LGBTQ Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is promoting his far-Christian right beliefs in his latest fundraising email, which asks, “Does America Need More God, Patriot?”Johnson, who last year was the lead sponsor of a federal “Don’t Say Gay” bill, lamented in his email that an increasing number of high school students identify as LGBTQ+. He also claimed “America is hanging on by a thread,” “I fear America may be beyond redemption,” and said, “we live in a depraved culture.”“I’m uneasy, Patriot,” Johnson’s email, sent via the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), begins, as Insider reported.

per the BBC.Williams can be seen holding a handbag while being questioned by Whitfield: “Who are you trying to impress?”Whitfield admitted the assault but at Friday’s hearing at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court, he argued that his motives stemmed not from homophobia — but rather a comment Williams made about his skin, which was scarred from cancer treatments.“I was very hurt, very, very angry,” Whitfield said.“He carried on. Then after the fourth ‘look at the state of you,’ I said, ‘Look at the state of you,'” Williams explained.

HB 599 has been dubbed as a “Don’t Say Gay” bill for government and private work environments.Under the bill, state and local government employers and contractors — which the bill defines as any “individual, partnership, corporation, or business entity” that “enters or attempts to enter into a contract for services” with any state, county, municipality, or special tax district in Florida — would be barred from using pronouns and honorific titles that do not match their assigned sex at birth, which is described as “an immutable biological trait.”As noted by transgender journalist Erin Reed, due to the bill’s wide-ranging definition of “contractors,” the prohibition would apply to private businesses, stadiums, convention centers, hospitals, insurance agencies, and any other entities that contract with local jurisdictions.“Florida Republicans just filed legislation that would essentially ban gender pronouns in PRIVATE businesses and prohibit trainings about pronouns in nonprofits too,” wrote State Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando) on the social media platform X.

READ MORE: ‘A Real Problem With Winning’: Right Wing Pundits Stunned by ‘Major Victories’ for Democrats“Think about what some people are doing, trying to dehumanize other human beings. Trying to turn people against each other.

pundits, for offenses — both real and imagined — often fixating on his sexual orientation. With respect to his travel habits, the Transportation Department announced in February it would audit Buttigieg’s use of FAA private jets.Buttigieg is believed to have taken 18 such flights since taking office, costing taxpayers around $42,000.

he made it. Barry Manilow revealed Friday that the reason he kept his sexual orientation quiet for so long was due to the fact that the singer feared being gay would have “killed” his career. “Well, in the ’70s, you know, you didn’t [come out],” Manilow, 80, said to veteran journalist Chris Wallace while appearing on an episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?““It wasn’t the same as it is today.

wrote in an Instagram post. “The love that I have received from you all over the last 6 years has been absolutely surreal. You have tuned in and been dedicated fans and together we were able to share the healing powers of design.

The Breakfast Club” podcast, the “White Chicks” star spoke openly about his child’s transition and how it has affected him. “I have a daughter that transitioned into a son,” Wayans, 51, said on the podcast. “My daughter Amai is now Kai, and so, I talk about the transition.” “Not his … their transition, but my transition as a parent, going from ignorance and denial to complete unconditional love and acceptance,” the actor continued.The Post reached out to Wayans for additional comment.

