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Senate Bill 12 was passed by the state Senate and House on May 29, and signed into law by Republican Governor Greg Abbott on June 18. The law bans “sexually oriented performances” on public property or in the presence of anyone under 18 years old.

annual conference at Liberty University last month, the event featured a “para-legislative session” at which state legislators and religious-right activists proposed and discussed various resolutions and sample legislation.Among the speakers at the session was Allan Parker, president of religious-right organization The Justice Foundation, who urged the lawmakers in attendance to return to their states and introduce resolutions declaring the month of June to be “Christian History Month.”“I think people are feeling it’s time for Christian History Month,” Parker said. “I hadn’t thought about when but I’m going to suggest June because it’s also Celebrate Life Month.

generated lots of media coverage by making appearances before North Carolina school boards to rant about the supposedly “perverted” books that are available in school libraries. He’s so pleased with himself that he’s taking his bigotry-promoting show on the road.Amanchukwu is a pastor at Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is overseen by virulently anti-LGBTQ pastor Patrick Wooden, who also happens to be Amanchukwu’s father-in-law.

In a move that harkens back to the 1950s while simultaneously echoing the ongoing censorship of depictions of LGBTQ identity nationwide, the Motion Picture Association has given the upcoming queer film Passages an NC-17 rating.“We hunger for movies that are in any proximity to our own experience,” director Ira Sachs told Los Angeles Times, “and to find a movie like this, which is then shut out, is, to me, depressing and reactionary.”To be sure, the Sundance drama is quite sensual — it centers on a Parisian love triangle between a movie director (Franz Rogowski), his artist husband (Ben Whishaw), and a teacher (Adèle Exarchopoulos).And yes, it has its fair share of sex and nudity — including a two-minute scene of the two husbands shot in a single take. But none of the scenes are particularly indelicate or over-the-top, the film’s distributor MUBI said in a statement.For Sachs, the rating is “a form of cultural censorship that is quite dangerous, particularly in a culture which is already battling, in such extreme ways, the possibility of LGBT imagery to exist.”“MUBI has officially rejected this NC-17 rating,” the film’s distributor said, per Variety.

textbook from classrooms because some supplemental materials accompanying it — although not the textbook itself — referenced Harvey Milk, an influential gay rights activist and U.S.

tweeting about her feelings over the song ban before speaking with her supervisors and bringing negative attention to the school district after her tweets went viral.“Ms. Tempel deliberately brought negative attention to the school district because she disagreed with the decision as opposed to following protocol and procedure and I believe that behavior is intolerable,” said Waukesha School District Superintendent James Sebert, who previously recommended in May that the Board of Education terminate Tempel.Tempel’s tweets criticized the school district for banning her students from singing “Rainbowland” at their school concert.While there are no explicitly gay or LGBTQ-related lyrics in the song, the lyrics speak of a world where everyone is accepted for who they are.

firearms regulations, corporate diversity programs, a Florida school’s policy on a transgender student’s privacy, and the decision by credit card companies to separately classify gun purchases, to name a few issues.READ MORE: GOP Senators and Right-Wingers Freak Out Over Biden Ordering 3000 Reservists to Ready for Possible Deployment to EuropeHe or his office have also accessed the medical records of transgender people,Earlier this week anchor Rachel Maddow took a look into Skrmetti “demanding and obtaining the private medical records of trans people in Tennessee as Republicans look for ways to make the lives of trans people miserable,” MSNBC reported.Just yesterday, Skrmetti headed a coalition of 13 Republican state attorneys general “warning the nation’s largest companies — many of which have diversity and equity programs — they could face legal action for using race-based policies,” Tennessee Lookout reported. The sharply-worded letter “put Fortune 100 companies on notice they could be hit with legal action for violating the U.S.

Instagram post after being crowned by her predecessor, Ona Moody, at the AFAS Theater in Leusden. “Yes I’m trans and I want to share my story but I’m also Rikkie and that’s what matters to me.

