“To hold that piece of paper brought tears to my eyes.” That is how my friend and former ACLU of Michigan colleague Amy Hunter says it felt to finally obtain a birth certificate showing her [...]
I’ve been wrestling with one painting ever since selecting works for a new exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) back in September 2019. The show, called “Oh, honey…,” isn’t about “queer [...]
Growing up, I followed in my mother’s footsteps. Like many single Black women raising a child, she represented diligence and poise. I performed femininity out of example, an obligation of what I knew womanhood to [...]
On June 11, I realized a dream come true 33 years in the making when I got to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Detroit Tigers game, part of the celebration of LGBTQ [...]
You know how they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity? And also how they say don’t feed the trolls? Well, in a convergence of the two I have discovered The Brothers Osborne, a [...]
I’ve posted quite a bit about trans kids, but I haven’t talked about their parents. Republicans are characterizing parents like me as dangerous, reckless, abusive and, in some cases, worthy of incarceration. Since they’ve spent [...]
Congratulations, everyone! We did it! Anti-LGBTQ+ bias is over and done now that Caitlyn Jenner is running to be California’s next governor! If we’ve learned anything from these past four years, it’s that putting a [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I was honored to recently join Affirmations, OutFront Kalamazoo, Equality Michigan and several other hardworking organizations and activists across the state for a virtual celebration of the historic ruling made by the Supreme Court to [...]
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 [...]
At the heart of many of society's "-isms" is a laundry list of stereotypes that seek to characterize a group in ways that both provide an easy, if inaccurate, method of describing that group, while [...]
