Sunday morning, we woke up to another massacre targeting members of the queer community. Our sense of community causes our pain. We mourn the loss, not because we knew the Colorado Springs victims personally, but [...]
We’ve all been to a place like Club Q. An unassuming place tucked into a strip mall that doesn’t look like much from the outside, but offers a safe-haven for LGBTQ+ people and allies inside. [...]
It’s been a brutal year for mass killings in a broken America. In 2022, victims include young schoolchildren, college students, grocery shoppers and, once again, queer people gathered in what should have been a safe [...]
Let’s take a trip in the way-back machine to “Saturday Night Live” in the late 1970s. Specifically to the recurring skit featuring The Coneheads, a family of aliens with giant bald heads shaped like, you [...]
If you’re reading this it means you survived election day. Congratulations.At the time of this writing it is Election Eve. Not to be confused with Christmas Eve, though it would be pretty cool if Santa [...]
Look, the Republican Party has no ideas. Republican candidates can’t campaign on the issues that matter to people because their positions are wildly unpopular: banning abortion, banning contraception, banning fertility treatments, giving the rich more [...]
“Everyone’s God-given human dignity must be respected, regardless of his or her faith, race, ethnic origin, gender, or social status.” That’s from the Qur’an — not that the protestors at Dearborn’s Public Schools board meeting [...]
I often feel that I am too alarmist. I have spent decades now, deep in the issue of anti-transgender violence and murder, and I know that colors my views. It is hard to look at [...]
Silence leaves much to interpretation. The cavern between full-throated support for Michigan’s LGBTQ+ community from a few, mostly queer candidates running for state and national offices, and hostile, angry anti-queer tirades coming out of places [...]
If you’ve been driving around Michigan lately you might have seen some crazy billboards and signs claiming that kids are going to get gender reassignment surgery without parental consent if Proposal 3 passes. It’s a [...]
Dear Editor, As mental health providers who practice in both clinical and school-based settings, we wanted to further elaborate on a recent op-ed relating to outing students to parents on October 5, 2022 (Op-Ed: Not [...]
Hello to everyone except for Florida, a state that never tires of finding new ways to ostracize LGBTQ+ students, teachers, and other Floridians. October is National LGBTQ+ History Month. Except in Miami-Dade County schools where [...]
In the United States, everybody knows that you don’t mess with Texas. That’s because you don’t have to. Texas will undoubtedly mess with you. Honestly, you could just be someone who needs, say, electricity on [...]
Editor’s Note: Recently, Tudor Dixon and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer weighed in on Michigan Department of Education (MDE) training that touches on parental notification as it relates to LGBTQ+ students. MDE urges caution in these situations. [...]
Midterm elections are upon us, my friends. People in Michigan already have ballots in hand. In fact, mine just came today. I can’t wait to vote for competent leaders who’ve been doing a damn good [...]
Last month, Michigan GOP Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock targeted U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg with a homophobic tweet, calling him a “weak little girl” while mocking his move to Michigan. Despite widespread condemnation of her [...]
In Iran, Islamic religious police detained Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, for wearing her hijab too loosely. Reports say that some of her hair was visible. That is forbidden. Amini died while in custody. Her [...]
In the assault on reproductive freedom in the United States, there’s one thing I can’t really wrap my brain around. According to the people who claim to be “pro-life,” being a mother is a gift [...]
Words. What are they? Are they simply a collection of letters arranged in a particular way to symbolize places, things, ideas, feelings, people and the like so that people can communicate with one another? Or [...]
Right-wing radicals love to rail against “identity politics” while at the same time asserting that the United States is a white, Christian nation. As if being white or Christian or a white Christian is not [...]
I don’t know about you, but when I want to blow off some steam and air some grievances, there’s just no more perfect target than a children’s hospital. Whether it's the staff, the administration, the [...]
I feel like I’m trapped in a decades long episode of "The Twilight Zone" where I am the only one who can see the monster on the wing of the airplane, and that monster is [...]
I woke up this morning thinking about disgraced former president Donald Trump and how relieved I was that he wasn’t on Twitter any more so that I was not constantly bombarded by what is surely [...]
There’s an old adage that advises people to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. With the U.S. Supreme Court now dominated by a conservative majority that apparently has no shame in overturning [...]
Are you tired of being told how bad things are? Are you sick of being bombarded with terrible news all of the time? Do you wish that you could read about something positive for a [...]