Far-right conservative preacher Kent Christmas asked God to “loose a Holy judgment” on the upcoming Barbie movie because it is “full of transsexual and transgender and homosexuality.”Posted on June 25, a now-viral video shows the Tennessee-based Christmas saying, “I curse in the name of the Lord this new Barbie movie that has been released full of transsexual and transgender and homosexuality in the name of the Lord. May God loose a judge, may God loose a Holy judgment.

six-page letter, dated July 5, also appears to promote a form of Christian nationalism, suggesting right-wing boycotts over the LGBTQ Pride products harmed the company’s market value, and then stating: “It is likely more profitable to sell the type of Pride that enshrines the love of the United States. Target’s Pride Campaign alienates whereas Pride in our country unites.”The letter also refers to reports from right-wing media including the National Review, Fox News, the New York Post, and the Daily Caller, along with articles from Reuters and Axios.It denounces Target’s financial support of GLSEN.

Ron DeSantis is now personally defending the anti-LGBTQ ad his official 2024 presidential campaign promoted last week, which drew massive outrage from the left and the right for being homophobic and transphobic. The ad wrongly attempts to paint Donald Trump as being pro-LGBTQ by using some of his remarks from years ago, rather than his long record as president and presidential candidate of targeting and attacking the LGBTQ community.“Identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream, where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants — I think that’s totally fair game, because he’s now campaigning saying the opposite,” DeSantis said Wednesday to  right-wing commentator Tomi Lahren, as NBC News reports.The video, which went viral on Twitter and currently has nearly 25 million views, includes this message from the DeSantis campaign attacking Trump: “To wrap up Pride Month, let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it.”READ MORE: ‘Disgusting’: Pro-DeSantis Former GOP Lawmaker Pulls Support and Slams Florida Governor After Anti-LGBTQ AdTrump’s anti-LGBTQ record is extreme, despite his pre-presidential remarks and actions.

George Michael came out to the world after he was arrested by an undercover policeman for engaging in a lewd act in a public bathroom.But, long before that scandalous outing occurred at Will Rogers Memorial Park in Beverly Hills, the late ’80s pop heartthrob revealed his sexuality to his Wham! mate Andrew Ridgeley. It was July 1983 — a year before the chart-topping duo first went No. 1 with “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.”They had just wrapped filming the video for their post-disco single “Club Tropicana” in Ibiza, Spain.“About six months before … I’d actually had something go on that made my attraction to men fairly clear,” Michael reveals in “Wham! The Documentary,” which premieres on Netflix July 5.

BBC Radio 4’s “Desert Island Discs” show and said, “I am always very flattered when gay men come up to me and talk to me about ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ or they talk about ‘Supernova.’ ” He continued: “They say that, ‘It was just so beautiful,’ you know, ‘You did it the right way.’ Because often, it’s not done the right way.“An actor is an actor is an actor. You’re supposed to play different people.

because she refuses to provide that service to same-sex couples. The case is 303 Creative vs.

HBO documentary, “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed,” and has alleged that Hudson made sexual passes at costar James Dean.Hudson — who died from an AIDS-related illness in 1985 — kept his homosexuality a secret among the social circles of Tinseltown.Griffin claimed in the special that Hudson was “privately hitting on Dean” during shooting the 1956 drama.“According to some accounts, James Dean was rather disdainful of Hudson,” he went on.“Dean considered it hypocritical that Rock was maintaining this hetero facade in public,” Griffin explained. “Some might consider that a case of the pot calling the kettle black.”“Giant” also starred Hudson’s friend Elizabeth Taylor, and was Dean’s last movie he shot before his 1955 death in a car crash.The “East of Eden” alum portrayed a ranch hand, who enters into a bitter feud with a wealthy Texas rancher (played by Hudson) for over a period of several years.Griffin also alleged in the documentary that Dean was involved with a gay media executive who was pals with Hudson’s agent, Henry Willson.“If you’re talking about shrouded sexuality, they weren’t all that different,” he noted.In an archived interview featuring Hudson from 1983, he stated that he despised his younger castmate.The “Dynasty” actor said that the only reason that “Giant” director George Stevens had cast Dean, was because he was “new and hot.”“As I said, I didn’t like the fella too much.

303 Creative vs. Elenis, was argued on First Amendment free speech grounds.“The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees,” the Court ruled on Friday, in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines.On Friday, Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, ruled in favor of the Colorado designer who claims she would like to expand her business to include producing wedding websites, but also claims her Christian faith requires her to refuse to do so for same-sex couples getting married.

