April 28, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News "The Unicorn: The Mystery" by Janet Mason. The collection of seven individual hangings known as “The Unicorn Tapestries” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at The Cloisters in New York City are, for all who have seen them, a magnificent experience of another time, place and world view. As The Met describes them, “these are among the most beautiful and complex works of art from the late Middle Ages that survive,” and “vividly depict scenes a

April 28, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have released a new report on sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and the numbers are grim. An announcement about the report states that the rate of STIs has skyrocketed in the past two decades, with significant increases in each successive year. The CDC suggests this steady rise in cases “may be due to a lack of sexual education and existing disparities” in healthcare and testing, pa

April 21, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News At a televised town hall at the Philadelphia Constitution Center on October 15, 2020, then-presidential nominee Joe Biden had a riveting exchange with the mother of a transgender child. Mieke Haeck asked Biden how he would protect her daughter legally. “I would just flat-out change the law,” Biden said. “I would eliminate [Mr. Trump’s] executive orders, number one.” Despite Biden’s efforts thus far and despite a new PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist

April 21, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News Opinion Op-ed There can be no true justice for murder victims. They can never be brought back to life. But accountability for their killers is a measure of recompense for the survivors, and it sends a message that this crime will have consequences. Every Black person in America is — if we are, as a society, honest — a survivor of police violence. Whether it is the relentless traffic stops that statistics show are as many as 300 times that

April 14, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News Opinion Op-ed A photo from the 2020 Philly Queer March for Black Lives. (Photo by Kelly Burkhardt.) The modern LGBTQ civil rights movement was born out of police harassment and brutality against a group of gay men, butch lesbians and trans women of color. Most queer and trans people know about the Stonewall Uprising in June 1969; it’s why we celebrate Pride Month. We know that some leaders of that event were regular targets of police viole

April 11, 2021 Special to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. Originally published March 31, 2021 in the Philadelphia Gay News (Editor’s note: Some names in this story have been changed by the Philadelphia Gay News to protect privacy.) (Photo via The Philadelphia Gay News) PHILADELPHIA — Marc Cruz was a server. Eliot Davis worked in retail. Cherie Williams worked in a nail salon. Amanda Martin was an adjunct professor at a local university. All are LGBTQ, all lost their jobs in th

April 7, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News On April 5, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal that could have further expanded religious freedom accommodations in the workplace. Two of the court’s conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, issued an angry dissent, disagreeing strongly with the decision. Gorsuch argued that people of faith do not receive the same Title IX accommodations as other protected groups. But the Trump administration’s Department of Justi

April 6, 2021 QueerForty.com As inequality widens, the Equality Act becomes more elusive — and it’s the only thing that will protect our community as a whole. The economic gap between LGBTQ Americans and their straight and cisgender peers is widening, threatening to engulf whole sectors of the queer and trans community in entrenched poverty with little access out. Statistics proffered in new studies show that within the queer and trans community, Black and Latinx people, peo