Oscar Stembridge's music reveals his optimism & emotional truth

Aug 08, 2023

He sings about mature themes and current events, all while finding music to be a catalyst for urging people to embrace activism

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MALMO, Sweden – With the rapid onslaught of new music coursing through our ears, many of us are looking for something authentic in music – something real. And although authentic music exists, it only exists in small doses and quantities. Oscar Stembridge, a 15-year-old singer-songwriter from Sweden, gives his listeners much more than a small dose of authenticity: he gives us what he calls his “emotional truth.”

Unlike today’s contemporary hyper-consumerist culture of music that follows a strict formula for likes, shares, and retweets, Stembridge’s music carries themes of endless possibilities and coming-of-age optimism from his personal experiences. His music is an anthem for Generation Z, a suspended cry of hope and disparity amid a larger global socio-political struggle.

His original music echoes the concerns of his generation facing climate change, destruction of natural habitats both in the oceans and across seven continents, and the crisis brought about by wars and natural disasters.

Stembridge won the Rookie Artist of the Year at the Sweden Pop Awards in 2022 (he was the youngest awardee) for his EP titled ‘Thir13en’ – an EP that details the teenage anguish of being belittled by the system and the hope that follows. We must ask ourselves, “who is Oscar Stembridge?” (Newsflash: he’s more than just a young kid with floppy dirty blonde hair and who speaks with an endearing British-Swedish accent)

The Blade had the privilege recently of interviewing Stembridge, and asked him that very question.

“I write songs, I play music, I sing and I perform” Stembridge replied ever-so-humbly. But he doesn’t just play music, he plays four instruments – guitar, piano, drums, bass, and then there’s his vocals. Stembridge’s music is amazingly eclectic and versatile. Inspired by artists such as Ed Sheeran, Queen, Guns n Roses, Van Halen, Sam Fender, Dominic Fike, Nirvana, and others, he has built up a strong global following on social media.

From a young age, Stembridge has been a musician, but he was born to perform. Whether he performs for a small, intimate crowd or a large festival, Stembridge feels calm and collected. “I’m never nervous,” Stembridge laughs, “I’m just gonna have fun.” And he can be seen having fun in every one of his performances – including his rendition of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing in front of the Swedish Royal Family. And maybe, Stembridge was a bit nervous that one time. “It’s not every day you get to play for the Royal Family,” he says laughing.

Then 12-year-old Oscar Stembridge performed his cover of powerhouse American rock group Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ in front of Sweden’s Royal Family. (Screenshot/SVT1)

To perform without error – and without a sense of nervousness – Stembridge spends a lot of time perfecting his craft; evidenced by one’s listening to Stembridge’s carefully crafted album Thir13en. “The reason why it’s called 13 is because I wrote It when I was 13 years,” he tells the Blade adding; “That time period was a rollercoaster for me… I wasn’t in the happiest place, but I came out of that. Writing this EP was very therapeutic.”

Rather than embarking upon the creation of an EP alone, Stembridge shared his vulnerability with two of his friends in the process. “I wrote [Thir13en] with two of my music buddies and awesome singer-songwriters, Isa Tengblad and Kristofer Greczula.” Stembridge described the process of working with Tengblad and Greczula as both positive and innovative with the vocals for the EP being recorded in Tengblad’s bedroom. “It was never a static formula, and it never has been – We would bounce around as a team.”

Thir13en, in all of its anguish, optimism, and truth raw in its sound, is ultimately true in its emotions and eclectic in its composition. Rather than starting with lyrics first and music second or vice-versa, Stembridge isolates that the album started out as a concept – a sound on the brink of possibility in the wake of being told what to do and how to act.

In fact, the cover of the album would be a good place to start. “[The cover comes from] a notebook that my godfather gave to me…. I wrote out the mind map for the EP – and the cover of the EP is that mind map.”

Thir13en EP cover art & design by Oscar Stembridge

As a mind map, Thir13en is incredibly cohesive in how it encapsulates the teenage lament towards a system that seeming refuses to listen. The ep is about teenage angst but not in a punk rock type of way, more of an activism way on subjects and issues that Stembridge and his fellow Gen Zers are confronting in an increasing complicated world.

But Thir13en dares to showcase the optimism that adults seem to lose as they age but when they witness the vitality of kids like Stembridge they are able to regain hope.

From the EP, the song Young Ones is the statement that the youth has made – and has been making – regarding the older generations not listening to them. “It’s like we’re the enemy // Don’t forget we’re in the same team” // “All you do is blame it, blame it on me” // “Youth is wasted on the young ones.”

In Don’t Lie To Me, the chorus sounds like a group of teenagers pleading to not be lied to. “Don’t lie to me // I know everything you don’t want me to know.”

Unlike the type of teenage angst seemingly solely directed at older adults, [read] parents not listening to them or the ‘no one understands me’ trope, Stembridge sings about mature themes and current events, all while finding music to be a catalyst for urging people to embrace activism.

“What if bombs were confetti,” Stembridge sings in his song “What If” which posits a series of questions about how the world could be. But although Stembridge notes that he won’t be the one to stop all bombs, he still has hope that he can make the world a better place.

The one cause that Stembridge continues to be a fierce advocate for is the climate movement. “I am a climate activist and am very vocal about that,” Stembridge says with certainty in his voice. As Stembridge marches alongside his friend, Greta Thunberg, herself a Gen Zer and longtime Swedish environmental activist, known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation- he stays positive about his effort to bring awareness to climate change.

Rather than falling into apathy – which most of us seem prone to do – Stembridge uses his energy to write music. “I had a positive outlook on my song ‘We March’ – “we can [solve the problem] if we all march together.”

Whether Stembridge plays music at the climate protest rallies or marches along with the crowd, he is sincere and passionate about his activism. “Music is the language of emotion – it breaks all norms and boundaries – it reaches a wider range of people,” Stembridge stresses ecstatically.

But the climate movement isn’t the only thing that Stembridge cares about. The LGBTQ+ movement has been one of Stembridge’s advocacies as well. “I am 100% an ally,” Stembridge says, “I think people should be able to identify themselves how they want. I don’t think that anyone should be restricted to some gender thing.”

Rather than adhering to someone else’s view of how you should be, Stembridge’s song ‘Fake Front’ advises the listener to be authentic. He states that “a lot of people in the world have their fake façade… you don’t have to have a façade in order for people to like you– everyone should be authentic to themselves.”

By playing music with an emotional truth, Stembridge believes that “a lot of people can relate to the songs and can use them as a way of helping themselves.”

Although Stembridge’s critically acclaimed EP Thirt13en was released just last year, Stembridge has music on the way. “I’m creating an official album release… Some of the songs I’ve written are really really really good” (The Blade took note that there were three “really(s)” excitedly uttered so it must be really good).

Stembridge describes that his new album is going to be a more mature version of Thirt13en; and no, it won’t be called Four14en. “This is like, ‘okay. I’m going to write an album now,’’ Stembridge says happily. Oscar hinted that his new, unreleased music will be performed at an event in Austin, Texas on August 9, as he headlines his first ever U.S. concert.

Ultimately, Stembridge’s emotional truth is one that he tells the Blade that everyone should live by. “Be who you are. Just be yourself and be confident with it because it will be great,” Stembridge advises. And with a great pause, Stembridge leaves the readers with one final note: “Believe in yourself.”

Stembridge is slated to perform in Los Angeles on August 2, at the Hotel Café in Hollywood and then again on August 5 in Santa Monica.

On August 9th, the Austin Film Society will present the world premiere screening of Primitive Planet Director Brian Gregory’s film, ‘Trust Your Wild Side with Oscar Stembridge,’ a captivating documentary that follows the incredible journey so far of Stembridge.

After the screening, he will perform his first headlining concert in the USA, playing to thrill the audience with his catchy melodies and heartfelt lyrics.

Calif. Rep. Calvert joins House GOP attacking LGBTQ+ Centers

Trans men, butch dykes & gender-nonconforming heroes in cinema

Anti-Hate Mural unveiled in Long Beach’s Bixby Park

Heat Dome over greater SoCal region prompts caution & advisories

Will Rollins, the gay Democrat vying for a second time to unseat the Republican castigates Calvert’s support for anti-LGBTQ+ amendments

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PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – Will Rollins, the gay Democrat vying for a second chance to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert (Calif.), spoke with the Washington Blade by phone on Thursday following the uproar over his opponent’s support for an anti-LGBTQ+ amendment to a spending bill that was advanced by conservative members of the House Appropriations Committee this week.

The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Subcommittee’s package contained a total of 2,680 Community Project Funding earmarks, all previously cleared by members from both parties, but just before its passage on Tuesday Calvert joined his Republican colleagues who removed funding for two LGBTQ+ centers in Pennsylvania and one in Massachusetts.

The decision to go after three CPF initiatives that provide housing and other support for LGBTQ people in need, none located in his district or state, was “pretty consistent” with Calvert’s “pattern of bigoted behavior towards the LGBTQ+ community,” Rollins said.

A former federal prosecutor who worked in counterterrorism and counterintelligence and was involved in the Justice Department’s pursuit of charges against participants in the deadly January 6 2021 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, Rollins is set to square off against two other candidates in his party’s primary ahead of the November 2024 elections. According to Cook Political Report, new data shows Calvert’s seat has moved from red-leaning to a tossup.

Calvert has served in the House since 1993, representing California’s 41st Congressional District for less than a year since it was redrawn in 2022 to include more Democratic and LGBTQ+ constituents, many residing in the Palm Springs area. Rollins challenged him in last year’s midterm elections, decisively beating primary opponents but ultimately falling short in his gambit for Calvert’s seat by about 11,000 votes.

Reflecting on the 2022 race, Rollins noted that while “the turnout was relatively low, I was the only Democratic challenger in California to win independent voters and had the best performance of any Democratic challenger” in California as measured against the share of votes in the state for President Joe Biden in 2020.

As a first-time candidate with only five months between his Democratic primary and the general elections, Rollins added, he had nearly unseated a member of the House who enjoyed the advantages of the name recognition that comes with being California’s longest serving Republican in that chamber.

In 2024, “we have enough support to flip the seat,” Rollins said — noting that the campaign now has 17 months to build awareness about his candidacy before voters cast their ballots, including by tapping into media markets that were prohibitively expensive in 2022.

Rollins told the Blade Calvert has a “fundamental misunderstanding of LGBTQ+ Americans” and is uninterested in learning about their lived experiences as sexual and gender minorities, as evidenced by his allyship with the GOP members whose move during Tuesday’s THUD markup provoked accusations by Democrats of rank anti-LGBTQ bigotry, igniting exchanges between lawmakers that became so heated the Committee was forced to recess three times.

At one point, Out Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (Wis.), who chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus and serves on the Appropriations Committee, advised Calvert that he would be wise to vote against his party’s anti-LGBTQ+ amendment lest he be looking for a path to retirement courtesy of the more diverse constituents he now represents.

Last month, Calvert, who chairs the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, was criticized after passing an amendment to a military spending bill that, among other provisions, proscribes “any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially, on the basis that such person speaks, or acts, in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief, or moral conviction, that marriage is, or should be recognized as, a union of one man and one woman.”

In practice, Democrats on the Committee argued, this could provide a pathway for someone who is responsible for the disbursement of survivor benefits to deny them to gay and lesbian beneficiaries.

Showing voters the contrast between Calvert’s extreme positions on matters like LGBTQ+ rights proved successful in courting more support for his campaign last year, Rollins said, but these issues are galvanizing not just for LGBTQ+ communities and their straight allies in bluer areas like Palm Springs.

“Study after study has shown that where you discriminate against the LGBT community, whether it’s anti-gay laws in Georgia or anti-LGBT rules overseas, economic output decreases,” stunting small business growth and depressing wages, he said.

So, Rollins said, while it is difficult to conceive of an alternative explanation, let alone a benign one, for the actions this week by Calvert and his fellow ultraconservative Subcommittee members, “we also have to be making the argument that the attacks on us really are an attack collectively on our economic growth and on opportunity and equality.”

“When you’ve got a Party that is prioritizing making sure that gay seniors can’t get food when they need it, versus a Party that wants to make our streets safer, or a candidate who wants to raise wages in Riverside County,” Rollins said, regardless of their political affiliation “voters understand that those priorities are misdirected from the far right.”