KFile, on Wednesday uncovered Johnson’s remarks in support of so-called “ex-gay” conversion therapy, which major medical institutions and government agencies have pronounced dangerous, possibly deadly, and likened to or defined as torture.Johnson had collaborated with an “ex-gay” ministry and his employer before he entered politics in the mid-2000’s, a Christian legal organization that is now designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.Wednesday evening, as Mediate reported, CNN played audio of Johnson talking about an annual event he worked on with his employer, the Alliance Defense Fund (now Alliance Defending Freedom) and Exodus International, a now-defunct and debunked “ex-gay” organization that claimed gay people could become heterosexual through conversion therapy.That event was targeted toward school children.READ MORE: Johnson Mocks Reports GOP Plan to Defund IRS Will Cost US Taxpayers Up to $90 Billion“Our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and cannot change. But what these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), who House Republicans unanimously voted for last week, has scrubbed his personal website, apparently deleting all 69 weekly podcasts he and his wife Kelly began recording last year.Kelly Johnson’s business website, Onward Christian Counseling, has also been scrubbed. HuffPost reports she “runs a counseling business that advocates the belief that homosexuality is comparable to bestiality and incest, according to its operating documents.” Attempts to access both websites now result in an “Error” message, although those web addresses have been archived.Speaker Johnson has been described as a far-right Christian nationalist and Christian dominionist.Last week, after Johnson was elected the third-most powerful official in America, Politico published a profile on “the Christian nationalist ideas that shaped House Speaker Mike Johnson.” The New York Times wrote, “The new House speaker has put his faith at the center of his political career, and aligned himself with a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that some describe as Christian nationalism.”An MSNBC columnist last week wrote, “Mike Johnson’s Christian nationalist track record isn’t a mystery — it’s a tragedy,” and added, “The new speaker cut his teeth trying to erode the separation of church and state and abortion and LGBTQ rights as a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund.”On Thursday, in a Daily Beast opinion piece, David Rothkopf wrote, “Here’s Why Mike Johnson Is More Dangerous Than Donald Trump.”“In interviews he has spoken of the fact that ‘We don’t live in a democracy’ we live in a ‘Biblical republic,'” Rothkop said.

a novel by Thomas Mallon. The series arc follows the clandestine romance of two different men who meet in McCarthy-era Washington: confident and charismatic Hawkins Fuller (Bomer) and idealistic and religious Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey, “Bridgerton”). The plot traces their on-and-off relationship through several decades, including the era when Sen.

screenshots leaked on TwitterThursday.Swift, who has recently been making waves attending NFL games to support her latest rumored beau, NFL star Travis Kelce, 33, has been romantically linked to a slew of men in the past, including Harry Styles, John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tom Hiddleston and Joe Jonas. “I swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth, and my female friendships.

We often take advantage of our queer privilege in ways many spend their entire lives hoping for. In Iran, a place not known for its pro-LGBTQ attitudes, queerness is something you hide, and hope never comes out, but that doesn’t erase it.

An attempt at a Kramer vs. Kramer-style custody battle through the lens of a gay marriage, Our Son (★★☆☆☆) offers an interesting premise and a semi-notable cast, but not much more.The biggest obstacle is a script that more often than not sounds like a 1980s soap opera.

“When I announced that I was running for public office, I called a lot of other politicians in the Middle Tennessee area, and heard the same thing from everybody,” recalls Olivia Hill, the recently sworn-in Metropolitan Nashville Council Member At-Large, who became the Volunteer State’s first out transgender officeholder. “All those politicians told me, ‘Olivia, on a campaign, you’re going to meet some really, really nice people.

The Chronicle, a local newspaper. As part of the painting, he wrote the slogan: “Have your heard the news? 4-H is 4 everyone,” with a drawing of an orange, yellow, green, and blue-colored rainbow underneath.Elwood said the design was meant to show the club was inclusive of LGBTQ individuals, a value that the national 4-H organization has promoted on its website, reports Des Moines-based CBS affiliate KCCI.But when the family drove by the window the following day, the rainbow had been removed.“I wasn’t expecting that at all,” Elwood Burns said. “I was kind of in shock.

Our Flag Means Death (★★★★☆). The pirate comedy from David Jenkins was quietly released on MAX last year with little fanfare but quickly caught attention as the tale of the show’s queerness spread.

Human Rights Campaign‘s ad, expected to air nationwide according to The Hill.“Instead, they’re trying to limit the health care you and your family can access, ban books and flags and block enforcement of civil rights laws, all while risking the government grinding to a halt.”“Tell Congress to reject the politics of hate and get back to work,” the video adds.READ MORE: ‘Careening’ Toward ‘Risk of Political Violence’: Experts Sound Alarm After Trump Floats Executing His Former General“In addition to attaching numerous anti-LGBTQ+ provisions to their draft spending bills,” HRC adds in a press release, “the legislative attacks from Republicans in the House of Representatives also include stand-alone bills such as H.R. 734 — a nationwide ban on transgender students playing sports — as well as larger legislative packages like H.R.

