Tabla de contenidos para September/October 2023 en The Advocate

IF YOU ASKED most members of the GOP House majority or any Republican vying for president whether the existence of LGBTQ+ people is a modern-day phenomenon, they’d likely answer in the affirmative. Even though millions of queer people in this country and around the world must still fight for their very existence, same-sex love and gender nonconformity has existed for aeons. How can we ensure our notable figures and victories endure when so many in power want to pretend we don’t exist, and never did? We tell our own stories. Here are 10.…

Queer bars are spaces where a lot of us figure ourselves out and try new identities and make mistakes. What did you learn about yourself going to queer bars in your early 20s? Number one, I learned that these are the places I want to be in, and number two, I learned what it feels like to actually have community; what it feels like to hit on someone and have them utterly reject you and then be OK with that and keep going to the same place; what it feels like to see an ex in a space that you once thought of as yours and now have to share. I learned how to move through queer society through those spaces. What do queer spaces — lesbian spaces more specifically…

A super-steamy video by queer Norwegian-American artist Magnus Riise has also managed to subtly disseminate positive messaging about people living with HIV. While the song is not at all about HIV, the decision to cast sexy Kinky Boots star Hernando Umana, who happens to be HIV-positive, as Riise’s one-night lover in the music video for his song “Until Tomorrow” is significant. Whether intentional or not, Riise is helping to bring attention to the U=U movement. These days HIV is a manageable condition, thanks to today’s many highly effective treatment options. When on meds, not only can people living with HIV now expect to live long, healthy lives, most can also quickly get the virus to undetectable levels in their body. Once you become undetectable, you then have a zero chance…

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at one point seemed to represent a new generation of Republican leadership. During his first year as governor of Florida, he visited the Pulse memorial and told gay lawmakers like Carlos Guillermo Smith and shooting survivors they would “have no problem” with his governance of LGBTQ+ issues, despite what other differences they had. Yet as he runs for president, DeSantis has rapidly built up a robust anti-LGBTQ+ record, including signing a bathroom segregation bill into law. DeSantis also restricted access to trans health care, threatened business licenses for venues allowing minors into drag performances, and enacted an infamous “don’t say gay” law that forbids classroom instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation. As DeSantis ramps up homophobic rhetoric in his quest for the GOP presidential nomination,…

KENNETH ANGER Gay filmmaker and author Kenneth Anger, known for his experimental and homoerotic movies and his wildly gossipy Hollywood Babylon books, died in May at age 96. He died at an assisted-living facility in Yucca Valley, Calif., Spencer Glesby, a spokesman for Sprüth Magers, an art gallery that represented Anger, told national media outlets. Anger, sometimes called the godfather of queer film, grew up in the Los Angeles area and began making movies in his youth. He was 20 when he made Fireworks, shot in his parents’ Beverly Hills home when they were out of town. Anger appears in the 14-minute film having “a sadomasochistic encounter with a group of muscle-bound sailors, one of whom undoes his pants to reveal a Roman candle,” as The New York Times describes…

LIL NAS X Though the Grammy-winning rapper has been out as gay for years, X opened up in January about possibly identifying as bisexual. “Be fr would y’all be mad at me if I thought I was a little bisexual,” he tweeted. Though he is famous for trolling and joking around on the internet, X followed up that tweet, saying, “That was my last time coming out the closet I promise.” BELLA RAMSEY The actor, who shot to fame in 2023 after starring in HBO’s popular and critically-acclaimed live-action adaption of the video game The Last of Us, opened up in a January interview with The New York Times about how their gender has “always been very fluid.” “Someone would call me ‘she’ or ‘her’ and I would think about…

Katherine Milon was strolling Philadelphia’s picturesque Pine Street when she saw the awning for Giovanni’s Room. Wait, that’s a gay book, Milon thought. This is a gay bookstore! Soon after, Milon began volunteering at the venerable queer and feminist bookseller — named for James Baldwin’s classic 1956 novel — becoming co-manager a few years later. In the past five years, Milon has witnessed COVID decimate business, the store’s pivot to e-commerce during the pandemic, the return of foot traffic in 2021, and, just this summer, the 50th anniversary of Giovanni’s Room, which is the oldest continuously operating LGBTQ+ bookstore in the nation. A joyous block party in front of the location heralded Giovanni’s half-century, with live readings, performances, and parties marking the occasion. For the store, a love of literature…

Thanks to a raucous weekly beer bust, Sundays at New Orleans’s Up Stairs Lounge were always the busiest nights. From 5 to 7 p.m., you could buy a pitcher of suds for pocket change back in the early 1970s — more than 100 people could easily gather there during the event, with no small amount of patrons being World War II vets. The party came to a tragic end one of those Sunday evenings, leaving a legacy of secrecy, homophobia, and trauma in its wake. Fifty years ago, 32 people died in what was once the deadliest attack on the LGBTQ+ community in U.S. history. It lost that notorious distinction in 2016 when the Pulse nightclub massacre saw 49 people gunned down in Florida. On the evening of June 24,…

