t in danger of being overturned, Justice Clarence Thomas would like you to think again. Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, today published a blistering attack on the Supreme Court’s landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges, which struck down state bans on same-sex marriage in 2015, arguing that it should be overturned. Thomas’s opinion is not a court decision, and has no legal impact. My husband and I are still legally married, and our daughter has not yet been taken away from us. But Thomas’s screed is a terrifying warning for the millions of LGBTQ Americans […]
In 2013, J.K. Rowling explained how she chose her now-controversial pseudonym, “Robert Galbraith.” The first name, she said, was a nod to her political hero, Robert Kennedy. And the last name? “When I was a child, I really wanted to be called Ella Galbraith, I’ve no idea why.” It’s a charming anecdote—but unfortunately, Rowling shares her pseudonym with real-life psychiatrist Robert Galbraith Heath, who in the 20th century pioneered what we now call conversion therapy using techniques including electroshock and “brainwashing” drugs. Rowling’s anecdote, issued before her alternate name choice had stirred much mainstream controversy, casts this tie as sheer, if […]
A pool boy allegedly fucked his wife as he sat, watched, and enjoyed every second. For such a virulently anti-gay, Christian conservative, props to Jerry Falwell Jr. for at least serving up a note of pure Jackie Collins camp in the scandal that has led to his reported resignation as president of Liberty University, although on Monday night he claimed to be on “indefinite leave.” “Becki [Falwell’s wife] and I developed an intimate relationship, and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room,” Giancarlo Granda told Reuters of his affair with the couple. Now 29, Granda told Reuters that these […]
As the curtain rises on the Republican National Convention, LGBTQ organizations are pushing back on the Trump campaign’s newest attempt to woo queer voters. The president’s campaign is calling Trump “the strongest ally that gay Americans have ever had in the White House,” but a new ad produced by GLAAD says otherwise. The anti-Trump advertisement, which will target Fox News voters the week of the convention, shows a gay man speaking with his Trump-supporting mother about the president’s opposition to the Equality Act and other proposed protections for LGBTQ Americans. “Ma, do you know that I could be evicted for being […]
Any ‘Gay and Lesbian History’ college course will dive into closeted white suburban gay male representations. In fact, this group of men, sneaking around in mid-century America, have received a fair bit of Hollywood attention in recent years. There was fashion designer Tom Ford’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s haunting novel A Single Man, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Oscar vehicle The Imitation Game, and Luca Guadagnino’s take on André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name. Todd Haynes’s excellent Far From Heaven refocused the lens from a cheating closeted suburban husband to the wife’s own relationship with a Black man who works as her gardener, […]
The thing about being out as transgender is that everyone—and I do mean everyone—thinks they can freely express an opinion about your identity, how well you “pass” for the gender with which you identify, and even your existence. And they expect you to defend it. No, expect is the wrong word; they demand it. Case in point, Dr. Rachel Levine. She’s the pediatrician who is the secretary of health for Pennsylvania. Her “steady, composed, data-driven approach” to the COVID-19 pandemic has won her widespread praise. She’s also become the target of a torrent of online hate, in print and on the […]
Of course Reverend Troy Perry is a preacher. He sounds like one. His voice booms smoothly. His Southern accent remains in place, despite years of Californian living. More than one sentence ends with a “And I will tell you…” On July 27th, Perry will celebrate his 80th birthday, and there’s a long, dramatic life to look back on which at its heart is about how one gay man who cherished his belief and faith in God did not believe—as he was constantly told—that God did not love him because he was gay. And to prove it, he created a church all […]
Thousands of protesters flooded the streets of lower Manhattan on Sunday for the Queer Liberation March for Black Lives and Against Police Brutality, a rallying cry against police violence that combined the spirit of Pride with the ongoing calls of the Black Lives Matter movement. Late afternoon reports on social media showed disturbing moments of confrontation after a largely peaceful march, with the police pushing through crowds of protesters and appearing to detain multiple people. An NYPD spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast that two people were arrested in the act of graffiting a police vehicle, and that pepper spray was […]
This year’s season of “Pride Plays,” produced by Rattlesticks Playwrights Theater in New York City, is showing online at Playbill.com. This is the first of two articles focusing on the Black queer playwrights with plays in the season. Rodney Hicks’ play, Just Press Save, is about the hopes, fears, and intrigues of a group of six high school seniors, including twins who are undocumented immigrants and a Black trans man. Hicks, 46, is also an actor who starred in the original productions of Rent and Come From Away. Just Press Save is directed by Michael Greif, who directed Hicks in the original production […]
A year ago, 160 members of the Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps (LGBAC), New York’s oldest LGBTQ marching band, eagerly waited at the start line of the World Pride 50 parade in New York. Neil Patrick Harris climbed a nearby float and waved his hands, conducting the starstruck band below. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio strode by, lifting a rainbow flag high above his head. Hundreds of pink T-Mobile balloons peppered the band’s starting pen. The day’s visual—five million global partygoers converging on parking lot’s worth of Manhattan asphalt—is now unimaginable. But the reception from last year—the open arms […]
On Tuesday, Melissa Zarda was dealing with two things at home in Kansas City, Missouri: the loud barking and mischief of her new foster puppy Winnie, a cattle dog/pitbull mix, while—above the din—relishing the hard-fought, historic victory she had just won in the Supreme Court in the memory of her beloved, deceased brother Donald. His was one of three cases featuring LGBTQ people fired for their sexual orientation or gender identity that SCOTUS yesterday ruled, 6-3, were illegal under the sex discrimination provisions of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The ruling—embracing the cases of gay men Zarda and […]
It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Trump administration rolled out its new rule denying trans people access to proper healthcare on the fourth anniversary of the massacre at the LGBTQ Pulse nightclub, in which 49 people died in Orlando, Florida. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Trump administration published the rule during LGBTQ Pride month. The cruelty is the obligatory scattering of garnish for the Trump administration; the sting long after the slap has been delivered. The cruelty is relished just as much as the intended harm. The cruelty, as the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer once observed, is the point. The […]
While tens of thousands around the world marched for justice and equality on Saturday, author J.K. Rowling decided to tweet about the phrase, “people who menstruate.” Her tweet, however, backfired bigger than the Avada Kedavra spell in her Harry Potter novels. Then, in the face of a swift backlash, the novelist doubled-down: she claimed to be both a supporter of transgender rights and a victim of hate. And she gave the most clear indication yet that she stands with feminists who will not accept trans women are women and trans men are men. Rowling apparently never read Zoyander Street’s 2016 essay […]
Larry Kramer, the late LGBTQ and AIDS activist, author and playwright, has been much praised and analyzed over the last 24 hours. But Larry Kramer was also both a friend and professional collaborator to many. Lost amid the tales of fire and brimstone are stories of a certain paisley pocket, an unexpected delivery of chicken soup, and the linking of arms late at night on a Broadway street. On Wednesday, in my obituary of Kramer, who died Wednesday at the age of 84, I mulled what people invariably mention most about Kramer: his anger. That anger, as I wrote, could be […]