“eradicating” transgender identity from public life has called for drag queens and attendees of Pride parades to be arrested for violating public indecency laws.Michael Knowles, of the conservative publication The Daily Wire, who hosts his own self-titled YouTube podcast, made the comments while attempting to defend conservative U.S. Rep.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune he lost a job calling bingo at the Mower County Fair in Austin, Minnesota, a gig he’s had for the past three years.He claimed it was due to the ongoing attempts to crack down on drag performances and displays of gender-nonconformity, which Republican politicians and conservatives have embraced in recent months. “It’s only been in the past year where I feel like every time Roxi goes to do something, I’m met with some sort of vocal backlash,” the 29-year-old said.

expressed her desire to star in a beer advertisement at the Super Bowl.Saying the potential link-up would be “epic,” Mulvaney told The Cut that she would be open to yet another beer ad months after her divisive partnership with Bud Light.“Maybe it’d be epic … if in like 10 years I got to do a beer commercial for a Super Bowl,” she said in the interview published Wednesday.Revealing that the fallout from the Bud Light saga had been a “huge wake-up call” for her, the influencer said she now realizes that she was naive about the realities of being a trans woman in the public eye.“I think that some trans elders probably looked at me this last year and were like, ‘Bitch. You have so far to go.’ I think they probably saw what has happened to me these last few months coming,” Mulvaney said.“This was a good wake-up call for me.

Amnesty International — which is protesting the man’s prosecution — the 20-year-old was arrested along with a 41-year-old man after the two were allegedly found half-naked around midnight on August 15 at the Soroti Sports Ground in the eastern part of the country.Initially, both men were going to be charged with engaging in sexual relations with a person of the same sex.The charge carries a penalty of 10 years in prison for attempting to engage in same-sex conduct and life imprisonment for those found guilty of engaging in same-sex conduct.However, the 41-year-old, who is reportedly “disabled” — a claim for which no evidence was provided — was released because he could not provide consent due to his “mental status.” As a result, the 20-year-old was charged with “aggravated homosexuality,” which the law defines as instances in which a person engages in same-sex relations while living with HIV, or with a partner who can either not legally consent or has been coerced or seduced into sex.Such offenses are punishable by death under the law, which was signed into effect by President Yoweri Museveni in May.

U.S. ON CANADA’S BAD LISTCanada has issued a travel advisory to the United States, per National Public Radio, warning members of the LGBTQ community that some American states have enacted laws that may affect them if they choose to travel to the United States.While the country’s Global Affairs department did not specify to which states it was referring, it did advise travelers to research local laws before traveling.Among the nearly 80 laws passed this year are those prohibiting drag performances, restricting access to gender-affirming care, or restrictions on which public restrooms or facilities transgender individuals can use.

Canada’s new warning to its LGBTQ people is a “political” attack on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and not an “actual concern,” several Fox News hosts on Thursday delivered caustic commentary against the Canadian government and U.S. cities including LGBTQ-friendly San Francisco and New York.“Well, they’re talking about Florida, right? They’re aiming this at Ron DeSantis, and the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, which is one of the most ridiculous interpretations of that bill that I’ve ever seen,” declared Fox News guest host Michele Tafoya, the former NBC Sports reporter who kicked off her political career with a “controversial stand on race relations.”After mentioning that the NAACP had issued a travel warning for LGBTQ people thinking of visiting Florida, Tafoya insisted, “this is all very much, this is very political, and it’s misdirected.”READ MORE: Governor Smacks Down GOP Lawmaker and Trump for ‘End Run’ Attempt to Derail Fani Willis’ RICO Prosecution“I think they need to be a little more concerned about countries in the Middle East who throw LGBTQ types off buildings and disrupt weddings and don’t even allow us to think about it,” she continued.

