March 31, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News It was a bad week to be LGBTQ in the U.S. as Republican governors and state legislatures continued their legislative assault on the very existence of gay and trans people. Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law on March 28 that forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. That bill has received harsh criticism from LGBTQ advocates and civil libertarians who argue it margi

March 30, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News It was the slap shown round the world. At the Oscars, Philly native Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock after the comic made an ableist joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who suffers from an autoimmune disorder that causes total hair loss, among other things. I was live-tweeting the Oscars and at first was unsure if this was a scripted bit or not. In the days since The Slap — for which Smith has apologized to Rock, the Academ

March 29, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News Will Smith may be a West Philly native, but before Smith became the only Oscars story in Philadelphia and elsewhere for slapping Chris Rock for an ableist joke directed at his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, the 94th Academy Awards had already made history several times over. After four years of no hosts, three women comedians — out lesbian Wanda Sykes, Regina Hall, and Amy Schumer — scored a hat trick win for their funny and innovative hosting

March 23, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing. (Youtube screenshot. It was nearly 10 p.m. Tuesday night, more than 12 hours into the second day of the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, when Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) asked Jackson to define the term woman. Jackson declined, saying “I can’t.” “You can’t?” Blackburn said, her voice rising. “Not in this context. I’m no

March 23, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News This year is on track to set a record for anti-LGBT+ legislation. A mere three months into 2022, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reports that 238 such bills have already been proposed in state legislatures, a rate of more than three a day. Limiting the rights of trans youth is a focal point of about half of these bills. According to an NBC News analysis of data from the ACLU and the LGBT+ advocacy group Freedom for All Americans

March 22, 2022 Bay Area Reporter Brittney Griner report on MSNBC When we started writing this column in 1994, we had a segment we called "news you're not seeing." It was comprised of major LGBTQ stories that never made the mainstream TV news. With the explosion of 24/7 cable news over lo these many years since, one would think that this was no longer relevant. The story of Brittney Griner says otherwise. As you read this it will be five weeks since she's been detained in Rus

March 16, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News Op-Ed Last week was peak March madness in Philadelphia: near 80 one day and snowing hard a few days later. That chaotic unpredictability in the weather was an apt metaphor for what we are experiencing with COVID right now. March 11 was the two-year anniversary of the day the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus pandemic. On Sept. 28, 2020 one million deaths had been reported worldwide, with the U.S. and Brazil recordi

Former Hostage Says More Should be done to Publicize Her Case March 16, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News It has been over a month since Brittney Griner — one of the best women basketball players in the world, an Olympic gold medalist, seven-time WNBA All Star, WNBA champion and Euroleague star — was arrested and detained in Russia. As PGN previously reported, the White House, U.S. State Department and Griner’s Congressperson, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), have all weighed in on

March 11, 2022 curve volume 32 #1 When bell hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins) died on December 15, 2021, she was only 69. There were many more years we–feminist, gay, lesbian, queer people–needed from her. BELL HOOKS When asked about her sexual identity, hooks described herself as “queer-pas-gay,” exemplifying her insistence that no one define her but her. hooks asserted, “I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or to someone else’s

March 9, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News Describing their new documentary series, “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” which began streaming March 9, Netflix says, “After he’s shot in 1968, Andy Warhol begins documenting his life and feelings. Those diaries, and this series, reveal the secrets behind his persona.” Brief, but accurate. Andy Warhol said, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behi

March 9, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News One of the best women basketball players in the world, Olympic gold medalist, seven-time WNBA All Star, and WNBA champion Brittney Griner has been arrested and detained in Russia. Griner, a vocally out lesbian known for her outreach to and mentoring of LGBT+ youth, is at grave risk in a country notorious for its repressive actions toward LGBT+ people, particularly lesbians and gay men. Griner is also now a high-profile political pawn at a

March 8, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News GLAAD’s latest annual report on LGBTQ visibility on TV reveals that queer, trans and nonbinary representations are at an all-time high across all platforms, bringing those representations closer to the actual demographics of LGBTQ people in the U.S. GLAAD’s Where We Are on TV report “analyzes the overall diversity of primetime scripted series regulars on broadcast networks and looks at the number of LGBTQ characters on cable networks and

March 8, 2022 Bay Area Reporter Sandra Oh in 'Killing Eve'; John Cameron Mitchell and Kate McKinnon in 'Joe v. Carole'; 'The Andy Warhol Diaries ' In William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, a soothsayer tells Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March." Well, the Ides of March are fast upon us and the whole world would do well to pay close attention. Some of us —especially the queer folks— have been warning about Vladimir Putin for quite some time. We recommend watching HBO's Welco

March 2, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News President Biden delivering his 2022 State of the Union address. (Youtube screenshot.) At President Biden’s State of the Union Address on March 1, there was little unity between Democrats and Republicans. But on one point the group appeared to be unanimous: all were seemingly in solidarity with the people of Ukraine. The chamber stood and cheered Oksana Markarova, the ambassador of Ukraine to the U.S., as Biden said that Putin “thought he c

March 2, 2022 Philadelphia Gay News The Russian invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin has highlighted past and present actions by Putin against LGBT+ people in Russia and re-emphasized the threat an occupation of Ukraine would pose for LGBT+ people in the democracy there. Just days before the invasion, Bathsheba Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. office in Geneva, sent a letter to the U.N. warning that Russia has created a “kill list” of Ukrainians to be attacked or de

March 1, 2022 Queer Forty At a time when Asian Americans are facing an exponential rise in hate crimes and street violence and Asian-American women have been murdered in hate crimes in New York City and Atlanta, Malinda Lo’s work stands as a testament to addressing such animus in fiction and opening discourse on what it is to be an Asian immigrant in America. Malinda Lo’s young adult novel, Last Night at the Telegraph Club, is a New York Times Bestseller. Lo’s book is also w

March 1, 2022 Queer Forty March is Women’s History Month. Cue mainstream media highlighting historical figures—and erasing their lesbianism. Women’s History Month should also centre the contributions of queer historical women. Like suffragist and abolitionist Susan B. Anthony, whose erotic letters to her female lovers are steamy even by today’s standards. Jane Addams, the founder of modern social work, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and co-founder of the NAACP, who was i