Around the country, small-minded activists have made battlegrounds of what should be safe, quiet, clean places for people to do their private business quickly and easily. But pushing back against this prejudice can be as easy as changing a sign. In just a few minutes, you can make the world a little safer for some of our most vulnerable citizens.
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Social Media Frees Moroccan Gays
Last month, in the small city of Beni-Mellal in central Morocco, two men were dragged from a private home, beaten by a mob (on camera), and then arrested by the authorities for “homosexual acts.”
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At 83, Chita Rivera Would Still Beat You in a Dance-Off
At eighty-three, Chita Rivera has had the kind of career longevity that no one who started off as a dancer could possibly expect. Along the way, she's picked up the Presidential Medal of Freedom and two Tony Awards. Oh, and she's also the first Latin@ to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.
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Queer Taika, a group directed by Kristy Oshiro, to perform at Tadaima.
In California, A 'Welcome Home' For The Japanese-American Queer Community
Tadaima. Okaeri.
Paired together, these two Japanese words are a common greeting-and-response. Tadaima means "I'm home," and okaeri means "welcome." But recently, these terms have taken on new significance as the names for a series of California-based conferences for the Japanese-American queer community and their allies: Okaeri in Los Angeles in 2014, and Tadaima on April 2nd in the Bay Area.
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Hillary's Tortured Relationship with LGBTs
For the first time in history, Democrats have fielded two credible primary candidates who are willing to admit publicly that same-sex marriage should be legal; that firing people simply for being transgender should be illegal; and that so-called "religious freedom acts" should not be used to create a backdoor to discrimination. One has a long and checkered history to examine; the other comes with less baggage (and fewer successes) to take into account. It's like living in a town with one gay bar—when a new one opens shop, you suddenly have to decide how you felt about the original one all along. When it comes to Hillary, activists, policy makers, and pol-watchers across the queer left are sharply divided around the question.
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Ryan Pfluger on Photographing Caitlyn Jenner and More
Pfluger sat down with SVA Close Up in his Williamsburg Studio to talk about how he made it happen, why he shoots the way he does, and how he works with his subjects to get the intense portraits he creates.
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See Moving Portraits of Same-Sex Couples Both Real and Imaginary
So Ciappa recruited gay couples and families to sit for intimate, black-and-white portraits that he’s been showing around the world, in his native France as well as in Canada, Peru, Slovakia, Germany, and Lebanon. He also invited heterosexual celebrities — like actor Eva Longoria and singer Lara Fabian — to pose as “imaginary couples” (which is where the project got its title).
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My Year of Sarah Schulman
While no one book can contain the revelations of an entire career, The Cosmopolitans is a novel that has deep roots in Schulman’s nonfiction, which I would broadly classify as an attempt to explore, catalog, and explain the queer experience in America today through the specific lens of her own life. A close reading of The Cosmopolitans can reveal the fruits of many of her earlier scholarly endeavors, from the profound commitment to urbanity she espoused in Gentrification of the Mind, to the powerful reflections on trauma at the heart of Ties that Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences.
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