LGBTQ

Chaya Raichik Photo: Screenshot Planet Fitness locations across the country have continued to receive bomb threats in the wake of an anti-transgender boycott campaign spearheaded by anti-LGBTQ+ hate influencer Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok social media accounts. Media Matter reports that at least 53 Planet Fitness locations in 20 states have now reported receiving bomb

Aug 27, 2023; Los Angeles, California, USA; Sophia bush looks on during the game between OL Reign and Angel City FC at BMO Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports Photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports Actress Sophia Bush has come out as queer at age 41 after rumors of a relationship between her and soccer

The organizers of a Russian poetry competition have banned entries from transgender people. Rules posted online for this year’s Andrei Dementyev All-Russian Poetry Prize specify that while the competition will accept entries from poets “regardless of citizenship, nationality, profession, and place of residence,” entries from “citizens who have changed their gender” will not be considered,

Eli. Underwood likes the experience of voting in person, but they now have to vote by mail. Underwood went to a Detroit church to cast a ballot in the 2022 general elections, but chronic health conditions meant the two flights of stairs to the basement taxed them badly; living with Long Covid as well, Underwood was frustrated by

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) Photo: Screenshot Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has agreed to drop his pursuit of information on transgender patients who have been treated at Seattle Children’s Hospital. The agreement comes as part of a settlement announced Monday between Paxton’s office and the Washington state hospital, the Texas Tribune reports.

March 16, 2024; Dayton, Ohio: Gov. Kristi Noem made an appearance ahead of former President Donald Trump at a campaign stop Photo: Barbara Perenic/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK South Dakota Gov. and VP hopeful Kristi Noem (R) tried to build her national brand two years ago on the back of her attacks on transgender

Welcome to the (somewhat shorter this week) LGBTQ Nation News Quiz. We’ve kept you up-to-date on politics, current events, and news from the LGBTQ+ community all week. Now, this is your chance to look back on what happened. We’ll be testing your knowledge with a series of questions taken from our headlines this past week. Try the

Marchers carry a rainbow flag to the Alabama Capital during the 2019 Pride March and Rally Photo: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser/ via IMAGN Alabama’s legislature is advancing two censorious anti-LGBTQ bills: H.B. 130 would ban LGBTQ+ flags in classrooms and expand the state’s “Don’t say gay” law to include grades 6-8; H.B. 385 would jail

A woman receiving a facial injection Photo: Shutterstock The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have said that “vampire facials” conducted in an unlicensed New Mexico spa caused multiple women to contract HIV. It’s the first time that the cosmetic procedure has been linked to an HIV outbreak. The facials, also known as platelet-rich

Lori Gimelshteyn, executive director of the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network. Photo: KUSA screenshot Colorado’s Supreme Court has said that an anti-LGBTQ+ “parents’ rights” group may start collecting signatures to approve Ballot Measure 142, a proposed law that would require schools to out transgender students to their potentially unsupportive parents. The group now has until August

Crystal, aka Colin Seymour Photo: Screenshot Laurence Fox, a prominent right-wing activist and former actor in the United Kingdom, has been told to pay £180,000 ($225,242) to two LGBTQ+ men, former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star Crystal, following comments Fox made on X (formerly Twitter) falsely referring to them as

Malcolm Kenyatta Photo: Malcolm for PA Out gay Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D) won his primary race against Mark Pinsley for the role of auditor general, an administrative position overseeing the state’s accounting and financial functions. Kenyatta’s victory makes him the first out gay man to be selected by a major party for a

Shangela at the 25th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2019 Photo: Dan MacMedan-USA TODAY NETWORK via IMAGN A former production assistant (PA) on HBO’s docuseries We’re Here has dropped his rape lawsuit against Darius Jeremy “DJ” Pierce, a former RuPaul’s Drag Race competitor better known as Shangela. Pierce still faces sexual assault allegations from five

