To create the right kind of atmosphere in order to write this I have all the lights off and am using a black background instead of a white one on my computer. I’m also burning [...]
I celebrated the return of Spring three weeks ago by helping to fulfill a 135-year-old request by America’s beloved poet, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). That recent memorable day in March was occasioned by what poet Emily [...]
Arkansas is auditioning hard to become America’s biggest nightmare state. There is a lot of creepy stuff afoot right now. Across the country, Republicans are passing anti-voting legislation because they know they can’t win on [...]
If it feels like Lil Nas X releases a new video for “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” every day, it is because the Twitterverse and Lil Nas himself haven’t had a moment’s pause since [...]
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 [...]
It’s been one hell of a week. First, the good news. Vaccine distribution is going great! Hooray! Go get stabbed when it’s your turn! I can’t wait! So many exclamation marks!!! Then the bad news. [...]
Stonewall! Stonewall! STONEWALL! Say it loud. Say it proud. It’s without doubt to our LGBTQ+ conviction and consensus — and that of the so-called heterosexual community — the single most important event leading to our [...]
They are at it again. After years of focusing on restrooms and locker rooms as an entry point for excluding trans people from public life, opponents of LGBTQ+ equality lately have shifted strategy to focus [...]
When we were children, we learned all kinds of things. We learned things as vastly different as our languages and cultures, but one thing that was pretty much universal was coloring. Coloring was a way [...]
Thousands of people in Jackson, Mississippi, were without water for weeks following winter storms that also wreaked havoc in Texas, revealing huge infrastructure failures. Thankfully, both Texas and Mississippi have responded with the only thing [...]
So apparently a child with a mustache posted a video on TikTok declaring that he’s “made a new sexuality” called super straight? That, according to him, means he doesn’t date transgender women because they aren’t [...]
When Mr. Potato Head first appeared on the market in 1952, the toy was very different from the smiling plastic orb we see in the "Toy Story" movie. The original Mr. Potato Head was basically [...]
I received my first COVID-19 vaccination shot last week. My second right-arm shot is scheduled for March 11. Among 300 seniors inoculated in a well-coordinated system at Dearborn’s Henry Ford Village, I was number 13. [...]
With the recent uprising of discrimination from some members of the gay community involving the ban on transgender men at a Michigan, all-male campground, I’ve been compelled to be a voice of change and education. [...]
Aimee Stephens has been on my mind a lot recently. I thought about her when President Joe Biden, on his first day in office, issued a sweeping executive order targeting discrimination based on gender identity [...]
In a basement classroom my freshman year of college, I heard a woman with purple hair say, “I came out to my parents as queer when I was 13. And I came out to them [...]
Hip, hip, hooray! The U.S. House passed The Equality Act! We’re all equal now! There’s no more hate, no more homophobia, no more Marjorie Taylor Greene! OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But the [...]
Have you ever thought to yourself, “What could somebody do or say that would get them kicked off of the Conservative Political Action Conference’s speaker roster?” and then found yourself thinking really hard about it, [...]
I am because we are. I come from a lineage of mothers - Black mothers, strong mothers. Mothers that have made a proverbial way out of no way. Mothers that have stared down the barrel [...]
We hold these truths to be self-evident: climate change is real and Republicans are terrible. Look no further than Texas, where, as I write this, millions of people are without power. No water, no heat [...]
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 [...]
By the time you read this, Joe Biden will be the President and the worst president in U.S. history will be history. Truly hope the door hits Trump in the ass on his way out. [...]
Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, for African American voter rights changed the South forever. (Or, did it?) Few know that another King – William Rufus DeVane King – [...]
Dear President-elect Biden: I’m writing you this open letter as you prepare to take office as president. My son was just a few months too young to vote in the last election, but watched it [...]
I started writing my Parting Glances column in 1999. Its premise was simple enough: choose an important LGB — and occasionally T — historical event that actually changed things for us, or challenged us to [...]
Hello! It’s 2021 and everything is fine now! Ha, ha, just kidding. The dumpster fire rages on. Some things in 2021 are delightful, like that guy who made the music video about the broccoli casserole [...]
We have reached the end of 2020, and I am sure my feelings about the year easily match anyone who happens upon this column. Good riddance to such a difficult year, and don’t let the [...]
2020 was supposed to be the year we woke up from the horrible nightmare that began with the 2016 presidential election. It was supposed to be the year that our passionate cries for a return [...]
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Joe Biden won the election. And I don’t know what the hell is going to happen when the day comes for Trump to leave the White [...]
In a year like no other, LGBTQ families, like all others, struggled with the physical, mental and economic challenges of the pandemic. And with children of LGBTQ parents much more likely to live in poverty [...]
I’m trying to think of a scenario in which it would be appropriate to call Dr. Jill Biden “kiddo.” Maybe if you were a long-dead relative of hers who has come back from the dead? [...]
Updated, 3:12 p.m., 12/10/20 It started with a Facebook Live Video that was sucked into the underbelly of the internet. There it churned and clipped and passed from person to person. Someone slapped a label [...]
In the early 1980s, a friend of mine let me borrow a vinyl record of theirs: the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for Monty Python's "Life of Brian." While it featured but two songs, it largely [...]
In case you haven’t heard, Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. It’s over. Joe Biden will be the next Commander in Chief and not a second too soon. In fact, it’s scary that Trump [...]
As national election results continue to come in President-Elect Joe Biden's favor, Republicans across the U.S. have continued to dispute electoral votes in Biden's favor. Recently in Michigan, Republican leaders of Michigan's House and Senate [...]
Mart Crowley’s “Boys In the Band” opened off-Broadway 53 years ago. I bought a copy of the play in Chicago in 1968 and read tryout dialog aloud while driving back to Detroit with my then-partner, [...]
On Monday, Oct. 27, Donald Trump swore in his third Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett under the cloak of night. And like many things that necessitate darkness, it was a sordid affair that will [...]
By Congressman Dan Kildee (MI-05) In 2013, I had the privilege of standing on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court as the High Court announced its decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage [...]
We are about two weeks away from the 2020 elections. A case that the U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing the day after the elections, however, has me as concerned as the elections themselves, for [...]
People who have been in my home will note that most of the wall space in my 840-square-foot abode is adorned by theatrical posters of plays and musicals, most of which would be regarded as [...]
By Tom Nelson and Linda Karle-Nelson A response to Archdiocese of Detroit throws out 2 LGBTQ Catholic groups When we discovered our calling in life was to minister to others through our Catholic faith, it [...]
Fred Upton supporters have launched a homophobic $500,000 TV campaign against gay U.S. Congressional candidate Jon Hoadley that uses antiquated and false tropes about the LGBTQ community. Hoadley is a Victory Fund-endorsed, three-term Michigan State [...]
When I learned that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died I was eating these little peanut butter granola bites I really like. I immediately felt like I was going to be sick. I don’t think I’ll ever [...]
Over the last few months, "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling has developed from beloved children’s author to the trans equivalent of reviled anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant. Rowling has evolved over the last two years, from [...]
By The National LGBT Newspaper Guild, BTL Member Among the many compelling reasons to make sure that Donald Trump and Mike Pence are not reelected on Nov. 3, perhaps the 26 most compelling are the [...]
Ruth Bader Ginsburg. What a devastating loss. For her family, for the country, for the rule of law. We didn’t let her have a single moment of peace in the last years of her life. [...]
Allow me a moment to bellyache. I’m living in the middle of a heatwave, inundated with smoke, fighting an infection and I am just in general full of reasons to grouse. It is none of [...]
