June 28,1969. In the early morning hours, police raid a mafia-run Greenwich Village bar named the Stonewall Inn that catered to an assortment of patrons including drag queens, transgendered people, homeless youth, middle class gays, and hustlers. …
MoreWhen Barack Obama was elected as the 44th president of the United States, queer people all across America cheered. We had good reason to celebrate. After all, he had the most far-reaching, pro-GLBT agenda of any presidential candidate in U.S. history: repeal DOMA, end “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” pass hate crimes legislation, lift the HIV travel ban, and increase funding for AIDS research. Not withstanding his opposition to marriage equality, candidate Obama was a strong ally for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender folks. Time and again, he included us—“gay America and straight America”—in his bold vision of a new “United States of America.” He talked to us and he talked about us, even in places where issues of gender and sexuality were historically taboo. His rhetoric and record all pointed to the same conclusion: we would have a strong champion in the White House.
MoreCongresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) took the lead in formulating this letter to President Museveni of Uganda when that country’s parliament was considering a bill to make homosexuality a capital crime. The same group of legislators sent a similar letter to President Obama urging him to act on this matter.
MoreLetters from our readers
MoreI am a recently separated United States Army Captain, a fiscal conservative, a lifetime member of the Republican Party; and I am angry. I am mortified that these characteristics align me with the forces of sexual discrimination that permeate our nation’s politics and its armed forces.
MoreRECENTLY I completed a federal prison sentence for receiving and possessing a few items identified as child pornography. Federal postal inspectors sent them to me because my name appeared on the mailing list of James Kemmish, an adult porn distributor who was caught at the border with some illegal videos recently filmed in Mexico.
MoreFOLLOWING THE PASSAGE of Proposition 8 in California last November, the battleground for marriage equality has now shifted to the nation’s capital as efforts are under way to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (or DOMA), which precludes the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage even in states where it is legal. One group that strongly supported Proposition 8-with seventy percent voting yes, according to some exit polls-was African-American voters.
MoreThe movement that followed Stonewall represented a sharp break with the past; the impact over time would transform the world in ways unimaginable to earlier activists. What’s more, scale of change over the ensuing forty years has been breathtaking. What, then, was so special about Stonewall?
MoreDESPITE President Obama’s lifting of the ban on prohibiting abortion information and services overseas, the issue is not settled. In the past fifteen years, right-wing groups unleashed a vast, many-pronged “culture war” to manipulate sexual anxieties and dictate what goes on in America’s bedrooms.
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