Additionally, he said, “part of the job, too, has to be changing the terms of the debate because a lot of the premises that these Republicans are operating from are complete lies.” And while elected Republicans “definitely have some serious problems with the truth,” Rollins said “the good news for me in a purple district is that regular Republican voters, many of whom are actually moderate, will stand up against extremism.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to the House, echoed some of these arguments in a statement to the Blade: “Ken Calvert is determined to turn back the clock on LGTBQ+ rights.”

“Calvert’s bigoted pattern of anti-LGBTQ+ extremism is disqualifying, disgusting, and wildly out of step with the values and beliefs of everyday southern Californians,” the group said.

Rollins said that contrary to Calvert’s claims last year that his thinking on LGBTQ+ rights had evolved, the congressman is “willing to take calculated votes to keep himself in power, which he did before the [2022] midterms” by voting for the Respect for Marriage Act — a move Rollins characterized as “a pretty transparent attempt to wash away an anti LGBTQ+ career that’s lasted three decades.”

Speaking to the Blade by phone on Thursday, gay Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who serves as ranking member of the U.S. House Veterans’ Affairs Committee and a co-chair of the Equality Caucus, said Calvert’s tendency to vacillate between whichever positions are most politically expedient has been on display throughout his 30-year tenure in the House.

The two ran against each other in 1992 and 1994, with Calvert winning both races, and they have served together in California’s Congressional Delegation since Takano first took office in 2013.

Takano said that when Calvert faced off against six opponents in 1992 and ultimately beat him in the general election by fewer than 600 votes, the Republican candidate had “assured key women in the community that he would moderate on social issues like abortion.”

By contrast, Takano said, today “the reality is he cannot survive a Republican primary” without embracing far-right positions, particularly on social issues. Because the GOP has become more extreme since 1992, Takano said, “for [Calvert] to stay in politics, he has to be representative of that extremism.”

The California Democrat contrasted the act of political bravery, and by an elected Republican with unambiguously conservative bona fides, with Calvert — a politician who made a “Faustian bargain” selling his soul to stay in Congress.

“Mark Sanford and I disagreed on a lot of stuff,” Takano said, referring to the Republican former politician who served as Governor of South Carolina and represented the state’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House from 2013 to 2019.

Takano recalled how Sanford came to the defense of “Hamilton” creator Lin Manuel Miranda when then-President Donald Trump attacked the Broadway star — “punching down at a citizen” — because Miranda had “made this appeal to Mike Pence to remember that he was Vice President for all of America.”

“From that moment on, Mark Sanford was on the pathway to lose his primary,” Takano said.

On Friday, Calvert shared a statement with the Blade about Tuesday’s appropriations markup: “I voted along with every Republican colleague on the Appropriations Committee to remove funding for three facilities in the FY2024 THUD appropriations bill due to objections over political activism by some facilities that include pro-communism propaganda, gender affirming care with no age specification, and sexually explicit material for children,” the congressman said.

“I believe most of my constituents, regardless of sexual orientation, do not believe that U.S. taxpayer dollars should be used on activities that undermine the foundations of our country. I do not condone discrimination of any kind and I will always vote my conscience,” he said.

Calvert did not answer questions about why he deserves the support of LGBTQ voters and their allies in his district or whether he encountered blowback from any LGBTQ conservative constituents over his vote on Tuesday.

Responding to the statement, Rollins said “Actions speak louder than Ken’s empty words. He’s voted to ban LGBTQ+ Americans from serving openly in the military, to prohibit us from adopting children, and to allow employers to fire people simply for being LGBTQ+.

Rollins noted that Calvert also voted against the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, adding that “The silver lining of these votes – and his latest vote this week – is that they will seal his loss in 2024 because LGBTQ+ Americans are just as foundational to our country as the belief that all of us must be free to control our own lives and destinies.”

Speaking with the Blade on Thursday, Log Cabin Republicans President Charles Moran disputed the allegations against Calvert along with the characterizations of his behavior and motivations that were provided by Rollins and Congressional Democrats.

Last year, Moran said, Calvert focused on strengthening relationships with his LGBTQ constituents, including through meetings with individuals and groups like Log Cabin, in a deliberate and sincere effort to better understand the community and its needs.

“I had drinks with him immediately following the vote” on the Respect for Marriage Act, Moran said. “And he presented to me a card [on which] he [had written] down the final vote total, and he handed it to me when we sat down because he was proud” to join his 46 House GOP colleagues who also backed the bill.

Moran noted that in 2020, Philadelphia’s William Way LGBT Center, one of the three CPFs whose funding was removed from Tuesday’s appropriations package, had welcomed participation from the city’s Log Cabin Republicans chapter in a forum about public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic before reversing course and disinviting the group in response to pushback.

While he had not yet discussed the THUD amendment with the GOP members behind it or with their Congressional offices, Moran said that they likely had legitimate reasons for removing the earmarks — objections over issues like the practice by at least one of these organizations of discriminating against conservatives.

At the same time, Calvert has arguably sought to police political speech by, for example, restricting the ability of institutions like the U.S. Armed Forces to administer programs centered around diversity, equity, and inclusion — provisions that were a major component of the amendment he passed along with the House’s Defense spending bill in June.

Takano, who has served as the Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s top Democrat since 2019, noted that the need for “affirmatively cultured” diversity in the military has been shown through, for instance, the “conflicts that arose during the Vietnam War era between an un-diverse white officers’ corps and Black and Brown grunts.”

Maintaining the status quo, therefore, runs contrary to the national interest, he added.

Today’s Congressional Republicans “don’t want to see LGBTQ+ service members [being] made to feel welcome, and they don’t want the officers to be trained in order to be sensitive to the backgrounds of service members of color and service members who are LGBTQ+ or service members who are women,” Takano said.

When it comes to next year’s race for California’s 41st District, Takano praised Rollins — a candidate whose reasons for running are “so admirable,” the congressman said, “because at its root, his efforts flow from a very high-minded devotion to our democracy, and in my mind, democracy includes space and protection for all people – LGBTQ people included.”

Rollins told the Blade that while he is appalled by Calvert and other Congressional Republicans’ “blatant targeting of a very small minority,” he is confident that it will add fuel to voters’s desire for change, including through new leadership in the Congress.

The White House released a statement from Biden whose working relationship & friendship with the civil rights icon spans 40+ years

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CHICAGO – During the annual meeting of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition civil rights organization he founded and has headed for over 5 decades, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. formally named Rev. Dr. Frederick Haynes III of the Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas as his successor.

The Rainbow PUSH Convention was held on Sunday at the Apostolic Church of God in the Windy City’s Woodlawn neighborhood. Also in attendance was Vice-President Kamala Harris, the event’s special keynote speaker, who had arrived at Chicago’s Midway airport earlier on Sunday morning.

“I am looking forward to this next chapter where I will continue to focus on economic justice, mentorship, and teaching ministers how to fight for social justice. I will still be very involved in the organization and am proud that we have chosen Rev. Dr. Haynes as my successor,” Rev. Jackson said in a statement released by the organization.

Rev. Haynes has served as the senior pastor of Friendship West Baptist for the past four decades.

“Rev. Jackson has been a mentor and I have been greatly influenced and inspired by this game-changing social justice general, international ambassador for human rights, and prophetic genius. Sadly, justice and human rights are under attack in the nation and around the world. The work of Rainbow PUSH is as necessary as ever and I am committed to standing on the shoulders of Rev. Jackson and continuing the fight for freedom, peace, equity, justice and human rights,” Haynes said.

The White House released a statement from President Joe Biden, who has had a longtime working relationship and friendship with the civil rights leader for over 40 years:

“The promise of America is that we are all created equal in the image of God and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. While we’ve never fully lived up to that promise, we’ve never fully walked away from it because of extraordinary leaders like Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr.

“Throughout our decades of friendship and partnership, I’ve seen how Reverend Jackson has helped lead our nation forward through tumult and triumph. Whether on the campaign trail, on the march for equality, or in the room advocating for what is right and just, I’ve seen him as history will remember him: a man of God and of the people; determined, strategic, and unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our nation.

“Jill and I are grateful to Reverend Jackson for his lifetime of dedicated service and extend our appreciation to the entire Jackson family. We look forward to working with the Rainbow PUSH Coalition as he hands the torch to the next generation of leadership, just as we will continue to cherish the counsel and wisdom that we draw from him.”

Jacquelyne Germain, political reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times and the pool reporter accompanying the Vice-President, reported notable quotes made during Harris’ speech included:

“So today, we celebrate one of America’s greatest patriots. Someone who deeply believes in the promise of our country.”

“At the core of Rev.’s work is the belief that the diversity of our nation is not a weakness or an afterthought, but instead, our greatest strength.”

“Early on, he even had the audacity to name this coalition the National Rainbow Coalition.He defined the rainbow. He was one of the first to define the rainbow. A coalition to push the values of democracy and liberty and equality and justice, not from the top down but from the bottom up and the outside in. He has built coalitions that expanded who has a voice and a seat at the table.”

“Across our country, we are witnessing hard fought hard won freedoms under full on attack by extremist, so called leaders. These extremists have an agenda, an agenda to divide us as a nation, an agenda to attack the importance of diversity and equity and inclusion and the unity of the Rainbow Coalition.”

“These extremists banned books in the year of our Lord 2023. They ban books and prevent the teaching of America’s full history. All the while they refuse reasonable gun safety laws to keep our children safe. Understand what’s happening.”

“Fueled by the love of our country, just as Rev. has done his entire career, let us keep hope alive”

Rev. Jackson, 81, was an early supporter and a protégé of the iconic civil rights leader, the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., starting his work with King participating in the three Selma to Montgomery marches, held in 1965 along the 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery.

King gave Jackson a role in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), sending Jackson to head the Chicago branch of the SCLC’s economic arm, Operation Breadbasket, which he later was appointed President of in 1967.

At 6:01 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, 1968, King, SCLC leadership, Jackson and other civil rights activists who had gathered at the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tennessee to stand in solidarity with striking African-American city sanitation workers, were on the balcony outside King’s room 306 when a shot rang out. King was leaning over the balcony railing in front of his room and was speaking with Jackson who was in the parking lot beneath the balcony.

The bullet struck the civil rights leader in his face rendering him unconsciousness and he was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where doctors opened his chest and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. King never regained consciousness and died at 7:05 p.m. whereupon in the aftermath, post-assassination rioting broke out in major cities across the nation.

On April 3, 2018, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the assassination, Rev. Jackson spoke with a reporter from Scripps News about the events of that night:

In the years following the death of Dr. King, tensions between Jackson and King’s successor as chairman of the SCLC, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, created a rift that escalated until early December of 1971, when Jackson, his entire Breadbasket staff, and 30 of the 35 SCLC board members resigned and began planning a new organization which formed the basis for People United to Save Humanity (Operation PUSH) which officially began operations on December 25, 1971 based in Chicago.

In 1984 Jackson organized the Rainbow Coalition and resigned his post as president of Operation PUSH in 1984 to run for president of the United States. He became the second Black-American to run a national campaign for president in a major party’s primary.

Twelve years previously in 1972, Shirley Chisholm, a Democratic Representative from New York City’s 12th congressional district, centered on Brooklyn’s Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood, was the first Black person, male or female, to run for president within a major party, and Chisholm became the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

The Democratic primary campaign races for president was a national political watershed moment for the country’s LGBTQ+ community. It marked the first time that all of the Party’s leading candidates had sought the endorsement of LGBTQ+ organizations.

At the national Democratic convention held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco in 1984, Jackson became the first candidate to deliver a speech to mention gays and lesbians. In what became known as his “Rainbow Coalition” speech, Jackson said:

[…] “Our party is emerging from one of its most hard fought battles for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in our history. But our healthy competition should make us better, not bitter. We must use the insight, wisdom, and experience of the late Hubert Humphrey as a balm for the wounds in our Party, this nation, and the world. We must forgive each other, redeem each other, regroup, and move one. Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow — red, yellow, brown, black and white — and we’re all precious in God’s sight.

America is not like a blanket — one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.” […]

Jackson decided to make a second run for the presidency in 1987.

On Oct. 11, 1987, at the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, which was thematically honing in on the HIV/AIDS crisis that had enveloped the LGBTQ+ community, among the speakers at the march rally, held on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, was presidential candidate Jackson along with gay U.S. Reps. Barney Frank and Gerry Studds, both Democrats from Massachusetts; former National Organization for Women president Eleanor Smeal and United Farm Workers Union president Cesar Chavez.

