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Jason A. Michael

Jason A. Michael

Jason A. Michael is a senior staff writer for Between The Lines and Pride Source Media Group. He has been writing for BTL since 1999. Jason is also an Essence bestselling author. He may be reached at [email protected].

'Bargain Block' Real Estate Expert Talks LGBTQ+ Allyship and 'Love at First Sight' for Keith Bynum and Evan Thomas — Her Chosen Family

A lifetime Detroiter, Shea Hicks Whitfield is the third member of the superhero team on HGTV’s "Bargain Block." For three seasons now, the real estate agent — along with real-life couple Keith Bynum, a designer, and Evan Thomas, a [...]

How Ruth Ellis Inspired My Early Activism Helping Queer At-Risk Youth

My friendship with the late Ruth Ellis predates my time with Between The Lines, Pride Source's print publication. But just barely. I first interviewed her for KICK! Magazine. I was managing editor of the publication, and we were putting Ruth on the [...]

Celebrating 20 Years Since First Legal Same-Sex Marriage

The year was 1989. I had finally accepted the fact that I was gay and started the long, tedious process of coming out shortly after turning 17. It was a time of liberation for me. I threw off the shackles of convention — and my Southern Baptist [...]

Stevie Baka Encourages Detroit Community to Reimagine ‘Arts & Scraps’

Some jobs are just jobs, but for Stevie Baka, their daily commute brings them to a job that feels more like a personal mission. Baka serves as community store manager at Arts & Scraps, a 35-year-old educational non-profit housed in a nondescript [...]

Community Tributes Pour in for Mary Sappington, Longtime Publisher of Queer Nightlife Magazine Metra

For over 40 years she told us where to find the best in queer nightlife in metro Detroit, Northern Ohio and Windsor. Mary Sappington, who died Jan. 14 at age 75, was perhaps better known as “Mary Metra,” the founding publisher of Metra [...]

Would Martin Luther King, Jr. Have Become an LGBTQ+ Advocate? His Daughter Yolanda King Thought So.

Preserving and recording Black history has always been important to me. In fact, back in 1999, it was a series I did on Black History Month for Wayne State University’s South End that caught the attention of then Pride Source Media and Between [...]

If Madonna Calls, I’m Here

My Dearest Madge,I feel quite confident it’s all right to call you that. You’ve so intimately become a part of my life through the power of your music over these past four-plus decades that you must surely feel that closeness as well. If [...]

The Lonely Season Arrives, Once Again

Well, it’s that time of year again, dear readers. The Lonely Season has arrived. What in the world, you ask, is the Lonely Season? Well, if you have to ask it’s obviously not on your emotional calendar. But for me, and a lot of other [...]

How This Former Heroin Addict Got Sober, Divorced Their Husband and Came Out as Genderqueer

Bree Rowe doesn't just work for a local non-profit, whose name they can’t disclose, providing a desperately needed syringe service for IV drug users. They also go out at night to popular LGBTQ+ nightspots and do anonymous HIV testing. [...]

How This Community-Minded Detroiter Is Looking Out for Their Neighbors, Queer and Non-Queer Alike

Ash Rose’s wide-ranging work — from promoting equitable development to helping to launch They Beach, a queer beach group — has at least one thing in common: putting Detroit and queer community first. Over in the close-knit [...]

All I Want for Christmas Is Cher

It was 1977. I was all of 5. And all I wanted for Christmas was Cher. Well, more specifically, a Cher doll. I’d asked Santa. I’d asked my mom. Yet somehow on Christmas morning, there was no 12-inch Cher doll by Mego in her swooping salmon [...]

This Michigan Trans Advocate Gives Away Holiday Care Packages to Trans Community Members

Grayson Papp has a heart for giving. That’s why he created the nonprofit Grayson’s Movement back in 2016, with the goal of sending care packages to trans people every December. Last year he sent out 150 packages. This year the goal is [...]