Creep of the Week: Trump Supporters
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. [...]
Billy and Miss Nancy: Selma Sweets
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 – [...]
Mombian: An Open Letter to Joe Biden from a Lesbian Mom
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 [...]
700 PGs later
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 [...]
Creep of the Week: Republican Party
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 [...]
Looking Ahead with Respair
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 [...]
Building Back, and Forward, Better Together
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 [...]
Creep of the Week: The Trump Administration
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 [...]
Mombian: 2020 LGBTQ Parenting Year in Review
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 [...]
Creep of the Week: Joseph Epstein
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? [...]
Todd A. Heywood: Down the Right-Wing Rabbit Hole: How did the Video of Rep. Cynthia A. Johnson go Viral?
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 [...]
One Joke too Many
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 [...]
Creep of the Week: Franklin Graham
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 [...]
BTL Publishers Urge Republican Sen. Mike Shirkey and Rep. Lee Chatfield not to Attend the White House
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 [...]
Parting Glances: Band Boys I Tooted With
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, [...]
Creep of the Week: Donald Trump
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 [...]
Rep. Dan Kildee’s Call to Action: The US Senate Must Pass the Equality Act
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 [...]
Mombian: The Day After the Election, a Crucial SCOTUS Case on LGBTQ Foster Care Rights
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 [...]
A Tribute to RBG’s Pro-LGBTQ Legacy
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 [...]
It’s Time for Congress to Protect all Americans
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 Launch Homophobic Campaign Against Gay Congressional Candidate Jon Hoadley
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 [...]
Creep of the Week: Donald Trump
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 [...]
JK Rowling and the Outdated, Dangerous Trope
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 [...]
For Joe Biden, Push Relentlessly Until Nov. 3
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 [...]
Creep of the Week: Amy Coney Barrett
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. [...]
The Wedge Issue
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 [...]
Parting Glances: Other voices; Other Gay Back Rooms
For over 50 years, Life magazine informed Americans about what was happening here and abroad. Photos and content were dramatic. Mostly conservative. Occasionally controversial. Once in a while, downright shocking. Life folded in 1973; circulation [...]
We Condemn Upton’s Homophobic Attacks on Hoadley
Jon Hoadley is the first openly LGBTQ person to run for Congress in Michigan, challenging incumbent Republican Fred Upton in Michigan's 6th district. Hoadley is running a great campaign - so much so that he [...]
Creep of the Week: James Dobson
In the eyes of James Dobson and other leaders in the far-right corners of Christianity, Donald Trump can do no wrong. In a Sept. 14 column titled, “A Moral Alarm Against the Legislative Death March [...]
Cracking Eggs
Every so often, I like to step back a bit and discuss some of the bare basics of being trans. It is very easy to go deep into the issues of the day, especially as [...]
Parting Glances: From a book in progress
As a gay teenager, I hung out at the Hub Grill in downtown Detroit, a greasy spoon of a place, located at Farmer & Bates in convenient walking distance of four quite popular gay bars, [...]
Creep of the Week: Donald Trump (Again)
Greetings and F.U. to Trump and his enabling Republicans who pretended COVID-19 was a Democratic hoax and STILL have no national plan to mitigate the virus, because my kid started his first day of middle [...]
Creep of the Week: National Straight Pride Coalition
Well, well, well, if it isn’t another week in Horror Town, USA. That's just about any town in the country right now, but it's definitely all of the towns in Florida. Every time I watch [...]
Parting Glances: Dreams Come and Go…
The mind-boggling possibility of recording dreams may soon be a reality, predicts a British monthly science magazine How It Works. Nanotechnology and brain scanning techniques are now such that translating neural impulses from brain neurons [...]
If You Value Essential Workers, Raise the Minimum Wage
Every day in these hard times, grocery workers and delivery drivers, health care aides and cleaning staff, childcare workers and fast-food cooks, go to work for $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage. It’s been [...]
‘Look What You Made Me Do’ Is one of the Most Memorable Songs in Pop Culture
If you know me, you know that I am a pop music connoisseur. If I’m not listening to it, I am either sleeping or blabbering about it to one of my friends. That being said, [...]
BTL Endorses Dave Coulter for Oakland County Executive
In the race for Oakland County Executive, there are two excellent choices in the Democratic primary on Aug. 4 – Dave Coulter and Andy Meisner. Between these two longtime advocates for LGBTQ issues, BTL strongly [...]
Dave Coulter is the Right Choice for Oakland County Executive
Less than a year ago, on Nov. 27, 2019, David Coulter signed a resolution to adopt an anti-discrimination addition to employment policy that protects LGBTQ workers in Oakland County. Previously, Oakland County’s policy had forbidden [...]
Andy Meisner is the Right Choice for Oakland County Executive
In just a month, Michigan voters will be heading to the polls for a primary election to select their candidates for November. The headline race for the Democratic nominee for Oakland County Executive features two [...]
With a Supreme Court Victory Behind Us, Congress Must Finish the Job on LGBTQ Nondiscrimination Protections
“It is my duty as a representative in Congress ... to represent everyone in my community,” Congressman Justin Amash says. Last month, I joined so many across the nation in breathing a sigh of relief [...]
Parting Glances: Book in Progress No. 1
I keep on my laptop desk a corner of chalky red brick. It's all that's left of the Cassboro Apartments formerly at 444 Peterboro, Detroit. I found this memento among broken boards and shattered glass [...]
Creep of the Week: Mike Pompeo
I’m in Philadelphia visiting my sister and apparently during my trip there were Nazis marching here and chanting “fuck the gays.” Ah, America. Meanwhile, people are debating whether or not “cancel culture” is the real [...]
Creep of the Week: Michael Heath
Corporate America, man. Who knew they had the power to do seemingly impossible things like getting the Washington football team that uses a racial slur as a goddamn mascot to change its name? I mean, [...]
Water in the Desert
Netflix has recently released "Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen," a documentary created by Sam Feder, Amy Scholder and Laverne Cox. In it, a cast of transgender and nonbinary people examine the history of trans images [...]
Win $2.5 Million (Save. $499)
It must have been something cogent and articulately pleading in my weekly prayers, but recently I’ve just been darn lucky. Not once, but twice. This past week I received an email from an unknown generous [...]
Creep of the Week: Mark Chambers
I am thinking of changing the title of this column to “Dispatches from Hell,” because I truly feel like every week is just another barrage of awful news stories, most of them with Trump at [...]
Why Britney Spears Is the Least Problematic Human Being
Britney Spears is my favorite celebrity. My obsessions with others came and went — Paris Hilton, Oprah, Lindsay Lohan — but Spears has stayed in first place ever since I was 6 years old. The [...]