In his remarks, Rev. Jackson told the crowd of approximately 300,000:

“We gather today to say that we insist on equal protection under the law for every American, for workers’ rights, women’s rights, for the rights of religious freedom, the rights of individual privacy, for the rights of sexual preference. We come together for the rights of all American people.”

During the 1987 primary campaign, Jackson would often spar with the party’s frontrunner, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis over the governor’s apparent lack of proactive concern over the HIV/AIDS pandemic that had gripped the LGBTQ+ community with thousands dying from the disease. Additionally, there were many leaders in the LGBTQ+ community who viewed Dukakis as homophobic.

Former Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, in his April 15, 1988 Post column reported that during a March primary debate, Jackson drew cheers from a vocal gay contingent at the debate when he spoke of the AIDS “hysteria.” Recalling the march on Washington, he said: “I saw people in their wheelchairs who are dying of AIDS. . . . Not one of the {Reagan administration} officials would come downstairs and shake their hand.”

Kurtz also noted:

“Dukakis is someone who has gone out of his way to hurt us,” said David Taylor, president of Manhattan’s Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats, a 400-member club that has endorsed Jackson.

The contest for gay voters is almost a microcosm of the larger campaign: While Jackson moves gays with his eloquent speeches on gay rights, Dukakis takes a more measured approach and finds himself pinned down on specifics from his tenure as governor, Kurtz reported.

After the ’88 campaign, Jackson, now living in the District of Columbia, ran for the office of “shadow senator” when the position was created in 1991, serving until 1997, when he did not run for reelection. This unpaid position was primarily a post to lobby for statehood for the District of Columbia.

While he declared that he would not be a candidate again for president, he and front-runner Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton had a series of public disagreements after Jackson called for the creation of “new democratic majority.”

On April 26, 1992, Jackson and Clinton had a 40-minute meeting and emerged to announce that they were both committed to defeating Bush in the general election. Asked if he was ready to endorse Clinton, Jackson said,

“Well, if he wins the nomination of our party, he would be well on his way. We need a new President and we need a new direction. We cannot afford any more of what George Bush represents,” The New York Times reported.

The National Rainbow Coalition held a leadership conference June 13, 1992, entitled “Rebuild America: 1992 and Beyond,” Jackson and Clinton appearing together spoke about their plans for the future of the U.S.

Over the course of the 1990’s Jackson devoted his time and efforts to stemming the rising gun violence, along with efforts to further advance civil rights for the disenfranchised minority communities. He also worked on the campaign for his son Jesse Jackson Jr., who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as Congressman from Illinois’s 2nd congressional district who served from 1995 until his resignation in 2012.

On March 1, 2000, Rev. Jackson announced his support of and endorsed Bill Clinton’s Vice President, Al Gore, for the latter’s presidential run. After George W. Bush won, Jackson was a vocal opponent of the Bush Administration’s policies.

During the course of the rest of the decade Jackson was active in social and cultural issues often being present at numerous protests. One notable incident occurred in November 2006, after a white comedian, former Seinfeld actor Michael Richards had launched into onstage racist tirade at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood directed at a Black audience member.

CNN later reported that Richards had called Jackson a few days after the incident to apologize; Jackson accepted Richards’ apology and met with him publicly as a means of resolving the situation. Jackson also joined Black leaders in a call for the elimination of the “N-word” throughout the entertainment industry.

Rev. Jackson was an early supporter of Illinois U.S. Senator Barack Obama who announced his candidacy in 2007 for president. In 2012, he praised then President Obama for his decision to support same-sex marriage and compared the fight for marriage equality to the fight against slavery and the anti-miscegenation laws that once prevented interracial marriage, a position that brought immediate criticism from conservatives- especially evangelical and Pentecostal Black Pastors.

After the infamous shooting death on February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, that brought about a national protests, and in which his killer, George Zimmerman was later acquitted under Florida’s so-called ‘Stand-your-ground’ law, Jackson refused to accept it comparing the decision to the acquittals in the cases of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers, decades earlier.

In the next few years he would also be vocal about the injustices and deaths of young Black males at the hands of primarily white law enforcement officials.

Jackson continued to actively work on behalf of civil rights causes as exemplified during the administration of President Trump calling out some of the more blatant examples of white supremacy seemingly endorsed by Trump.

As the 2020 election neared, Jackson said that Trump had left “African Americans in the deepest hole with the shortest rope” and predicted “African Americans—and particularly African-American women—will vote overwhelmingly for Joe Biden.”

A few weeks ago, Rev. Jackson announced his plans to step down as the leader of Rainbow PUSH, following 64 years of civil rights activity within this movement. Aides said that his decision was brought about in consideration of his advanced age as well as health complications – Jackson was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017, and was hospitalized twice in 2021, after testing positive for COVID-19 and then following a head injury.

“I think it’s really important to find that one thing that you look forward to every single day, something you can’t wait to get home to do”

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WEST HOLLYWOOD – British Olympic gold medalist diver, LGBTQ-human rights activist, husband and father of two boys, Tom Daley, whose enthusiastic passion for his knitting is well known, has recently partnered with Lion Brand Yarn for a new venture.

The crafty Olympian’s self-titled “Made with Love by Tom Daley,” is slated to arrive in Michael craft stores and online starting in September 2023. Made with Love will feature Daley’s custom patterns for beginners and yarn colors inspired by his life and career, such as “Gold Medal” and “Primrose Hill.”

Daley took a break from a Made with Love/Lion Brand Yarn photoshoot up in Laurel Canyon in the hills above West Hollywood recently to chat with The Blade about knitting, family life, and striking a work-life balance.

Daley grew up in Plymouth, a port city in South West England about four hours outside of London. His long competitive diving career started in 2003 when he won a medal at National Novice Championships in the 8/9-year-old category.

At age fourteen, Daley was the youngest qualifying British Olympian athlete since rowing coxswain Ken Lester. In 2007, he became the youngest-ever winner of a British senior title when he took the individual platform event and the following years retained his title and added the synchronized event with partner Blake Aldridge.

In March 2008 he scored a surprise victory at the European Championships in Eindhoven to become the youngest-ever European champion in either swimming or diving. After Beijing he claimed two silver medals at the 2008 World Junior Championships, before winning the senior World Championship in 2009 at the age of 15.

Daley won two gold medals at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, in the 10-metre individual and synchronized event with Max Brick. He competed in his second Olympics in London’s 2012 games and won an individual bronze medal. After the London Games, he gained celebrity status and hosted his own TV show titled Splash.

During the entire course of the Olympic games in Tokyo 2020, held from 23 July to 8 August 2021, audiences following the diving competitions were certain to see the British Olympian quietly and intently focused in-between matches- on his knitting.

The Gold medalist only picked up his first set of knitting needles in March of 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic first spread across the globe, strangling normal daily routines in its deadly grip.

After being seen knitting at the Olympic Games, Daley has become a craft influencer whose dedicated Instagram page attracts 1.4 million plus followers.

Daley founded his Made With Love fashion label in November 2021, stemming from his genuine love for knitting and crochet and his desire to share it with the world and encourage others to take up the hobby.

“It’s been a journey for me that started when I first picked up my knitting needles in March 2020. Fast forward 18 months and I’m so proud to introduce these kits to you all so that you can experience the joy I found learning to knit,” Daley said on his website at the time of the launch.

“I designed these knit kits to help encourage you to pick up those needles, learn the basics, and fall in love with knitting at the same time – all whilst creating something to show off or pass on. Ready? Pick up your needles, learn the basics and let’s have some fun!”

Daley recently moved to Los Angeles from London with his husband, D. Lance Black, and their two sons, Robert – known as Robbie (age 5) and newly arrived Phoenix (age 3 months).

Lion Brand Yarn, which has a long history of supporting the LGBTQ+ community with initiatives like Knit the Rainbow, “crafting handmade clothing for LGBTQ youth,” caught wind of Daley’s passion and approached him about collaborating on this project. In turn, Daley loved the idea.

“I love the crafting community,” Daley told the Blade. “Diving is extremely niche. People might like and enjoy diving, but everyone who loves diving doesn’t necessarily do it. Whereas with knitting, the people who love it are really doing it. It’s nice to have a community where everybody actually does the thing they are passionate about rather than one person watching and one person doing.”

Daley’s line will focus mainly on beginners and first-time knitters, with a few projects for intermediate knitters thrown in as well. Although well-known for his knitting, Daley was a novice himself not so long ago.

“I started knitting in 2020,” said Daley. “My coach told me, ‘You’re always on the run. You’re always on the go. You need to find a way to slow down.'”

Daley was perplexed by the concept of slowing down. He shared that he is easily bored and is not prone to sitting and watching TV. Daley’s husband, an Academy Award winning filmmaker, who often saw actors knitting on set between takes, suggested that he take up the craft. The rest is history.

“I became completely obsessed with it,” said Daley.

Daley knits for an hour every day after his children have gone to bed. He usually gifts his finished creations to his loved ones or donates them to raise money for those in need.

“Every stitch is made with love; every stitch is handmade; every stitch is imperfect in its own way. To be able to gift that to someone else is really nice.”

Daley stressed that he believes passion should be an integral part of everyone’s life.

“I think it’s really important to find that one thing that you look forward to doing every single day,” Daley told The Blade. “You have to find that something you can’t wait to get home to do. For me, that’s knitting. It’s my mindfulness. It’s like a meditation.

Daley and Black met in March 2013 at a restaurant in Los Angeles. After some casual chitchat about how the happenings inside the Olympic Village would make a great TV show, the pair decided to meet for drinks. The two have been together ever since.

During their first date, the pair instantly bonded over two shared life experiences. The first was that they had both recently lost a loved one.

“He lost his brother the year before,” Daley told The Blade, “and I had lost my father the year before.”

The second point of bonding came over what Daley describes as “the slump” that comes after reaching the height of career success.

“We were both in similar places in that we had both achieved our career goals. I had won a gold medal, and he had won an Oscar for his film ‘Milk.’ So we both understood what it meant to get to that, but we also understood what is really hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been there. We both understood the slump or the crash where you ask yourself, ‘What next?'”

Daley reminisced about how good it felt to have someone understand what he was going through: “I really had this feeling like I had found a partner in this life.”

Daley instantly lit up when describing his home life, sharing that the couple loves their role as parents.

“Fatherhood is the best and hardest thing anyone ever did,” said the proud Dad of two boys. “Having children puts a different perspective on everything. You start to see the world through their eyes and how you take so much for granted. Fatherhood brings your inner kid out.”

Dad life for Daley also means maintaining as much of a routine as possible. That means Daley wakes up before anyone else in the house for an hour of “me time” to knit and watch the news. He then gives Robbie his breakfast, gets him ready for the day, and takes him to daycare on the way to work.

At the end of the day, Daley picks up his eldest and brings him home, and makes dinner for the family. Daley said that his husband is an amazing father who takes over nighttime feedings of their infant so that Daley can get his much-needed sleep.

Of course, maintaining a routine isn’t always easy, especially with Daley’s chaotic travel schedule, which he told The Blade is about to pick up soon. When Daley is away, his husband often has to take time off from work to care for their children full-time. Black’s solo parenting job will become even more demanding now that there are two children in the house.

When asked whether the couple will look in to hiring a nanny, Daley admitted that he feels pressure and guilt around the subject.

“I feel like gay dads are judged so much more harshly,” said Daley. “There is this attitude that as two dads, we should be doing it all ourselves. I mean, it takes a village, but there is shame there for me. I never want people to say, ‘Oh, see, they couldn’t do it.’ I know I have to build up the courage if we are going to take that step.”

When asked about the difference between raising children as a gay couple in London versus Los Angeles, Daley said that he noticed a huge difference in body positivity in the United States.

“LA is very gay,” said Daley. “But there is this pressure to have one standard look. I know I’m an athlete, so I’m guilty of looking a certain way as well, but I think it’s really important to value all body types and shapes and sizes.”

Daley and Black keep the conversation open at home about everything from body positivity to the fact that families also come in all shapes and sizes.

“I think keeping the conversation open is the most important thing,” said Daley. “When you avoid a topic, you create shame around it. We always say that every body is beautiful and that everybody is unique in their own way.”

When asked whether the couple is considering a third child, Daley said they might be open to the idea in a few years time.

Daley also commented on how important he now finds the lesson that knitting taught him. He explained that while slowing down can be difficult, it is also necessary for a healthy, well-balanced life.