I get inundated with story pitches, many of them requesting that I write about new podcasts. Some of the pitches are from left field and have nothing to do with the LGBTQ+ community — not that they must. I got a pitch a while back wanting me to plug an electronics podcast. Clearly, that PR person wasn’t paying attention. Ironically, as a long-time public relations professional, my job was to pitch to media an eclectic array of product and program launches throughout my career, like the hottest summer toys from Toys “R” Us, holiday gifts from Macy’s, eco-friendly washers from Sears, and new-fangled tools from Kmart. I’m sure I’ve sent thousands of pitches, and perhaps that’s why I just do not like to be pitched — about anything. So, it’s…

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff hosted a star-studded LGBTQ+ Pride reception at their official residence in late June. In partnership with GLAAD, Harris and Emhoff welcomed dozens of LGBTQ+ community members, activists, and allies to celebrate Pride while also discussing the numerous attempts by Republican extremists to strip the community of its rights. vp lgbtq+ reception purple lily 8th Annual Purple Lily Awards Los Angeles THE STARS CAME out to support the Latino Equality Alliance at its 8th Annual Purple Lily Awards, held at The East Angel in L.A. on June 22. The event, which honored actor and advocate Johnny Sibilly (Pose, Hacks, Queer As Folk) and community philanthropist and advocate Rolando Palencia among others, helps raise funds for various mental health and social justice programs, and support “the…

After Fox News retracted a story on its website and noted that it had “inaccurately attributed” a quote, White House officials continued to demand that the far-right network retract another recent report on the site that was false and inflammatory. On July 7, Fox News withdrew a story it had published in which former Trump administration Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was quoted as saying he would not support the former president in 2024. “He can kiss my big medical butt,” the story claimed Price had remarked. However, the story was taken down and instead replaced with an editor’s note stating, “This article inaccurately attributed a quote to former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and has been retracted.” White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates took…

When the U.S. Supreme Court revoked the national guarantee of abortion rights last year, there were warnings that the ruling would endanger other rights involving bodily autonomy. And indeed, it’s care. Several states that have outlawed such care for transgender minors are invoking the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization anti-abortion ruling when defending their laws in court. That argument hadn’t succeeded until this month, when a federal appellate court cited Dobbs in letting Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban take effect. The ruling, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, isn’t the final word on the case; it simply lets the law go into force while the suit against it is heard. But it’s raising concern that other courts might buy the argument or, if federal appellate circuits…

FROM DANCE TO theater to music, LGBTQ+ people have long held prominent positions in the arts, influencing culture in myriad ways. Similarily, queer journalists have always been part of the fourth estate and the number of prominent out editors, columnists, and reporters continues to grow, with Gio Benitez being one of the most prominent. Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow, and The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart continue to drive the national dialogue, but a new slate of LGBTQ+ journalists are also stepping up — meet a few of them here: Tre’vell Anderson The singular voice of this Morehouse and Stanford graduate has been featured in publications including Ebony, Essence, Cosmopolitan, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Out, and the Los Angeles Times, with Anderson often chronicling major cultural forces like Janelle Monáe and Lil Nas X.…

Many LGBTQ+ people of a certain age don’t look back fondly at the ’80s, but there was one bright spot then — lesbian bars were ubiquitous among the urban landscape, with well over 200 operating in 1987. Now, only a few dozen remain. Journalist Krista Burton, creator of the blog Effing Dykes, embarked on a post-COVID mission to visit some of these remaining oases of queer community and what she was found, professionally and personally, was profound. Her new book on the experience, Moby Dyke, takes lucky readers on the trip; read an excerpt below. “It’s ok,” I said aloud, my breath puffing into the icy night air. “It’s going to be fine.” It was Saturday night, and I was in Bloomington, Indiana, walking to the Back Door, the state’s…

The tragic fire at a gay bar here on Sunday, June 24 [1973] — being celebrated as Gay Pride in many of the nation’s cities — turned a festive evening info a hell in which 29 persons died. One other man died in a hospital four days later. Fourteen others were injured, several of them barely clinging to life nearly a week after the blaze. The belief was widespread that the bar—the Up Stairs Lounge—had been firebombed, but authorities had still made no official determination of the cause of the blaze nearly a week later. Fire Supt. William McCrossan said “it could be one of the worst fires in the city’s history in terms of people killed.” Certainly never before in the memory of observers had a gay bar been…

A QUEER WOMEN’S road-trip movie rife with severed heads, bumbling bad guys, dyke bars, all-women make-out parties, raucous lesbian sex, and a psychedelic Miley Cyrus cameo has been long overdue. Now Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s high-octane Drive-Away Dolls delivers on all of that and more with the wildest ride ever to be had in a ’90s-era Dodge Aries with “Love is a sleigh ride to hell” emblazoned on the trunk. It’s also a period piece that’s a love letter to lesbian culture at the turn of the new millennium. Stars Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan sport high-waisted jeans, oversized belt buckles, cut-off tees, and chambray shirts as their characters Jamie and Marian (respectively) traverse the highways and byways from Pennsylvania to Tallahassee in search of heralded dyke bars of…