You probably don’t know the name Paul Fasana. But the librarian was instrumental in preserving hundreds of thousands of artifacts of queer history.
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It’s Time to Take Cisgender Seriously
In a very real and measurable way, cisgender identity is no longer unmarked, universal, or assumed. It is denoted, limited, and in conversation with trans identities—or at least we’re moving in that direction.
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We got rid of gender-specific bathrooms, and it’s been fine
Around the country, small-minded activists have made battlegrounds of what should be safe, quiet, clean places for people to do their private business quickly and easily. But pushing back against this prejudice can be as easy as changing a sign. In just a few minutes, you can make the world a little safer for some of our most vulnerable citizens.
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Social Media Frees Moroccan Gays
Last month, in the small city of Beni-Mellal in central Morocco, two men were dragged from a private home, beaten by a mob (on camera), and then arrested by the authorities for “homosexual acts.”
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Queer Taika, a group directed by Kristy Oshiro, to perform at Tadaima.
In California, A 'Welcome Home' For The Japanese-American Queer Community
Tadaima. Okaeri.
Paired together, these two Japanese words are a common greeting-and-response. Tadaima means "I'm home," and okaeri means "welcome." But recently, these terms have taken on new significance as the names for a series of California-based conferences for the Japanese-American queer community and their allies: Okaeri in Los Angeles in 2014, and Tadaima on April 2nd in the Bay Area.
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Hillary's Tortured Relationship with LGBTs
For the first time in history, Democrats have fielded two credible primary candidates who are willing to admit publicly that same-sex marriage should be legal; that firing people simply for being transgender should be illegal; and that so-called "religious freedom acts" should not be used to create a backdoor to discrimination. One has a long and checkered history to examine; the other comes with less baggage (and fewer successes) to take into account. It's like living in a town with one gay bar—when a new one opens shop, you suddenly have to decide how you felt about the original one all along. When it comes to Hillary, activists, policy makers, and pol-watchers across the queer left are sharply divided around the question.
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Gay in Nirvana: Bhutan’s LGBT Population Emerges from the Shadows
“I’ve never really faced any kind of harassment,” Karma Dupchen, who at 23 is one of the most public LGBT figures in the country, told The Daily Beast. Yet “growing up gay in Bhutan was a very alienating experience for me,” Dupchen said, because in Bhutan, the idea of being gay or transgender is “pretty much unheard of.”
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Anyone in any loving relationship should get the legal benefits of marriage
Formal inequality – the kind that’s written explicitly into law – must obviously be undone. Yet I can’t help but feel that we’ve gotten the right answer to the wrong question. I have no problem with marriage as a religious tradition, or as a non-religious communal expression of love and commitment. Give me a fancy dress, lots of flowers and an excuse to day drink anytime. But it’s poorly designed to be a modern civil institution. Allowing gay people access to it makes it a little more fair, but it doesn’t make it any more just.
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