“I know there are a lot of people who want to work all the time. That can work in some cases, but really, I think you have to ask yourself, ‘Why am I working so hard if I’m not enjoying life?'”

Daley stressed that while his schedule may become more hectic soon, he will always make time with his family and friends a priority.

A recent Gallup Poll shows that 58.2 percent of people in the U.S. who make up the LGBTQ community identify as bisexual

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WASHINGTON – Bisexual rights advocates point out that a recent Gallup Poll using scientifically proven polling techniques shows that 58.2 percent of people in the U.S. who make up the LGBTQ community identify as bisexual.

And for many years, bi activists say, earlier polling data have shown that people who self-identify as bi have comprised close to 50 percent of the overall LGBTQ population.

Yet in spite of this, a half dozen prominent bisexual rights activists interviewed by the Washington Blade who have been involved in the LGBTQ movement for 20 years or longer say bisexuals for the most part have been neglected and treated in a disparaging way in the early years of the post-Stonewall LGBTQ rights movement.

Things began to improve in the past 15 years or so, but misconceptions and biased views of bisexuals among lesbians and gays as well as in the heterosexual world continue to this day, according to bisexual rights advocates.

These advocates point to the one major stigma they have had to endure for years—the belief that they cannot make up their minds or they are hiding the fact that they are gay men or lesbian women.

“For the record, I state that bisexuality is not a counterfeit behavior or a phase,” said longtime bisexual rights advocate Cliff Arnesen in a statement to the Blade. “It is a true sexual orientation of physical and emotional attraction to both genders,” he said. “I believe some of the apprehension to a person’s bisexual orientation lies within the mindset of people who oppose the concept of bisexual people having ‘heterosexual privilege,’” Arnesen says in his statement.

Arnesen, 74, a resident of Canton, Mass., is a U.S. Army veteran and has also been an advocate for military veterans, both LGBTQ and straight. He says one of the highlights of his many years of activism took place May 3, 1989, when he became the first known openly bisexual veteran in U.S. history to testify before a committee of the U.S. Congress on behalf of LGBTQ and heterosexual veterans.

Among the issues he discussed in his testimony, Arnesen says, were HIV/AIDS, post-traumatic stress disorder, homelessness, gays in the military, and the then Uniformed Code of Military Justice sodomy law impacting LGBTQ people in the military.

He also told the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the U.S. House Committee on Veterans Affairs in his 1989 testimony about efforts by him and other LGBT veterans to advocate for the upgrade of less-than-honorable discharges of people in the military based on their sexual orientation.

“Bisexual people have always made enormous contributions of benefit to the larger gay community,” Arneson told the Blade. “Yet historically we are marginalized by many in both the gay community and society,” he said.

“To counter that marginalization, we bisexual people must use the ‘key of visibility’ to enlighten and educate the masses as regards to their preconceived misconceptions of bisexuality.”

Arnesen is among at least five other elder U.S. bisexual rights advocates who told the Blade they are seeing positive changes in recent years for bisexuals, including among the national LGBTQ organizations that, according to these activists, ignored the ‘bi’ in the movement for far too long.

Among them are longtime D.C. residents Loraine Hutchins, who co-founded the organizations BiNet USA and the Alliance of Multicultural Bisexuals, and A. Billy S. Jones-Hennin, who in 1978 helped launch the National Coalition of Black Gays, the nation’s first advocacy organization for African-American lesbians and gay men.

Jones-Hennin is also credited with helping to organize one year later the first national March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979. During the same weekend of the march, he helped to convene what observers call an historic National Third World (People of Color) LGBTQ Conference at D.C.’s Howard University.

Hutchins, co-editor of the acclaimed 1991 book, “Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out,” holds a doctorate in cultural studies and has taught sexuality and gender and women’s studies at Montgomery College and Towson University in Maryland.

Hutchins is now retired and lives in a retirement community in Montgomery County, Md. She told the Blade she has seen some positive changes in recent years within the overall LGBTQ rights movement and LGBTQ rights organizations toward bisexuals. She notes that the National LGBTQ Task Force’s current executive director, Kierra Johnson, identifies as bisexual.

The Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights advocacy organization, “have gotten much stronger on understanding bi advocacy or bi education,” Hutchins said.

But despite this, she said, she doesn’t see sufficient advances regarding the needs of bisexual people being fully taken up at the federal policy-making level, including in the administration of President Joe Biden, even though she sees the Biden administration as being better than previous administrations on bisexual issues.

BiPlus Organizing U.S., a national coalition of bisexual rights organizations, reports on its website that bisexual advocates held “three important convenings with the White House” during the Obama administration in 2013, 2015, and 2016. It says a small group of bi activists met with White House officials and officials with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2022 under the Biden administration during Bisexual Awareness Week.

Fiona Dawson, one of the co-founders of BiPlus Organizing U.S., said the meeting between bi advocates and the Biden administration officials took place at the Department of Health and Human Services offices rather than at the White House.

Dawson, who is from the United Kingdom and now works as a filmmaker based in Austin said the meeting was productive but she and other bi activists would like the Biden White House to hold an official White House reception for the bi community like the reception it holds for the full LGBTQ community.

“We want more bi organizations to contact us,” Dawson said in describing the work of BiPlus Organizing U.S. “I estimate that there are at least 20 bi organizations nationwide,” she said, with most of the groups being locally based. “I see change coming,” she added, saying the younger generation of LGBTQ people, including bisexuals, are becoming more supportive of bi rights.

Jones-Hennin, who attended the first White House meeting with bisexual rights advocates during the Obama administration, said the lack of information about bisexuality in the media and from gay rights groups going back to the 1970s played a role in his own coming out process as a bisexual man.

“I started as straight and then as a gay man,” Jones-Hennin recalls. “I at first did not buy into the idea of being bi,” he said. “Bisexuals have been erased and to a certain degree that’s still happening. We need more visibility of bi,” he said.

Jones-Hennin said he and his husband, who spend part of each year in their homes in Mexico and in D.C., now proudly identify as bi plus.

His reference to the term bi-plus or bi+ is part of the definition of bisexuality that bi rights advocates have been using to be inclusive of those who identify as pansexual as well as those who are both transgender and bisexual.

“Bi+ people may use many terms to describe their own sexual identities, including queer, pansexual, omnisexual, polysexual, and heteroflexible,” according to T.J. Jourian, Ph.D., and author of a January 2022 article on bisexuality for the publication Best Colleges.

In his article, Jourian quotes Massachusetts-based longtime bisexual rights advocate and author Robyn Ochs as providing her own interpretation of being bi.

“I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted – romantically and/or sexually – to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree,” Ochs says in a statement.

Hutchins, meanwhile, points to a report released on June 13 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) that shows that adults who identify as lesbian, gay, and bisexual are more likely to have mental health problems than their straight counterparts. But the study also shows that people who identify as bisexual have a higher rate of mental health problems, including suicidal ideation, than gays and lesbians.

LaNail Plummer, a mental health therapist and licensed professional counselor who serves as CEO and clinical director of the D.C.-based Onyx Therapy Group, said she has seen from her therapy and counseling practice that the mental health issues faced by bisexual people are often the result of discrimination and negative treatment they receive from both the heterosexual community and from gays and lesbians.

Plummer, who herself identifies as bisexual, told the Blade in a phone interview that bisexuals often go through a coming out process that’s more complicated and involves less peer support than the coming out process for gay men and lesbians.

“There’s a lot of people who are bisexual in a world that seems to be centered around polarity,” Plummer said. “It is complicated for bisexual folks because bisexual folks can and will likely date people of the opposite sex at different times,” she said, requiring to some degree that they must “come out” in a same-sex relationship and later in an opposite-sex relationship.

Bisexual people face additional “stressors,” Plummer said, when they are in a relationship with a partner of the same sex because that partner sometimes manifests fear that their bi partner will leave them for someone of the opposite sex.

“I have a person I know who identifies as bisexual and she has a wife,” Plummer told the Blade. “And every time the person that I know goes out, the wife, who identifies as lesbian, gives her a really hard time, by asking are you going to be with a man today? What happens if a man comes up and talks to you? How are you going to respond to them?”

That type of dynamic, according to Plummer, often prompts bisexual people to go back into the closet and withhold their identity as bi to someone they are dating or in a relationship with who may be of the same sex or the opposite sex.

Plummer and bisexual rights advocates say this type of stress placed on bi people is usually based on misconceptions and bias against bisexuality that bi advocates say they hope will continue to decline with improved education and understanding of bisexuals.

Ochs told the Blade in an interview that she has been an activist in support of LGBTQ and bisexual equality for more than 40 years, with a focus on issues of concern to bisexuals.

“And I would say the first 30 of those years I felt we were beating our heads against a stone wall,” she said in describing efforts to advance bisexual rights. “It was so frustrating. I saw little progress. I felt like we were having the same conversations over and over and over,” she said.

“We continued to be ignored in all sorts of media, both mainstream media and LGBTQ media,” she recounted. “It would have been inconceivable up to about a decade ago for an out bisexual person to have ever been appointed as head of any national LGBTQ organization,” she said.

“So, that’s the background. The good part is that’s no longer true,” Ochs said. “There is much more cultural representation now with musicians, politicians and public figures coming out as bisexual and pansexual.”

She pointed to the two prominent national LGBTQ organizations that currently have top leaders who identify as bi+. The two are Kiera Johnson, executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, and Erin Uritus, CEO of the national LGBTQ group Out & Equal.

Another longtime bi advocate currently based in San Francisco, Lani Ka’ahumanu, is widely recognized as a leader in national social justice movements, including Native American, feminist, anti-war, and LGBTQ and bisexual rights movements. She is also an acclaimed author and poet whose writings appear in 20 books, including the book she co-edited with Loraine Hutchins, “Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out.”

Her online biography says Ka’ahumanu, like other bi activists, evolved from a suburban housewife in a heterosexual marriage with children in the 1960s and an amicable divorce with her husband before she came out as a lesbian.

“I was a lesbian for four years in the ‘70s,” she told the Blade in a phone interview. “And then I fell in love with a bisexual man and came out in 1980 as bi,” she said, adding that she continued, sometimes despite fellow activists who were skeptical about bisexuality, in her involvement in the feminist and LGBTQ rights movements.

She became the first known out bisexual to serve on the board of directors of a national LGBTQ rights organization in 2000, when she was appointed to the board of the National LGBTQ Task Force, where she served until 2007.

Ka’ahumanu agrees with other bi rights advocates that things have improved in recent years for the bisexual community in the political and social landscape. But she said she was startled earlier this year when expressions of bias toward bisexuals surfaced, of all places, at the National LGBTQ Task Force’s annual Creating Change Conference held in San Francisco last February.

In her role as an elder and mentor to young bi activists, she said, she attended one of the conference’s bisexual workshops. “And hearing what some people said, it was the same stories from the ‘80s and 90s,” she recounted. “You know, you need to make up your mind. People were still being trashed for being bisexual within the lesbian and gay community,” said Ka’ahumanu.

“And that part kind of threw me,” she recounted. “I said, are we still in this place of being invisible?” she asked. “A lot of people still can’t step outside of that either or thing.”

Ka’ahumanu made it clear that most of the other sessions of the Creating Change Conference, which marked the beginning of the Task Force’s 50th anniversary, appeared supportive of the LGBTQ organization’s progressive and supportive views and policies on LGBTQ issues.

Shoshana Goldberg, Public Education and Research Director for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ political advocacy organization, said that like the LGBTQ community as a whole, recent developments have been “mixed” for bisexuals in the U.S.

“Bisexuals, particularly bisexual women of color, consistently earn less than the average American worker, and even less than their LGBTQ+ peers,” Goldberg said in a statement. “Many of the health disparities seen between LGBTQ+ and cis/het folks are magnified for bisexual people, and bisexuals continue to face biphobia from both straight and queer communities, and bi-erasure from all sectors of daily life,” Goldberg stated.

HRC official Rebecca Hershey, who works on diversity and inclusion issues, said HRC has been addressing issues of concern to the bisexual community through, among other things, its LGBTQ Coming Out Guides, which offer information to “dispel myths and address stereotypes about bisexuality.”

HRC also supports the annual Bisexual Health Awareness Month and in 2019 released its Bi+ youth report, which analyzed a survey HRC conducted of close to 9,000 teens to “help shed light” on the experiences of bi+ youth nationwide.