Caitlyn Jenner, the pro-Trump former California Republican gubernatorial candidate and Olympic gold medal winner, is praising GOP 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley‘s apparent multi-pronged attack on transgender Americans, the U.S. Armed Forces, and the Biden administration’s foreign policy – while continuing to adhere to the GOP’s agenda of injecting “communists” into her messaging.“The Chinese Communist Party is building missiles and we’re arguing over gender pronouns.

303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, has echoes of another case that was decided a few years ago, Masterpiece Cakeshop v.

Talk about not reading the room correctly.In perhaps one of the most tone-deaf and spectacularly abysmal attempts at tongue-in-cheek humor, participants in New York City’s annual Drag March chanted “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children. We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going shopping,” as they marched through the city’s streets last Friday. The event, in which marchers trek over a mile from Tompkins Square Park in Alphabet City to the Stonewall Inn in the West Village, features hundreds of drag queens and LGBTQ activists, often holding provocative signs or banners while leading each other in chants.

Club Q, a Colorado LGBTQ nightclub, and wounding 19 others with an AR-15 style assault rifle last year has been sentenced by a judge to life in prison, including over 2200 years behind bars.“Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, was sentenced Monday to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the 2022 massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado,” CNN reports.“Judge Michael McHenry also sentenced Aldrich to an additional 2,208 years in prison for the attempted murder charges. Aldrich also received a four-year sentence for bias-motivated charges, which are akin to hate-crime charges in other states.”RELATED: Watch: Club Q Owner Testifies Before Congress About ‘Hundreds’ of Messages of Hate He Received After Anti-LGBTQ AttackColorado does not have the death penalty.Unarmed patrons in the club took Aldrich down.Cheryl Norton, whose daughter Ashtin Gamblin survived after being shot nine times, urged Judge McHenry, “Please your honor, I’m pleading with you: Lock this animal away to the depths of hell.”Extremism expert Mark Pitcavage on Monday noted Aldrich “had prominently featured on his website an accelerationist white supremacist video urging killings and terrorist attacks.”Calling it “one of the worst mass killings in Colorado history,” NBC News adds that “Aldrich, 23, who identifies as nonbinary and uses Mx.

Reddit’s r/Oakland forum on Tuesday. Though the text of the post has since been deleted, according to KRON, Rike said he had the specific prescription filled for three years at the Telegraph Avenue location.

And Tango Makes Three, are suing a Florida school board as well as members of the Florida Board of Education. One of the arguments is that the book, based on a true story, is implied to be obscene by the fact that it’s banned.The lawsuit was filed Tuesday, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, the two authors of And Tango Makes Three, along with six children who wish to read the book and their parents.

tweeted Tuesday evening.Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions. The words “cis” or “cisgender” are considered slurs on this platform.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023READ MORE: Conversion Therapy Tied to Suicide Attempts by Transgender People, Massive New Study ShowsBut “cisgender” and “cis” isn’t a slur—it’s merely the opposite of “trans.” “Cis-” is a standard latin prefix, meaning “on this side of.” It’s particularly common in geography, where it just means the same side as the speaker.

declared Donald Trump the President of the United States and Joe Biden a “wannabe dictator,” Fox News once again is under fire, this time for an article and corresponding social media post that claimed “critics” say the LGBTQ pride flag “promotes grooming and pedophilia.”The White House in a rare move slammed the far-right wing propaganda network, which focused its article on an LGBTQ Pride flag hanging from the White House portico during President Biden’s LGBTQ Pride event this past weekend.Today, the People’s House – your house – sends a clear message to the country and to the world.America is a nation of pride. pic.twitter.com/ZZS9oTpDww— President Biden (@POTUS) June 11, 2023According to multiple reports, the initial headline on the Fox News article written by Kerry J.

American Family Association publicly attacked U.S. Senator Ted Cruz over the Texas Republican’s opposition to the “Kill the Gays” law in Uganda.