Maelle Jacques Photo: Screenshot During a hearing yesterday regarding trans sports ban bill S.B. 375, transgender teenager Maëlle Jacques delivered a powerful speech that appealed to the humanity of transgender teens, highlighting the harm bills like this do to the transgender community. “Joining the male teams wouldn’t even be a choice for me with the

In a significant blow to the conservative, anti-trans argument that transgender women possess insurmountable biological advantages over cisgender women that should make them ineligible to compete in women’s sports, new research suggests that the opposite may in fact be true. A new study, funded in part by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and published recently

Almost 50 years after a 16-year-old boy on a weeks-long heroin bender terrorized the gay community in New Orleans, killing at least three gay men after accompanying them to their homes, he’s earned an early release. Warren Harris Jr. was convicted in 1977 on three counts of first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of Jack

River Nevaeh Goddard Photo: Screenshot A nonbinary 17-year-old, River Nevaeh Goddard, was found dead earlier this month, and their boyfriend has been arrested in connection to the death. But he’s not being charged with murder. Police were responding to a welfare check at the home of their boyfriend, Shane Curry, in Stow, Massachusetts on April

A Grindr banner on the the New York Stock Exchange building in November 2022 Photo: Shutterstock Over 670 Grindr users in the U.K. are suing the queer hook-up app for allegedly and non-consensually sharing their “highly sensitive” private information — including ethnicity, orientation, and HIV-status — with third parties for commercial purposes. Grindr has denied

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton Photo: YouTube screenshot Big Mama Thornton — a six-foot tall, 300-pound, Black, gender-nonconforming blue musician who wore men’s apparel and sang with a growl — has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her influence on the genre. Though Thornton didn’t personally identify as LGBTQ+, modern

In state after state, GOP-dominated state legislatures are adjourning without passing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Now, Iowa has become the latest state to fail to pass any of the numerous bills introduced this session. It joins Kentucky, Georgia, and West Virginia in the cohort of states failing to pass a single bill. Florida passed only one. Iowa

Owasso Public Schools graduate Marley H. in the Human Rights Campaign’s new ad. Photo: Screenshot A little over two months after the death of trans teen Nex Benedict, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has released a new ad featuring an Owasso High School alum describing the culture of anti-LGBTQ+ bullying she experienced first-hand at the

It had taken weeks to make the appointment, and still, all they could offer me was a phone call. So instead of seeing my doctor in a nice warm room, I was standing in a cold parking lot in January. I cringed as he asked me to “outline the problem.” Lowering my voice so the

Photo: Bil Browning/Shutterstock A 36-year-old trans man named Tee Arnold died earlier this month after he was shot outside a shopping mall in Hallandale Beach, Florida in the middle of the night. Hallandale Beach police Captain Aaron Smith does not believe the murder was a hate crime and says it was “an isolated incident” sparked

While William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is problematic on many levels, one simple and sustaining truth surfaces in Shylock’s queries to his interlocutors: “I am a Jew! Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to

A 24-year-old ex-Marine was sentenced to nine years in prison for firebombing a Planned Parenthood clinic in Orange County, CA in 2022, just one act in a laundry list of planned attacks by the defendant and his neo-Nazi associates. Chance Brannon of San Juan Capistrano, California, was an active-duty member of the U.S. Marine Corps

WNBA superstar Brittney Griner is expecting her first child with her wife, attorney Cherelle Griner. The couple posted a sweet announcement on Instagram in which followers can see an ultrasound as well as the couple holding hands – their matching cross tattoos on full display. “Can’t believe we’re less than three months away from meeting

Welcome to the (somewhat shorter this week) LGBTQ Nation News Quiz. We’ve kept you up-to-date on politics, current events, and news from the LGBTQ+ community all week. Now, this is your chance to look back on what happened. We’ll be testing your knowledge with a series of questions taken from our headlines this past week. Try the

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has unveiled its long-awaited overview of Title IX anti-discrimination protections for transgender and other queer students. The new rules do not cover the hot-button issue of transgender student-athletes, but the new rules have still been praised and criticized by LGBTQ+ and civil rights groups nonetheless. The new rules, which