Bi rights advocates say the national LGBTQ organization GLAAD, which focuses on improving fairness in media and entertainment industry portrayals of LGBTQ people, has also acted as a strong advocate for bisexuals. In the 11th edition of its Media Reference Guide, GLAAD includes a detailed write-up on how the news and entertainment media should report on or portray bisexual people.

“By being more cognizant of the realities facing bisexual people and the community’s many diversities, and by fairly and accurately reporting on people who are bisexual, the media can help eliminate some of the misconceptions and damaging stereotypes bisexual people face on a daily basis,” GLAAD’s Media Reference Guide states.

Arnesen, the elder bisexual rights advocate who his bi colleagues refer to as an icon in the bi movement, sums up his sentiment as a bisexual advocate in his statement to the Blade.

“As a Bisexual human being, I am mindful that I stand upon the shoulders of the innumerable and courageous GLBT+ pioneers and advocates for ‘equality’ who came before me,” he wrote. “Fate just happened to put me in the right place, at the right time to advocate for ‘equality’ on behalf of my bisexual brothers and sisters; and our country’s GLBT and Heterosexual veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces,” he states.

“Today, the love of my life of 33 years is a heterosexual woman named Claudia, whom I love with all my heart and soul,” he says. “As a bisexual person I have been doubly blessed to know the love of both men and women during my life’s journey, and I cherish those memories within my heart.”

Additional information about bisexual rights issues and the state of the bi movement can be accessed through BiPlus Organizing US and its member organizations:

• BiPlus Organizing US• Bisexual Resource Center, biresource.org• Bisexual Organizing Project• Los Angeles Bi+ Task Force, labitaskforce.org• Bi Women Quarterly, BiWomenQuarterly.com

Why the arson attack that killed 32 gay men still resonates 50 years later

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By Robert Fieseler | NEWS ORLEANS – On June 23 of last year, I held the microphone as a gay man in the New Orleans City Council Chamber and related a lost piece of queer history to the seven council members. I told this story to disabuse all New Orleanians of the notion that silence and accommodation, in the face of institutional and official failures, are a path to healing.

The story I related to them began on a typical Sunday night at a second-story bar on the fringe of New Orleans’ French Quarter in 1973, where working-class men would gather around a white baby grand piano and belt out the lyrics to a song that was the anthem of their hidden community, “United We Stand” by the Brotherhood of Man.

“United we stand,” the men would sing together, “divided we fall” — the words epitomizing the ethos of their beloved UpStairs Lounge bar, an egalitarian free space that served as a forerunner to today’s queer safe havens.

Around that piano in the 1970s Deep South, gays and lesbians, white and Black queens, Christians and non-Christians, and even early gender minorities could cast aside the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the times to find acceptance and companionship for a moment.

For regulars, the UpStairs Lounge was a miracle, a small pocket of acceptance in a broader world where their very identities were illegal.

On the Sunday night of June 24, 1973, their voices were silenced in a murderous act of arson that claimed 32 lives and still stands as the deadliest fire in New Orleans history — and the worst mass killing of gays in 20th century America.

As 13 fire companies struggled to douse the inferno, police refused to question the chief suspect, even though gay witnesses identified and brought the soot-covered man to officers idly standing by. This suspect, an internally conflicted gay-for-pay sex worker named Rodger Dale Nunez, had been ejected from the UpStairs Lounge screaming the word “burn” minutes before, but New Orleans police rebuffed the testimony of fire survivors on the street and allowed Nunez to disappear.

As the fire raged, police denigrated the deceased to reporters on the street: “Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.”

For days afterward, the carnage met with official silence. With no local gay political leaders willing to step forward, national Gay Liberation-era figures like Rev. Troy Perry of the Metropolitan Community Church flew in to “help our bereaved brothers and sisters” — and shatter officialdom’s code of silence.

Perry broke local taboos by holding a press conference as an openly gay man. “It’s high time that you people, in New Orleans, Louisiana, got the message and joined the rest of the Union,” Perry said.

Two days later, on June 26, 1973, as families hesitated to step forward to identify their kin in the morgue, UpStairs Lounge owner Phil Esteve stood in his badly charred bar, the air still foul with death. He rebuffed attempts by Perry to turn the fire into a call for visibility and progress for homosexuals.

“This fire had very little to do with the gay movement or with anything gay,” Esteve told a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I do not want my bar or this tragedy to be used to further any of their causes.”

Conspicuously, no photos of Esteve appeared in coverage of the UpStairs Lounge fire or its aftermath — and the bar owner also remained silent as he witnessed police looting the ashes of his business.

“Phil said the cash register, juke box, cigarette machine and some wallets had money removed,” recounted Esteve’s friend Bob McAnear, a former U.S. Customs officer. “Phil wouldn’t report it because, if he did, police would never allow him to operate a bar in New Orleans again.”

The next day, gay bar owners, incensed at declining gay bar traffic amid an atmosphere of anxiety, confronted Perry at a clandestine meeting. “How dare you hold your damn news conferences!” one business owner shouted.

Ignoring calls for gay self-censorship, Perry held a 250-person memorial for the fire victims the following Sunday, July 1, culminating in mourners defiantly marching out the front door of a French Quarter church into waiting news cameras. “Reverend Troy Perry awoke several sleeping giants, me being one of them,” recalled Charlene Schneider, a lesbian activist who walked out of that front door with Perry.

Esteve doubted the UpStairs Lounge story’s capacity to rouse gay political fervor. As the coroner buried four of his former patrons anonymously on the edge of town, Esteve quietly collected at least $25,000 in fire insurance proceeds. Less than a year later, he used the money to open another gay bar called the Post Office, where patrons of the UpStairs Lounge — some with visible burn scars — gathered but were discouraged from singing “United We Stand.”

New Orleans cops neglected to question the chief arson suspect and closed the investigation without answers in late August 1973. Gay elites in the city’s power structure began gaslighting the mourners who marched with Perry into the news cameras, casting suspicion on their memories and re-characterizing their moment of liberation as a stunt.

When a local gay journalist asked in April 1977, “Where are the gay activists in New Orleans?,” Esteve responded that there were none, because none were needed. “We don’t feel we’re discriminated against,” Esteve said. “New Orleans gays are different from gays anywhere else… Perhaps there is some correlation between the amount of gay activism in other cities and the degree of police harassment.”

An attitude of nihilism and disavowal descended upon the memory of the UpStairs Lounge victims, goaded by Esteve and fellow gay entrepreneurs who earned their keep via gay patrons drowning their sorrows each night instead of protesting the injustices that kept them drinking.

Into the 1980s, the story of the UpStairs Lounge all but vanished from conversation — with the exception of a few sanctuaries for gay political debate such as the local lesbian bar Charlene’s, run by the activist Charlene Schneider.

By 1988, the 15th anniversary of the fire, the UpStairs Lounge narrative comprised little more than a call for better fire codes and indoor sprinklers. UpStairs Lounge survivor Stewart Butler summed it up: “A tragedy that, as far as I know, no good came of.”

Finally, in 1991, at Stewart Butler and Charlene Schneider’s nudging, the UpStairs Lounge story became aligned with the crusade of liberated gays and lesbians seeking equal rights in Louisiana. The halls of power responded with intermittent progress. The New Orleans City Council, horrified by the story but not yet ready to take its look in the mirror, enacted an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and public accommodations that Dec. 12 — more than 18 years after the fire.

“I believe the fire was the catalyst for the anger to bring us all to the table,” Schneider told The Times-Picayune, a tacit rebuke to Esteve’s strategy of silent accommodation. Even Esteve seemed to change his stance with time, granting a full interview with the first UpStairs Lounge scholar Johnny Townsend sometime around 1989.

Most of the figures in this historic tale are now deceased. What’s left is an enduring story that refused to go gently. The story now echoes around the world — a musical about the UpStairs Lounge fire recently played in Tokyo, translating the gay underworld of the 1973 French Quarter for Japanese audiences.

When I finished my presentation to the City Council last June, I looked up to see the seven council members in tears. Unanimously, they approved a resolution acknowledging the historic failures of city leaders in the wake of the UpStairs Lounge fire.

Council members personally apologized to UpStairs Lounge families and survivors seated in the chamber in a symbolic act that, though it could not bring back those who died, still mattered greatly to those whose pain had been denied, leaving them to grieve alone. At long last, official silence and indifference gave way to heartfelt words of healing.

The way Americans remember the past is an active, ongoing process. Our collective memory is malleable, but it matters because it speaks volumes about our maturity as a people, how we acknowledge the past’s influence in our lives, and how it shapes the examples we set for our youth. Do we grapple with difficult truths, or do we duck accountability by defaulting to nostalgia and bluster? Or worse, do we simply ignore the past until it fades into a black hole of ignorance and indifference?

I believe that a factual retelling of the UpStairs Lounge tragedy — and how, 50 years onward, it became known internationally — resonates beyond our current divides. It reminds queer and non-queer Americans that ignoring the past holds back the present, and that silence is no cure for what ails a participatory nation.

Silence isolates. Silence gaslights and shrouds. It preserves the power structures that scapegoat the disempowered.

Solidarity, on the other hand, unites. Solidarity illuminates a path forward together. Above all, solidarity transforms the downtrodden into a resounding chorus of citizens — in the spirit of voices who once gathered ‘round a white baby grand piano and sang, joyfully and loudly, “United We Stand.”

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Robert W. Fieseler is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of “Tinderbox: the Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.”

What’s amazing about watching queer identity shift is that it’s young people who are actually moving us into a more expansive idea of gender

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NEW YORK — LGBTQ+ stars and allies came out for a celebration of the global human rights organization Outright last week, showering activists from the Caribbean, Google’s philanthropy division and the out stars of Star Trek Discovery with awards and applause.

“Star Trek: Discovery calls on us to do the hard thing: To remember who we are and commit ourselves to the work of realizing our collective mission of creating a multicultural and multiethnic world in which everyone’s humanity is respected, and everyone’s voice is heard, valued, and needed,” said actor Wilson Cruz.

He joined Anthony Rap and Blu del Barrio on stage to accept this year’s Outspoken Award on behalf of their queer costars Mary Wiseman, Tig Notaro and Emily Coutts, executive producer Michelle Paradise and writer/director and producer Lee Rose.

“The reason why we’re being honored tonight for our storyline is because Star Trek is a franchise that reaches around the globe,” Wilson told the Los Angeles Blade. “Star Trek has been so successful in helping to inspire people to create a better world. And so, the fact that LGBTIQ people are a part of the stories now is why we’re here today.”

“We’re honoring Star Trek: Discovery because they have such an out and proud queer cast, and we think it links to what we do,” Maria Sjödin, executive director of Outright International, told the Blade. “Outright is all about promoting rights for people here on Earth, and what we see in Star Trek: Discovery is taking that across the galaxy, and really building on coming together. We do a lot of work at the United Nations, and we think it’s important to get as many countries as we can to agree that rights for LGBTIQ people is important. And so we see that in Star Trek Discovery.”

The 27th annual Celebration of Courage Gala, held June 5 at the swanky Pier 60 of Chelsea Piers in Manhattan, also served as a fundraiser that generated $1 million for Outright on a single night, as Gay City News reported.

During the auction portion of the event, one attendee made a $50,000 donation; Another matched every $100 donation, dollar for dollar, with those proceeds specifically dedicated to helping activists in Uganda.

Bebe Zahara Benet, the inaugural winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race and star of TLC’s Dragnificent and the documentary Being BeBe, hosted the ceremony. “I found there is power and dignity in being able to live authentically, and most importantly, I found my community, my people,” she said. “This is why Outright is so important.”

The night’s focus was on the work Outright does around the world, especially in countries where LGBTQ+ rights are under attack, from Uganda to the Eastern Caribbean, as well as Pakistan, Russia and of course, here in the U.S., especially for transgender people.

“There are so many issues that are facing trans people across the world and here in the United States,” said Rikki Nathanson, a refugee from Zimbabwe who is Outright’s senior advisor on trans issues. “And what’s happening in the United States is so heartbreaking because the United States is the first nation of the world, and we are the leaders on human rights, and to see everything that’s happening in the United States in regard to trans rights, to me, it’s disgraceful.”