Fox News co-host Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal on the the right-wing cable channel’s very popular afternoon show “The Five,” destroyed her conservative co-hosts’ talking points on a wide variety of culture war issues.Behind a chyron of “Tyranny of the Minority” – related to remark made by Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy – Tarlov on Wednesday fed facts to the conservatives who tried to claim the majority of Americans oppose the right to choose an abortion, and the majority of Americans do not support transgender people.“On the trans issue, for instance,” Tarlov offered, “our own Fox polling shows that 57% of Americans think that trans kids and their families being the target of political attacks, as in these anti-trans bills, is a major problem.”“When you look at the actual numbers of kids that are, for instance, they have gender dysphoria, and they’re getting top surgery. How many kids do you think got top surgery last year?” she asked, not receiving a response from any of her co-hosts.READ MORE: DeSantis ‘Shuts Down’ Question of How He Would Handle His Kids Being LGBTQ: ‘We’ll Leave That Between My Wife and I’“Under 300,” answered Tarlov, who “holds two Master’s degrees in political science and public policy, as well as a Ph.D.

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, currently polling 40 points behind GOP 2024 presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, in a rare TIME magazine interview refused to answer a reporter’s question about what he would do if one of his three children were LGBTQ – but he did spend time promoting his parents’ rights platform.“I think we were viewed, really from Day One, as the candidate that had the strong record on the issues important to parents,” the Florida Republican told TIME’s national political correspondent Molly Ball in a 30-minute interview at the Iowa State Fair published Wednesday,“’It has been an issue, really, from the beginning,’ he says of the ‘parents’ rights’ agenda that has been central to his struggling presidential candidacy. ‘And so I do think we’ve tapped into that, and we’ll continue to do it.'”Parents’ rights is the latest conservative code word for “family values,” as TIME’s national political correspondent Molly Ball notes.READ MORE: ‘We’re Gonna Start Slitting Throats on Day One’: DeSantis Makes New Deep State Pledge in Campaign RebootBut it really was really a platform the Florida governor grabbed after it proved to be a winning issue for Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin in what had been a “long-shot” gubernatorial battle.

if you can get past a career-worst performance from Uma Thurman.Based on a popular novel (TikTok videos on the topic have over 500 million views), the Prime Video movie is directed by Matthew Lopez and produced by Greg Berlanti. The story follows Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), a bisexual law school student who is the “first son” of the United States, since his mom, Ellen Claremont (Uma Thurman), is the President.

come out as gay in the Disney+ series based on the iconic franchise.“High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” dropped its fourth and final season on Wednesday and there is a scene where some of the original Disney Channel stars are filming “High School Musical 4.”The TV series’ showrunner Tim Federle told TV Line recently that he called Grabeel, 38, to tell him the news of Ryan’s sexual orientation.“Lucas, like, cried on the phone and said, ‘This would mean so much to people who grew up with this movie,'” Federle recalled.He went on and noted that the “Switched at Birth” star had told him: “It’s what they were always kind of missing from this character.”The TV show’s scene featured Ryan kissing his partner, portrayed by Pentatonix member Scott Hoying.“High School Musical” premiered on Disney Channel in 2006 and subsequently had two sequels released in the following years.

claimed to Teen Vogue that since his rise to fame in the Blighty-based queer coming-of-age drama, his mother has been forced to abandon her social media accounts and create new ones, after being messaged relentlessly by strangers. And, according to the actor, one die-hard fan even attempted to contact his grandmother, after discovering her phone number. “It’s a weird guilt I sometimes feel that, by association, their lives are affected by choices in my life,” Locke told a reporter for for the online publication’s cover story.

removed all mention of JK Rowling from their “Harry Potter” exhibit after calling her a “cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity,” according to a blog post that was posted in May.Project manager Chris Moore, who is transgender, authored the piece and claimed that they would “love to go with the internet’s theory that these books were actually written without an author.” “But this certain person is a bit too vocal with her super hateful and divisive views to be ignored,” continued the post. “For the time being, the curators decided to remove any of her artifacts from this gallery to reduce her impact.”“It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s what we were able to do in the short-term while determining long-term practices.”The Daily Mail has reported that MoPOP has kept the “Harry Potter” memorabilia on display, but Rowling’s name is not mentioned anywhere in the exhibit.