December - 2021

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 29, 2021
5 min

2021: The Year In Review

December 29, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News Canadians got a ban on conversion therapy. The U.S. didn’t. The U.S. also didn’t get the Equality Act despite all the election rhetoric in 2020. While the House passed the Act, the Senate failed to even bring it to debate. Instead of the Equality Act, a slew of anti-LGBTQ laws were either passed or proposed in legislatures around the country. While President Biden promised the Equality Act would be passed in his first 100 days, it didn

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 28, 2021
6 min

The Lavender Tube's best of 2021

December 28, 2021 Bay Area Reporter Olly Alexander and Lydia West in 'It's a Sin' (Source: Ross Ferguson/Channel 4) The unmet promise of 2021 is almost at an end, along with, one hopes, the perils. As we move onward to 2022 and the midterm elections, we also have two new drugs in the COVID arsenal. But while we are in a new viral surge, let's stay safe, get vaxxed and boosted, wear a good mask and watch the best TV of 2021. You won't find Succession, Ted Lasso and Wandavisi

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 24, 2021
5 min

They Won’t be Home for Christmas

December 22, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News Between one-third and one-half of women in prison self-identify as lesbian or bisexual. Despite Omicron and Delta variants converging in a perfect storm of surging COVID-19 cases, the nation is still bustling with holiday cheer. Malls are packed with last-minute shoppers still hoping for bargains that have been elusive as retailers try to recoup from last year’s lockdowns. A spate of gorgeous and unseasonably warm climate-change weathe

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 22, 2021
6 min

Inside the Prison Walls

December 22, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News This is part two of a series on LGBTQ people in prison. Unless otherwise noted, names have been altered to protect the privacy of formerly incarcerated persons. Evie Litwok’s mother was a Holocaust survivor. While Litwok was doing time in two different federal prisons in West Virginia and Florida — including 42 days in solitary confinement — she frequently thought about the parallels to mass incarceration in America. And as her mother

Why are so many Lesbian, Bi and Trans Women in Prison?

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 15, 2021
6 min

Why are so many Lesbian, Bi and Trans Women in Prison?

December 15, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News Unless otherwise noted, names have been altered to protect the privacyof formerly incarcerated persons. Throughout the summer of 2020, Nadia Martinez watched the social justice protests on TV. She would have liked to have been part of those protests, but she couldn’t risk it. Martinez was on probation and living in a halfway house after spending three years in the State Correctional Institute at Muncy. “I kept waiting for our names to

International News: Canada Bans Conversion Therapy

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 15, 2021
4 min

International News: Canada Bans Conversion Therapy

December 15, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News In a major victory for sexual minority advocates, Canada has banned conversion therapy, a widely discredited practice that claims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The law makes it a crime to subject anyone in Canada to conversion therapy, profit from the practice, or take a Canadian outside the country to undergo conversion therapy elsewhere, like the U.S., which has not banned the practice. On Twitter, Prime

Make the Yuletide Gay: The Lavender Tube on Holiday Specials, 'With Love' and More

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 14, 2021
5 min

Make the Yuletide Gay: The Lavender Tube on Holiday Specials, 'With Love' and More

December 14, 201 Bay Area Reporter/Edge Media Network Billy Porter performed At the National Christmas Tree Lighting (Source: CBS) We don't know about you, but part of our holiday cheer is now hearing Billy Porter perform for the President, Vice President and their respective spouses for not one, but two holiday events. At the National Christmas Tree Lighting, when Porter sang "Make the Yuletide Gay" while in full eye make-up and wearing skirt-like palazzo pants and a gold

Patricia Highsmith: A Lesbian Life in Diaries

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 9, 2021
5 min

Patricia Highsmith: A Lesbian Life in Diaries

December 9, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News Patricia Highsmith would have been 100 years old this year. Marking her centenary year is the publication of “Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, 1941-1995,” an intimately detailed exploration of a half century of the life of the iconic lesbian writer. Joan Schenkar, author of “The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith,” wrote the afterword for the collection. Schenkar said, “Highsmith

Ending Roe v. Wade Could End Same-Sex Marriage

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 8, 2021
5 min

Ending Roe v. Wade Could End Same-Sex Marriage

December 8, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News On September 6, 2018, at the Senate confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) asked a series of questions regarding established precedent-setting landmark civil rights law — Brown v. Topeka Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. Among those is, according to Harris, Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled that the fundamental righ

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 8, 2021
4 min

Pennsylvania Doesn’t Need Dr. Oz

December 8, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News Dr. Oz at a U.S. Senate hearing in 2014. (Youtube screenshot) On Nov. 28, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician made famous by Oprah, a couple of TV series, and several bestselling medical self-help books, announced he is running for Senate in Pennsylvania. Oz, a Trump Republican, joins a field of Republicans and Democrats vying for the seat that will be left vacant by retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey. The 2022 race is critically important

Patricia Highsmith: A Half Century of a Lesbian Life

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 2, 2021
7 min

Patricia Highsmith: A Half Century of a Lesbian Life

December 2, 2021 QueerForty.Com The newly-published letters and diaries of America’s lesbian master of psychological thrillers are as gripping as any of her fiction. In this Patricia Highsmith’s centenary year, the publication of the mammoth Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, 1941-1995 offers a prismatic look at the history of some of the most fraught years in American life while also telling a deeply revelatory tale of the prolific writer in her own compelling n

International News: World AIDS Day, Hungary, Botswana, Russia

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 1, 2021
5 min

International News: World AIDS Day, Hungary, Botswana, Russia

December 1, 2021 Philadelphia Gay News President Biden reaffirmed his commitment to ending the global epidemic of HIV/AIDS for World AIDS Day. Photo: YouTube. World AIDS Day President Biden reaffirmed his commitment to ending the global epidemic of HIV/AIDS for World AIDS Day. “Ending the HIV epidemic is within our reach, and we are committed to finishing this work,” Biden said in a proclamation. “On World AIDS Day, we rededicate ourselves to building on the progress of the

How to Enlighten America: An Interview with Keith Boykin

Victoria A. Brownworth

Dec 1, 2021
9 min

How to Enlighten America: An Interview with Keith Boykin

December 1, 2021 COVER STORY QueerForty.com He’s Black, he’s gay, and he’s the one political analyst you need to listen to right now. As we end another tumultuous year, journalist, author, and cultural critic Keith Boykin can shed light on some of America’s darkest and most persistent problems, discussing topics exclusively with Queer Forty, such as the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict; the fraught racial divide in America propelled by Donald Trump and the GOP; what it’s like to be

Created by HackezDezigns rlhackez@gmail.com created with Wix.com