Kenita Placide and Lysanne Charles of the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality, or ECADE, accepted the Felipa de Souza Award. ECADE has worked to advance the decriminalization of colonial-era sodomy laws in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

“Where you come to vacation and where you come to visit is where I live. The realities will always be different, because what you see on your visits is not what I have to live with, 24 seven,” said Placide, who is ECADE’s executive director. She told the Blade she wishes Americans who want to help the LGBTQ+ communities outside the U.S. would first do their homework. “Understand the climates of where they would like to work, whether it be the Caribbean or Africa. Connect with people on the ground. So, change the mindsets in terms of approach, change the mindset in terms of how you like to connect with and what would you like to do.”

Google.org was the recipient of this year’s Outstanding Award.

Outright brought together not just actors from the Discovery show, but also three queer stars from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which has its second season premiere this week: Jess Bush, Celia Rose Gooding and Melissa Navia.

“Star Trek has always had such a powerful cultural influence,” said Bush, an Australian actor who plays Nurse Christine Chapel. In this incarnation, Chapel is bisexual. “And at a time like this, when there is so much violence and separation and polarization and discrimination against members of the queer community, I think that Star Trek has a responsibility to stand behind our friends.”

“I grew up in a time in which Blackness and queerness were approached as two separate things,” Gooding told the Blade. She plays a young Ensign Uhura and is the first queer actor to do so. “I had no idea what I was feeling until I found the content and media that represented my community authentically. I went on Tumblr and found what things meant. To be a part of the representation that I was so hungry for as a kid, there isn’t a much better feeling than that! It means a lot to me to be able to represent young, Black queer people in any iteration.”

“I have a phenomenal cast and crew and they deserve my absolute best,” Navia said, about how she worked through grief following the sudden death of her partner, Brian, just a few months before the first season of “Strange New Worlds” premiered. “He was with me all throughout season one and he was with me all throughout season two. Every day I went to set, I was like, ‘I got to pull it together.’ And I did. And I think that speaks to Star Trek. It’s about overcoming adversity and it’s believing that you can, and then doing it.”

Navia plays the pilot of the Enterprise, Erica Ortegas, and besides flying the ship, she promises fans of her androgynous character: “Even bigger things are coming!”

Blu del Barrio came out as trans nonbinary after being cast as the nonbinary character Adira on Discovery in 2020. They told the Blade that since then, they have grown into their role as a role model for nonbinary viewers.

“It’s been three years, but I feel like I’m starting to understand that more,” they said. “When I started this, I didn’t know, I didn’t feel like I was doing enough. And the longer I’ve been doing it, the more I realize, like, ‘Oh, I didn’t I start my transition until I saw somebody else on screen who was trans.’ We need to see ourselves reflected.”

The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery premieres on Paramount+ in 2024.

“Gender identity has shifted immensely,” Julie Dorf told the Blade, reflecting on the three decades since she founded the organization that is now Outright, and how nonbinary people like del Barrio have helped bring about change in the LGBTQ+ community. “What’s amazing about watching queer identity shift is that it’s the young people who are actually moving us into a more expansive idea of gender. I myself have one nonbinary kid and one trans kid.”

“This new generation of Star Trek reflects and contends with the challenges and opportunities of our time, and finds that the answers and solutions have only ever been found in each other,” Cruz said in his acceptance speech. “On Discovery, we are the heroes of our own stories. No one saves us, we save our own lives.”

Although not a father in real life, Cruz is a mentor to del Barrio and plays one of their “space dads” alongside co-star Anthony Rapp, who is a new father with his husband, Ken Ithiphol. Their son, Rai, is now seven months old, and will be celebrating his first Pride on the West Coast.

“We are taking Rai to meet his family in California,” Rapp told the Blade after a recent performance of his Off Broadway one-man musical, Without You. “We are having our queer family fully embraced in the fullness of his entire family and our extended family. And on the day of New York Pride, we will actually have a Trek family gathering.”

The Blade asked Cruz about the challenges the community is facing this Pride month.

“It’s very easy to be distracted by this moment in history, but when we remember the courage and the effort that it took to get us to this moment, we can’t help but be inspired to continue their work,” he said. “We have to take over for Frank Kameny, for Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and for all of those people who started our first Pride, who called it Pride, so we would stop being ashamed of who we are. We have to remember that work that led us to this moment. And it felt great to get the kind of result that we’ve had in the last 20 years, but that didn’t mean that the work was done. We expected this backlash. We knew this was going to happen. And so now we have to do the work of supporting all of those people who are doing the kind of work like Outright International.”

Find out more about Outright International by visiting their website here.

The NOH8 Campaign is the silent photographic protest created by celebrity photographer Adam Bouska & partner Jeff Parshley

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LOS ANGELES – They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But for Adam Bouska and Jeff Parshley, the founders of the NOH8 campaign, a photo is worth the change it makes in the world, and that change is exponentially ever-growing.

The NOH8 Campaign is the silent photographic protest created by celebrity photographer Bouska and his romantic partner Parshley, an outspoken activist for the LGBTQ+ community, in direct response to the passage of California’s Proposition 8 nearly 15 years ago.

Colloquially known as simply Prop 8 – the proposition against gay marriage in the Golden State – was placed on the ballot in 2008 and in November passed. Before its passage, California was only the second U.S. state (after Massachusetts) to allow same-sex marriage.

NOH8 Campaign photos feature subjects with duct tape over their mouths, symbolizing their voices being silenced by Prop 8 and similar legislation around the world, with “NOH8” painted on one cheek in protest.

“Even when it was up for a vote, we were thinking, ‘oh, there’s no way. There were rallies and marches all over the city in Los Angeles,” Parshley told the Blade. “We were taking part in all of those, but we also wanted a way to speak out beyond the streets.”

Parshley, who is from a small town in New Hampshire, and Bouska who is also from a small town growing up in Illinois shared that, as gay youths, they felt they had nowhere to turn for advice or support.

“Growing up, I didn’t even know what gay was,” Parshley said. “I knew the feelings I was having, but I didn’t know how to describe them. I didn’t have anybody to look up to. I didn’t even have TV shows like Glee that portrayed gay characters in a positive light. I just felt like there was a lack of knowledge growing up in somewhere that has no resources like that.”

“My experience was very similar,” Bouska reflected. “We didn’t have a Gay-Straight Alliance at school or anything like that. My experience taught me the necessity and importance of activism and shoots like these today.”

“We know what it’s like to have no resources in your area,” Parshley lamented. “That’s why it’s really important for us to get to some smaller places like those as well.”

Recently, the couple was able to bring NOH8 to Parshley’s old high school – an accomplishment that Parshley felt brought his childhood experience full circle.

“I love that we can spread the message that you are not alone,” he said.

The couple met through a charity photoshoot the pair was working on for Aids Project LA (APLA) over fifteen years ago. Together, they identified with their shared passion for activism and love for photography and bringing people together.

During their first six months together working on that APLA gig, the two fell in love and have been inseparable ever since.

“We were uniting activism with photography in the process of us uniting at the same time,” Parshley wryly quipped.

Currently on a 40-location tour with their NOH8 project and traveling partially the U.S. by RV the pair continues to spread their message, one photo at a time.

“It seemed like a natural response for me to use photography to combat this issue,” said Bouska reflecting on the initial foundation of NOH8 . “Jeff was the first one to upload his photo to Myspace at the time. That was around the birth of social media, and we were really using it to change activism. We know that photos are not the end all, but lending a face to the fight for visibility does create change.”

Since its inception, the NOH8 Campaign has grown to a collection of well over 100,000 individual faces and continues to grow at an exponential rate. The campaign began with portraits of everyday Californians from all walks of life and soon rose to include politicians, military personnel, newlyweds, law enforcement, artists, celebrities, and many more from across the globe.

“Prior to the campaign starting, a lot of people didn’t have this kind of outlet,” Parshley said. “I think we are providing this outlet to people, celebrities, and everyday people. Everyday people are the foundation of this campaign.”

While inspired by the passage of Prop 8 and the fight for marriage equality, the scope of the NOH8 campaign has grown to stand against discrimination and bullying of all kinds all around the world.

Bouska and Parshley started to realize the breadth of the NOH8 message when participants shared their reasons for joining the fight against hate with the couple. To their surprise, participants wanted to combat the hate that extended into their own lives, often having nothing to do with LGBTQ+-specific hate.

“People started coming in and saying, ‘I’m here because I’m hated on because of my religion, or because of my skin color, or because of my body shape, or because of how much money I have,'” said Parshley. “We realized that there are a lot of different reasons people can relate to hate or discrimination. When they started sharing these stories, we thought, Wow. This is so much more relatable than we initially realized. Because the message was relatable to such a large scale of people, it became even more important for us to bring NOH8 to new places.”

So far, the NOH8 team has accomplished photoshoots in 23 countries and counting. “People overseas understand the message of NOH8 without being able to speak the same language as us,” said Bouska. “This message is universal.”

“I think it’s beautiful how every single event can be so different because everyone has a different reason to be involved,” said Parshley. “But there is one similarity. We have all come together over one cause.”

Bouska and Parshley continue to use the NOH8 in correlation with current events. Recently, they created an event centered entirely around the Club Q shooting, which took place at a drag bar in Colorado Springs last November, killing 5 people and injuring 25 more.

“If the people here in Colorado Springs felt like their voices weren’t being heard in support of the LGBTQ community, that’s why we are here to share their voices,” Parshely said at the event.

The shooting started with hate speech online, targeted drag queens and the LGBTQ+ community as “groomers” and “pedophiles” before culminating in violence and death.

With so many hate crimes like these starting online, Bouska and Parshley agree that something must be done to curb the way the community is targeted on social media.

“Hate speech is not free speech,” Bouska emphasized.

TRANS LIVES MATTER

Recently, Bouska and Parshley started working on a new section of the NOH8 campaign, specifically targeting anti-transgender hate. These photos feature subjects with the trans flag colors painted on their hands and faces, signifying their support of the trans lives matter movement and their condemnation of anti-transgender laws currently sweeping the country.

“We’ve had to explain … ‘this campaign is not solely a campaign for marriage equality, this is a campaign for no hate, this is a campaign for equality, this is a campaign for anti-discrimination and anti-bullying, this is a campaign to bring people together.”

“You would think that everybody who poses for the NOH8 campaign supports trans lives, but we can’t assume that,” said Parshley, explaining why he and Bouska felt it important to show trans-specific support.

When asked to compare how this new chapter of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and legislation compares to the passage of Prop 8, both Bouska, and Parshley agreed that circumstances feel more dire now than ever before.

“In many ways, it feels like history repeating itself,” said Bouska. “This is yet another marginalized community being attacked. This really puts people’s lives at stake. In some ways, what is happening now seems more cruel.”

“Queer and especially trans people are in danger right now,” said Parshley.

“I think it is important to remember that gender-affirming care being under attack in so many states is a life-threatening issue,” Parshley said. “Trans people are much more likely to attempt to commit suicide than someone else within the queer community. When you take away someone’s ability to be authentic to themselves, you are putting their life at risk. This definitely seems worse than before.”

ABOUT NOH8

Anyone who wants to join in the fight against hate is welcome to do so by attending one of NOH8’s many photo events listed on a calendar on their website. Single photos cost $40, and pictures of multiple people cost $20 per face in the photo. Events marked as “free” are sponsored, and so come at no cost to all participants.

“Ideally, we would provide all of these for free,” said Parshley, “but we can’t do that, unfortunately. This looks like a big operation, but it’s really just Adam and me. These are the same price as when we started, though, because we refuse to raise them.”

A 17-year-old girl became a victim of constant- often violent harassment, resulting in 18 restraining orders & thoughts of suicide

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Editor’s note: LA Blade journalist Simha Haddad details the ongoing oft times traumatic effects of social media’s impact on LGBTQ+ kids, profiling a client of The Rainbow Youth Project a nonprofit based out of Indiana. At her and her family’s request, the Blade is not identifying their exact city of residence nor their last name to protect their privacy and mitigate further homophobic hate-filled attacks.

LOS ANGELES – How did one seventeen-year-old child suddenly become the victim of constant and often violent harassment resulting in over 18 restraining orders, virtual home imprisonment, serious thoughts of suicide, and a forced move to a new town? Simple, she came out as a lesbian to her friends.

In another case, a suburban Houston family had put up the LGBTQ+ Progress Flag in October last year in a show of support for their trans and non-binary teens and immediately the harassment started and escalated to physical acts of violence.

Carrie is a self-proclaimed art nerd who loves making ceramics and painting in vivid and bright pastels. She lived at home with her loving mother, father, older brother, and baby sister. Prioritizing love and loyalty, Carrie kept her friend group small and intimate.