The American College of Pediatricians, a small, right-wing extremist group of physicians who for two decades has struggled to gain traction finds itself for the first time with more power than it has ever had as the far-right takes greater hold on America.But along with their new-found power comes a deep dive into at least 15 years worth of their internal documents, the result of the group reportedly publishing a link to its own unsecured Google drive in April, which WIRED uncovered and reported on back in May.The Washington Post combed through 10,000 of the group’s documents, and on Thursday publishing its exposé on the American College of Pediatricians, which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.“The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a fringe anti-LGBTQ hate group that masquerades as the premier U.S. association of pediatricians to push anti-LGBTQ junk science, primarily via far-right conservative media and filing amicus briefs in cases related to gay adoption and marriage equality,” SPLC writes in its extensive report.READ MORE: ‘Lying Through Their Teeth’: White House Slams Fox News Over ‘Grooming and Pedophilia’ LGBTQ Pride Flag ArticleAccording to The Washington Post, the American College of Pediatricians is a “small group of conservative doctors” that “has sought to shape the nation’s most contentious policies on abortion and transgender rights by promoting views rejected by the medical establishment as scientific fact.”The American College of Pediatricians promotes the discredited practice of “conversion therapy,” which has been called “torture” by some who have been subjected to it.

Concerned Citizen (★★★☆☆), a cleverly told story of what it means to be a good neighbor and citizen. One who considers himself both, Ben (Shlomi Bertonov), who lives in neat, orderly, Roomba-assisted comfort with boyfriend Raz (Ariel Wolf), plants that tree in an empty sidewalk plot outside their building.Clearly, he deems his efforts a selfless act intended to beautify his rough-around-the-edges neighborhood, located in the outer limits of Tel Aviv.

Passages, the “sexy and sad” romantic drama from writer-director Ira Sachs, and Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovani Project, the festival aims to celebrate the community that’s been there for decades.Other highlights of this year’s festival include It’s Only Life After All, a newly-minted documentary about the Indigo Girls, the Argentinian drama Horseplay, and Nelly & Nadine, a poignant documentary about two women who, after their release from Ravensbrück concentration camp, forged a life of companionship and love.Cinema Art executive director Helen Chamberlin, a native Washingtonian who spent her summers as a youth in Rehoboth, has watched the area’s community evolve over the years. “I remember it was very prevalent that there was an LGBT — or LGB — community here in Rehoboth back in the mid-seventies,” she recalls.“When I looked at the original mini film festival that they did for this community — when I got here, it was called ‘LGBTQ Cine-brations’ — I thought to myself, ‘You know, Pride has become such a huge phenomenon globally…let’s get in the game here.”Getting in the game meant re-branding the festival, scheduling it during Pride Month, maintaining partnerships with organizations like festival co-presenter CAMP Rehoboth, and going after some of the most buzzed-about queer-themed titles to premiere this year at Sundance and Berlin.“When you rebrand something, you have to grow your audience,” says Chamberlin, who stepped into her role at the Cinema Art and the Rehoboth Beach Film Society a year ago.

Mike Pence on Wednesday officially launched his 2024 campaign for the White House, in a lengthy, polished video carefully constructed to position himself as the torch-bearer of American values, including Christian nationalism, while conveniently all but ignoring his four-plus years spent in service to Donald Trump, who recently was held liable by a jury for sexual abuse, is currently under a 34-count state felony indictment, and expected to soon be facing a slew of federal and state charges amid several other investigations.“I believe in the American people, and I have faith God is not done with America yet,” Pence tweeted atop his campaign video. “Together, we can bring this Country back, and the best days for the Greatest Nation on Earth are yet to come!”The well-known presidential historian Michael Beschloss, author of ten books, noted that it will “not be easy for a VP to separate himself from the President he served for four years.”READ MORE: Double Bombshell: Mark Meadows and Trump’s Secret Service Agents Have Testified, NYT ReportsAnd he made this critical observation: Pence’s “just-released announcement video cites ‘drag queens’ and Biden-Harris but not a single mention or image of You-Know-Who,” referring to Donald Trump.In fact, in Pence’s video (below), he falsely claims, “President Joe Biden and the radical left have weakened America at home and abroad.” “The American dream is being crushed under runaway inflation.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg blasted Republicans attacking the LGBTQ community on Tuesday, saying the reason right-wing lawmakers have decided to target them is they don’t want to talk about their “radical positions,” including opposing President Joe Biden’s massive infrastructure law and other accomplishments, like $35 insulin.Appearing on MSNBC, Secretary Buttigieg was asked to weigh in on the Human Rights Campaign’s declaration earlier in the day, of a national emergency in the U.S.