I am writing this on Primary Election Eve. By the time you’re reading this, races across the country will be decided, for better or worse. In Michigan, we have a clown car of right-wing Republican [...]
A bill to protect marriage equality passed in the U.S. House recently and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is raring to get it passed in the Senate. Which would be nice! (And which would [...]
In another episode of “Elections Matter,” the U.S. House of Representatives, which has a Democratic majority, voted to protect the marriages of LGBTQ+ people should the Supreme Court overturn Obergefell, the 2015 case that saw [...]
Through hard work, determination, support and imagination, Hotter Than July has been a premier event for 27 years. The project is now older than some people I know. Many have shared their talents with the [...]
I am sure by now you have heard the devastating news about Brett Kavanaugh, credibly-accused sexual assaulter/Supreme Court Justice/man who likes beer. It’s hard for me to even write this. But you need to hear [...]
Growing up in a Black middle-class household in the early ’90s, the only force more powerful than God was gender. In our childhood home, there were boys and there were girls. Boys did boy stuff, [...]
I am sure you don’t need me to tell you this: in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which established constitutional protections for abortion, as part of a 6-3 ruling to [...]
Well, this sucks. Even when you know something terrible is coming, you’re never quite prepared for the moment it happens. And yet here we are: The United States Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. [...]
I woke up this morning with TLC’s “No Scrubs” stuck in my head, that anthem lambasting “deadbeat ass” men. And then I open my computer to read an article about the Texas Republican Party adopting [...]
Ah, spring! Time of flowers, birdsong and, for many of us parents and our children, college visits. My own son went through the college admissions process a couple of years ago. While I am in [...]
I turned 50 earlier this year. That means I’ve been going to The Woodward Bar & Grill for about half of my life. I had no idea of its history as the oldest gay bar [...]
Pride Month is halfway over, and what a month it has been so far. It’s awesome to see photos from the many Pride events and marches across the country and the world. It is NOT [...]
In the United States the call for meaningful gun violence prevention is louder than ever. People are tired of mass shootings every day and want their kids to go to school and come home alive. [...]
How are you doing? You doing OK? Because I’m not. I can’t stop thinking about Uvalde, a place I didn’t even know existed until May 24, a day that marked something shocking — but not [...]
“I’m having a proper full-on gay crisis.” So shares Nick, one of the protagonists in Netflix’s beautiful “Heartstopper,” a tale about Charlie, a gay high schooler, who falls in love with his classmate Nick. I’m [...]
I had a friend who smoked meth up until the day she died. Skyy was a transgender woman and a daily meth user for the entire time I knew her. When she was diagnosed with [...]
Clarence Thomas should not be a Supreme Court justice. But because we don’t believe women about sexual harassment, especially not Black women, he is. I’m old enough to remember Anita Hill testifying about being sexually [...]
In Buffalo, New York, a white supremacist terrorist went to a grocery store 200 miles from his house specifically to murder Black people. Which he did. I’m not going to name the terrorist here, because [...]
It was bound to happen. Eventually someone was going to discover that LGBTQ+ people own and run Disney and have been using it to make kids across the United States queer. But hey, someone had [...]
In Watertown, South Dakota, on the 25th of April, a German teacher at Watertown High School, Calvin Hillesland, handed letters to four trans and nonbinary students. The letters, shared widely on social media by at [...]
Wonder Woman (specifically Linda Carter as Wonder Woman) made me gay. Little did I know, that was the plan all along. But the truth about all of your comic heroes is finally coming out thanks [...]
The Michigan Republican Party recently held its endorsement convention in Grand Rapids, a process that many observers are calling a free and fair election that was totally well organized and showed Republican unity shit show. [...]
In the race to be the most anti-LGBTQ+ state in the union, Alabama is pulling ahead. Gov. Kay Ivey (who, get this, is a Republican!) signed a law making the provision of gender-affirming care to [...]
What are we to make of State Sen. Lana Theis (R-Brighton)? To say she has promoted transphobic legislation is a fact. To say she has been an ardent opponent of LGBTQ+ rights is a fact. [...]
I have tinnitus, which, according to the technician who did my hearing test, is pronounced TIN-uh-TIS rather than the more commonly heard ti-NI-tis. But no matter how you pronounce it I can assure you: it [...]
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