“My grandma used to tell me that if you can count your true friends on more than one hand, you need to recount,” Carrie told the Blade.

One day, ready to open up to those closest to her, Carrie came out to her best friend. Supportive, the best friend accompanied Carrie to come out to her parents, who accepted their daughter’s sexuality with openness and love.

Finally, armed with this love and support, Carrie was ready to broaden her circle of trust. She invited about six friends over for a sleepover, where she confided in them, asking for their support and discretion.

Moments later, as the teenagers lounged on the floor watching a movie, one of Carrie’s so-called “friends” created a Facebook post that would alter the course of Carrie’s life forever.

“I went from not being popular to being the most popular person but for the wrong reasons,” said Carrie.

The Facebook post, outed Carrie as lesbian and mocked her sexuality, but worse, instantly went viral within Carrie’s small town outside of Houston.

“It was hell,” said Carrie. “I wasn’t ready for how quickly it spread. Within 24 hours, it was literally all over town. People had posted it on everything from Instagram to Facebook to TikTok. They were making videos about my weight, saying how that was why I was a lesbian, because I could never get a guy because I was fat and ugly. It was things like that all the way to saying I was a dike who is going to die.”

Carrie said that for months, there was no respite from the taunting and harassment.

“Every time I turned around, someone was tagging me and sending me videos or sending me posts that people had made about me.”

“I became the target of the town,” Carrie continued. “They put stuff in our mailboxes. They would put pictures of transgender surgeries in the mailbox. We even had somebody put female condoms in the mailbox. There was always something.”

“Kids at school even sent my phone number through the school email system, saying, ‘This is where you can harass her.’

While Carrie’s school did step in to stop this unlawful use of the school email system, the damage had already been done. The harassment escalated to physical altercations, making Carrie feel unsafe whenever she stepped outside.

“One day, I was walking my dogs to the park,” Carrie recounted emotionally, “and some kids were calling me a carpet-muncher and queer, and all these things. I was just trying to walk home. Then they actually went to the store to buy eggs. They came back and started throwing eggs at me and my dog.”

While her peers made many attacks on Carrie, school parents, and other adults also began to join in making her life a living hell.

“Sometimes they would get physical. If I tried to build a shield around myself and ignore it, they would grab my arm and turn me around to make me talk to them,” said Carrie.

“One time, a woman grabbed my arm and turned me around, and said that I needed to get right with God. I remember being so scared that I started laughing. It feels stupid to say now, but I was only laughing because I didn’t know what else to do. I was so scared. That made her more angry. I don’t know who she is to this day.”

“I’ve even had people at Walmart go and buy me a Bible and come up to me and tell me I needed to read it because I’m going to hell,” she said.

“One of the hardest things is to realize that these were all adults,” Carrie lamented. “How could they walk up to a kid and say the things that they have said?”

Adding to her nightmarish experience, Carrie’s harassers made a public game of harassing her, bragging about their encounters with Carrie on Facebook.

“After these things would happen, people would actually go on Facebook and write about the fact that they ran into ‘that little lesbian’ at Walmart and had to ‘tell her all about herself.’ I thought, why are you bragging about this? You are a grown person.”

“Facebook became like a scoreboard. Every time somebody would do something to me, they would post about it like they were trying to win an award or something. Then somebody else would see it, and they would confront them, saying, ‘Well, I can outdo that,’ and then they would try. They were building up ideas of what to do to me together on Facebook.”

Unsafe both in her home and outside of it, Carrie became more and more isolated, depressed, and afraid. Her parents insisted on going everywhere with their daughter, never wanting to leave her alone for fear of another attack.

“I was like a pet on a leash,” recalled Carrie. “I had to rely on my parents for everything. If I wanted to go to the store or the library, they had to stop what they were doing and come with me.”

Unable to find respite from the torrent of hate at school, Carrie left to instead use online learning courses to complete her high school education.

Carrie is grateful for her parents, brother, aunts, and other family members who continue to emotionally support her to this day.

“I’m so proud to have the people in my life support me,” Carrie told the Blade. “Without them, I don’t think I could’ve made it.”

But, this support came at a price, especially at the height of the harassment over her coming out.

“When people found out that my family was supportive, they would drive by our house yelling things like queer and dyke and lesbo,” said Carrie.

Carrie’s brother, a popular jock, was harangued constantly by his peers.

“They started attacking him because he was standing up for me,” Carrie explained. “He was playing on our football team and our baseball team. His teammates would test him and call me a dyke, and he would almost get into physical altercations. For example, he would be playing a scrimmage game, and if he struck out, they would yell things like, ‘Your dyke sister could hit better than you.’ They were always name-calling me to him to try to test him.”

Carrie shared how the constant taunting almost made her brother give up sports altogether.

“It got to the point where he did not even want to go to practice anymore. But I told him he had to because that was his life. Now he is getting ready to go to college on a baseball scholarship, so that was important for him, but it was hard on him. I’ve never seen him cry, but he cried to me one night because he was so hurt that they were just constantly shaming it one way or the other.”

As they did to Carrie, adults and children alike joined in to make her brother’s school life almost unbearable. Carrie recalled one time when a teacher cornered her brother to make comments about the “shame” his sister must feel because of “who she is.”

“I think the kids saying those things was one thing. But having a teacher saying that to him, I mean, that was really hard for him.”

Carrie’s parents also faced attacks by the community. Her father faced discrimination and aggression at work, and her mother was regularly on guard whenever she stepped out of their home.

“My mama almost got in a fight at Walmart,” recalled Carrie. “We were in Walmart, and we walked by one of the girls from school was there with her mom, and I heard her tell her mom, ‘She’s a lesbian,’ and the mother said to my mother, ‘How can you let your kid be like that?’ Well, my mother just blew up. My mother called her every name in the book and was ready to fight. That is not an exaggeration. She was literally ready to fight. At that point, she had seen what my brother and I were going through, and that was just a breaking point.

Carrie felt overwhelming guilt over what her family was going through.

“I felt like that was my fault, and even though my mama would tell me every day, and my daddy would tell me every day, that these people were just ignorant, it still didn’t make it better because I saw how it affected them. They felt like they couldn’t even leave the house because of me.

“My brother had to close his Facebook account. My mother had to close her Facebook account. She is one of those that used to stay on Facebook all the time. You know how they have all those little bingo games? She used to play those, and she loved it, but she had to close her Facebook account because anytime she posted something, somebody would leave a comment, and she would block them and then somebody else would leave a comment and she would block them. It literally got to the point where instead of playing games and having fun, she was just blocking people all the time.”

When advised to file restraining orders against the adults who were targeting her, Carrie hesitated at first.

“I was scared to do that because I thought if I did something like that, what would they do to me then? Then I realized I was just one of the kids being harassed, and if it wasn’t me, it was going to be somebody else one day. So, I decided I would try,” she said.

“One of the lawyers came down and spent the whole day with me talking about how the trial would go. They said I couldn’t use just the screenshots of the harassment because those could be fabricated. I would have to actually go in and tell the stories behind them.”

Carrie said that the retelling of those stories is what terrified her the most.

“It wasn’t reliving what they did that was the hardest. It was having to sit there and tell the stories to someone in front of everyone. The looks that the courtroom gave me were awful.”

The judge sympathized with Carrie’s traumatic experience and issued 18 restraining orders against the adults who terrorized her.

“I remember the judge looked at me, and he said, ‘Young Lady, don’t let these people destroy your heart or who you are. Always be who you are, and know that these people have no power over that unless you give it to them. Do not give it to them.'”

Carrie teared up as she related the judge’s support. “That really meant a lot because I was not expecting that.”

Carrie now lives with her aunt in a different town closer-in to Houston. She explained that she felt that her new town is much more open, liberal- more accepting of LGBTQ+ people, than the small town she grew up in. When she saw two girls walking down a street holding hands, her jaw dropped and she had to sit down from the powerful feeling of being overwhelmed.

While she is happier and feels more relaxed in her new environment, Carrie is still traumatized by her recent past.

“I wish it was a situation where I don’t have to worry about if someone is walking up to me as a friend or if they want to attack me because that’s really how it was last year. Every person that approached me is an enemy.”

Carrie, who last year often contemplated suicide, is working with a therapist from Rainbow Youth Project to open herself up again and she is no longer suicidal.

The Rainbow Youth Project a nonprofit based out of Indiana, serves as a godsend for many of these LGBTQ+ youth. The organization provides mental health, financial, housing, services, and counseling assistance to homeless LGBTQ+ youth under the age of eighteen across the nation. Without RYP, Carrie’s medical needs would be unattainable.

Carrie also hopes to get back to a happier and brighter mental space so that she can start creating the vibrant pastel art that she so loves.

“My art took a turn last year. It started being more reflective. I used to love bright, abstract paintings and pastels, but after last year it took a dark turn. It was more reflective of my mood. It became much darker. I had never used grays or charcoals before that. But everything was all dark colors. Until I get that motivation back for the brightness, I don’t want to do art right now.”

Carrie is currently working while taking classes at community college. She hopes to eventually enroll in a 4-year college and to one day help other kids like herself.

“I don’t know exactly how, but I would love to help other kids in my situation. I don’t think I have it in me to be a counselor, but I know Rainbow Youth has an art therapy program. I’d maybe like to work in something like that. I would love to do something to let them know that they are not alone because that loneliness feeling is overpowering.”

Finally, Carrie shared a message to those who might be going through something similar to what she had experienced in high school.

“If there is anybody out there who is going through what I did, I want you to reach out to somebody. There are people who will help. There are people who will not only help but will stay with you every step of the way. I thought I was all alone even though I was surrounded by love and support. But there are people out there who are good. It’s going to get better. Just please, reach out to somebody.”

On March 21, 2023, Houston CBS affiliate KHOU 11 reported on a suburban Houston family in Kingwood, Texas, that were being terrorized at their own home due to a flag they have flying outside their house. It’s not the flag, in particular, that’s causing them to be targeted, rather, it’s what the flag represents.

They said they fly the LGBTQ flag to show support for their children, but it has instead led to attacks, vandalism and name-calling by a gaggle of teens.

Dr. Luisa Montoya, the mother of a 12-year-old trans boy and a 17-year-old who’s non-binary, had put up the LGBTQ+ Progress Flag in October last year in a show of support for her kids. She told KHOU’s Lauren Talarico and Cory McCord that instead it led to attacks, vandalism and name-calling by a group of teens. Dr. Montoya said that the harassment is consistent and has turned violent lately. Some of the acts have been caught on video.

Some of those attackers had returned to school after serving their brief suspensions. The rest remain unpunished

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INDIANAPOLIS – Officials at Arlington Middle School in northeast Indianapolis repeatedly failed to intervene when presented with reports that a group of boys had been targeting a 13-year-old lesbian student with homophobic harassment, the girl’s mother told the Washington Blade.

Jessica Todd said her daughter, Nadia, had been suffering this abuse for months when, on April 19, those boys — more than 5 but fewer than 10 — physically assaulted her at school, one warning: “you’re not gonna do nothing about it, we’re gonna do it again.”

Upon receipt of an incident report, no action was taken by adults at the school that might have prevented the subsequent attack on April 20, which sent Nadia to the emergency room and was committed in the same exact place on campus, a stairwell landing located outside the view of surveillance cameras.

Indianapolis Public Schools communications director Alpha Garrett, disputed the claims in an emailed statement: “Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) has investigated this incident and has determined — based on witness statements and facts discovered, which are much different than what had been alleged — that disciplinary action was not warranted. IPS affirms its support for all students and staff, ensuring a safe and inclusive environment.”

Contrary to the school district’s claim that no disciplinary action was taken, Todd said three of her daughter’s attackers were given brief out-of-school suspensions and kicked off the football team, punishments she believes were far too lenient.

The IPS Code of Conduct states that bullying, when a “Level 3” offense, may be handled with a range of actions including in or out-of-school suspensions, the latter to be followed with “a written corrective action plan that will include methods for changing behavior and the necessary supports to remedy the problem behavior.”

When bullying rises to a “Level 4” offense, reserved for “violations that seriously affect the learning environment or the safety of the student and/or others in the school and/or are legal violations,” options on the table include extended suspensions and referrals for expulsion and/or referrals to law enforcement.

By phone, Garrett told the Blade she was not in a position to provide any information on the attacks against Nadia beyond what was included in the statement and declined to address questions about exactly which claims the district disputes, the facts supporting its decision to not pursue disciplinary action, and whether punishments were, in fact, administered to the students involved in the attack.

