Michigan’s LGBTQ+ community has come a long way. Marriage is legal and, for the most part, LGBTQ+ people are able to live their lives as their whole selves with full acceptance from friends and family. [...]
Once upon a time, in the early 2000s, when writing checks to pay for stuff was something people did, I had rainbow checks. Each check was a little Pride flag. I wanted the electricity company, [...]
In 2018 I wrote an article about accessibility in LGBTQ+ spaces. This year, I want to analyze what local options are available to disabled queer people looking for support in Southeast Michigan. Rather, I wanted [...]
Michigan Republican Sen. Lana Theis recently introduced Senate Bill 218 that will discriminate against and prevent transgender youth from playing school sports consistent with their gender identity. Last week, several Ozone House staff and community [...]
I first met Jan Stevenson and Susan Horowitz while serving them a plate of pasta with a rainbow Pride bracelet around my wrist. I was working at Noodles & Company as a shift manager. This was [...]
This Friday is the American holiday known as Juneteenth, although this holiday is largely unknown to many Americans — as it commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger announced federal orders in Galveston, [...]
As someone who participated in the Stonewall riots back in June 1969, many people have been asking me the similarities between that event and the events, civil unrest and demonstrations following the murder of George [...]
Strike up the band and start the parade, ladies and gentlemen and those who identify somewhere in between or beyond. Chick-fil-A has gone gay! We’ve done it. At long last we’ve broken the anti-LGBTQ spirit [...]
Don Grundmann is not having the best month. He is very much not at all racist, and yet the people of Modesto, California, have the nerve to think otherwise. They even laughed at him! Humiliated [...]
The U.S. government is locking children in cages and refusing to give them soap or toothpaste, but for some folks, the most pressing issue is the fact that my wife and I are legally married. [...]
Milo Yiannopoulos is not a good person. But, then, who cares, right? It’s not like he gives a shit about being a good person. In fact, the fact that he is a terrible person — [...]
Being transgender in the late 2010s means you talk about restrooms. Indeed, it's a topic you end up having to revisit over and over again, with what has been years now of attacks on public [...]
The mind-boggling possibility of recording dreams may soon be a reality predicts "How It’s Made," a British monthly science magazine. The nanotechnology/brain scanning techniques are now such that translating neural impulses from brain neurons and [...]
It should be obvious by now that the Creep of the Week every week is Donald Trump. He is a cancerous tumor on the U.S, and as a nation we desperately need a Trumpectomy. [...]
Is Vice President Mike Pence a closeted, deep-in-self-hate raging homo? Is that self-hate so intolerable for him that he’s become the commander in chief at the White House in pushing the most homophobic agenda since [...]
BY THOMAS 'TJ' ROGERS Although fear is a legitimate emotion - one I would never discount - fear has a tendency to create paranoia. This could not be more apparent than in the alleged connection [...]
Equality Michigan is a mess. There. We said it. This is not a new state of affairs for the agency, which has struggled to find its footing since before the 2010 merger between the state's [...]
By Yoruba Richen When I began documenting the same-sex marriage quest in Maryland which ultimately became the award-winning film, "The New Black," I was intrigued by the many nuances explored and positions justified when people [...]
By Gwendolyn Ann Smith In November 2011, I found myself making a whirlwind trip to Washington, D.C. to be part of a meeting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The Eisenhower Executive Office Building, for [...]
I wept as I approached the plaintiffs' attorneys at the end of the trial in DeBoer v. Snyder. "I've waited 42 years to hear what you had to say in a court of law," I [...]
As we move forward in our collective quest for equality we are struck by the absurdity of the opposition's arguments. Whether it is the Catholic Bishops letter against Employment Non-Discrimination Act or the rabid right [...]
It is Tuesday at BTL's offices. As we go to press this afternoon all of us are awaiting the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in two pivotal cases, scheduled to be handed down tomorrow morning. Although [...]
By The Secret Footballer for CNN (CNN) - Childhood is confusing. It's difficult to fully understand things at the best of times and, occasionally, you'll experience something that is unlike anything that you've experienced thus [...]
Once upon a time it took political courage to stand up for LGBT rights. Mainstream journalists, elected officials and governmental agencies treated LGBT people with anything from open distain to polite tolerance. As recently as [...]
Here at BTL we feel the same betrayal, anger and frustration as many of our readers do, over the recent revelations that the Michigan Department of Community Health has been improperly collecting personal information about [...]
BTL Editorial The numbers are staggering. The numbers are terrifying. The numbers represent a threat to the health and safety of gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. And the silence around [...]
There are times in our lives when we remember exactly where we were when something historic took place. And for many LGBT citizens, Jan. 21, 2013 will be one of those days. As President Barack [...]
"Boy, this restores my faith in the American people," said a woman sitting next to me at the election return watch party we attended Nov. 6 when it was finally announced that President Obama had [...]
BTL Editorial If you have a TV set you have most likely been subjected to the barrage of political ads this summer. It is so easy to tune them out and begin thinking that Romney/Ryan [...]