She pointed the Blade to a school board policy adopted on April 27, “Reaffirming Support of the LGBTQIA+ Community,” which stipulates that “all people, particularly all students, must be protected by schools from bullying and discrimination based on their gender identity and sexual orientation. No student should experience any form of harassment or any unfair treatment while in the care of Indianapolis Public School District.”

Arlington Middle School’s Principal John Edge, Counselor Carole Stacker, and Title IX Coordinator Gradis did not respond to inquiries from the Blade about their handling of the bullying reports, nor did they address questions about how long they have been unable to monitor the space where Nadia was attacked, or the existence of possible plans to install an additional camera in the stairwell to better protect the students.

Clearly, Todd said, the students (including, of course, her daughter’s assailants) have long known, just as the school’s faculty and staff have known, that the area is unsupervised.

Today, Nadia’s right arm remains in a full cast to repair hairline bone fractures sustained during the assault, and she will soon begin treatment with a counselor to work through the trauma, which has left her withdrawn and unable to return to school.

“It’s heartbreaking, I look at her every day knowing that she’s been stagnant right now, not moving around, not even wanting to leave the house, because she doesn’t want people to ask her, ‘why’s your arm in a cast?'” Todd said.

“She’s avoiding everybody and I don’t like that. But I can’t rush my baby — I have to do it on her time.”

With the end of the school year approaching, “We’re definitely changing schools,” said Todd, whose added that her elder daughter was also bullied at Arlington. The family is now in the midst of moving out of the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) district, she said. Nadia “will not be returning to an IPS school.”

Due to her injuries, Nadia was pulled from the school sports teams where she had competed with some of the boys who for months had targeted her with homophobic verbal abuse on and off the field before attacking her in the stairwell.

“I think they were jealous, too, because my baby can catch a ball and run around,” Todd said, adding, “Hopefully, by taking time and healing, she’ll be able to return to sports next year.”

In the meantime, it was only because she refused to back down that Todd said school officials eventually ceded her request, or demand, that Nadia be allowed to take end-of-year exams in a classroom by herself rather than with the boys who assaulted her.

Some of those attackers, the boys whom Nadia was able to name, had returned to school after serving their brief suspensions. The rest, to her knowledge, remain unpunished, despite Todd’s suggestion for the administration to try identifying the other boys from surveillance footage of the top and bottom of the stairwell.

School officials did not respond to questions about whether the punishments administered to the boys who attacked Nadia were in line with those proscribed in official policy.

Even in the presence of an Indianapolis Public Schools coordinator, who was summoned for a sit-down with Todd, Nadia, and officials from Arlington a week after the attacks, Todd said the school failed to take even a modicum of accountability.

After walking them through the violent beating of her daughter, Todd said that Stacker, the school’s counselor, dismissively responded, “you know how kids are, they horseplay.”

Todd remembers, “I took my glasses off and I looked at her and I was like, ‘really?! That’s what we’re doing?!'”

Stacker did not respond when asked about her remarks.

During that meeting — which remains the only communication between the Todds and the school since Nadia’s assaults — Todd tried to explain that her daughter “cannot return back to the school, because if she does, she will be different. She will not be able to concentrate. She will be looking over her shoulders.”

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the severity of the physical injuries she sustained, Todd said they told her Nadia’s absences would not be excused, that “every day she’s [not in school] will be counted against her.”

Todd said she informed an IPS school resource officer of her intentions to file charges against, at least, the attackers whom her daughter was able to identify.

He “did not take me serious at all,” she said telling her, that “he’s never been in this situation before.”

“And I was like, well, I’m sorry about that. But I take this very seriously.” she told the Blade she had responded.

With the formal complaint already filed with IPS police, even if the department continues to do nothing, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is prohibited from running parallel investigations or otherwise pursuing any law enforcement action in connection with the matter.

But a social worker on staff at the hospital had referred Nadia and Todd to the Rainbow Youth Project, which has since been providing and coordinating services for Nadia including legal counsel and mental health counseling. The Indianapolis- based national group works with LGBTQ youth under 19 and their families who are in need of assistance on a variety of fronts.

The group’s founder Lance Preston told the Blade, “when you see this child” and the injuries she sustained from this group of at least five boys, “it will break your heart,” he said. “She is a little girl.”

Christopher Cooper, an attorney on staff at the organization who serves as its director of legal and legislative initiatives, is working with the Todds and will be representing Nadia as they explore possible avenues for action on a number of fronts.

Cooper told the Blade that among these, “of course,” is the question of whether “these juveniles that did this should be charged” with a crime. “There’s always a lot of consideration that goes into that simply because you’re dealing with juveniles,” he said.

“But these injuries were so severe, requiring two trips to the ER, that I think that that action, you know, might be warranted.”

Separately he said, they may look at whether the school should have “stepped in and taken care of” the medical expenses to treat Nadia’s injuries at the hospital, which instead were paid by Todd and her ACA state-sponsored health insurance plan.

“Number one for us, though, from the legal side, is policy changes — implementing policies that are enforcing the alleged anti bullying policies of the IPS. If Indiana Public Schools had an anti bullying policy as strong as it is on paper, it needs to be that strong” in enforcement and effect,” Cooper stressed.

“Make sure that the school has cameras in the appropriate places because if you have more than one incident report in in one area, you might want to do something,” he added.

These measures could go a long way toward helping to reduce the likelihood that other vulnerable students, including those who are LGBTQ, will not experience the same abuse to which Nadia and her older sister were subjected at Arlington, Preston noted.

Rainbow Youth Project has worked with a number of kids from that same school, he said, LGBTQ students who were subjected to verbal harassment, including within earshot of teachers who in some cases did nothing to intervene or even laughed.

Asked to respond to the statement from IPS, Cooper said, “during my 27 years of practice, I have represented young people in 57 claims against public school administrations regarding serious allegations of bullying and the response from the school district is typical.”

“I have found it way too common for school systems to have a very strong anti-bullying policy on paper, but not in practice,” he said, adding, “Far too often the school staff will file these incidents as ‘confrontation’ or ‘horseplay’ or even ‘student conflict’ rather than what it actually is – bullying.”

Healing from the trauma of the bullying and physical assaults will be a process, a journey, for Nadia, but “she’s a powerhouse,” Preston said. “Yesterday, when I was talking with her, I told her, ‘I want you to understand you got a whole army behind you now.'”

Nadia’s mother, Preston said, “is relentless in her pursuit of justice for her daughter and relentless in making the school protect other kids.” He added, “I wish every mom in these situations were like her.”

“I always tell people online hate is death by a thousand papercuts. It’s all the little things. You’re old. You’re ugly. Go kill yourself”

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This is part two of a series looking at the cyberhate and bullying from a queer perspective. To read part one click here: (Link)

LOS ANGELES – Amid empty promises by social media companies to create safer and more inclusive platforms, online hate and harassment rates continue to rise to record levels.

Nearly half of all Americans having experienced some kind of online harassment and hate, many find themselves frustrated by a lack of government anti-hate legislation and enforceable social media guidelines to help eradicate this ever-growing problem.

What’s worse is that online hate speech has now been linked to physical hate crimes, with many physical and illegal acts of violence starting as seeds in the comment section.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations:

A 2019 study by academics from Cardiff University’s HateLab has concluded that there is a direct correlation between social media hate against minorities and physical acts of hate and violence.

These studies and reports are among the many highlighting the real dangers of cyberhate lie beyond the platforms themselves, begging the question, what can be done to stop this?

Sepi Shyne, The first Queer Iranian female mayor of West Hollywood, told The Blade that two things need to happen to make the Internet a safe place again: Social media platforms need to take firmer action against hate, and laws on inciting violence need to be rewritten to consider online hate as a direct threat to a victim’s safety.

“I think these platforms need to come out very strongly against hate speech,” said Shyne. “It is very simple. Just take a stand for people. If their lawyers are saying this is protected speech, then as a corporation, they can take a stance. They can use their algorithms and all their technology and institute their community standards.”

“We also have to reconsider our laws about what is considered inciting violence because those laws didn’t consider social media at the time. When those laws were created, they were about people saying things in person and then asking whether or not it is probable that violence will ensue from that interaction. But now we have people on social media saying horrible things that do lead to violence.”

One small step in the right direction came in September 2022, when Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he signed a social media transparency bill (AB 578) by Assembly Member Jesse Gabriel, which will require social media companies to publicly post their policies regarding hate speech, disinformation, harassment, and extremism on their platforms, and report data on their enforcement of the policies. However, the bill is still in it’s early stages of implementation so it has not yet made a notable change in online hate regulation.

Eric Nathan is CEO of Nathans Investigations, a Miami, Florida-based private investigation agency that focuses on cybercrime and cyber harassment.

He has gained his reputation from assisting a lengthy list of high-profile clients, tracking down harassers and stalkers who, at first, are able to hide their identities behind false usernames and email addresses.

People who turn to Nathan are often frustrated with social media platforms.

“You’ll go around in circles with Facebook or Instagram because they don’t really take it seriously just because of how much it is happening. It happens so often,” Nathan said.

When asked about the uptick in cybercrime, keeping PIs busy, Nathan told the Blade, “Between emails and phone calls, I probably get about twenty a week with the same exact issue. This is really a big issue.”

From cyber stalking to harassment to defamation from anonymous emails, Nathans has investigated the gamut of mysterious, aggravating and unpredictable cases around the globe.

“We deal with things on a daily basis that no one would believe,” said Nathan.

As an example, Nathan recounted the case of one particular OnlyFans model who was being harassed online. The male perpetrator would send this model everything from lewd remarks to graphic photos of his body. The model’s boyfriend enlisted Nathans help to find and stop these disturbing messages.

“Do you know how it turned out to be?” said Nathan. “It was the female’s father that was harassing her.”

Shocking stories like this one naturally spark many, many questions. The most obvious being how did the father think he could get away with something like this?

“People think they can be whoever they want,” said Nathan, explaining that the main issue with online harassment nowadays is that people find it easy to assume a new identity under fake usernames and what they think are anonymous email addresses.

However, in spite of these efforts at anonymity, Nathan has built a business on sniffing out these cybercriminals. While he would not disclose his methods for security reasons, he did say that he has found alternative and sometimes nontraditional means of identifying the guilty party.

“Things that people don’t usually think about is how I usually find them,” he noted.

Nathan explained that those who turn to him often know that cyber hate can lead to cybercrime.

“A real stalking will start online. I’m not a psychiatrist or a doctor, but I do believe mental illness is often involved. They want more and more of a response. They want a reaction. If they aren’t getting that online, they might show up in person.”

“I think it’s important to ask why this person has become a stalker. Often it is because they want a reaction because they are so awfully controlling.”

Of course, once a stalker does commit a physical act, different departments of the police get involved.

“My personal feeling is if there were stronger laws against all of this craziness, it would put a stop to some of these people.”

According to a study at the Williams Institute at UCLA, members of the LGBTQ+ community are nine times more likely to experience hate speech than non-LGBTQ+ people.

In a comment on GLAAD’s report on social media’s failure to stop anti-LGBTQ hate speech, Jenni Olson, GLAAD’s director for social media safety and author of the report, said, “The reality is, there’s very little transparency and very little accountability. And people feel helpless.”

With the evident targeting of LGBTQ+ people on social media and the nature of the platforms providing a deep window into the lives of internet celebrities, now is one of the most dangerous times to be an openly queer influencer. But it is also one of the most important times to stand out and stand up against homophobia and transphobia.

In light of the rising dangers for LGBTQ+ people around the world, three queer influencers shared their struggles with cyberhate with The Blade.

Amir Yass is a queer Muslim influencer who found his calling on TikTok when he started posting funny videos of himself over COVID. An avid advocate for queer rights, Yass often takes part in well-attended panels at the LGBT center and popular podcasts.

Yass has received a flurry of cyber hate, from messages shaming him for being queer and Muslim to comments telling him he will burn in hell.

“I will never forget one comment I got that said, ‘I can’t wait for you to come to the Middle East so I can throw you off the roof.’ I was in shock. I didn’t even know that was a thing.”

Sadly, Yass told the Blade that the ignorance and prejudice he experienced as a young Mulsim growing up in the conservative town of Orange County, CA, somewhat prepared him for this onslaught of hate.

“When I was in school, and 9-11 happened, they asked me to talk to the whole school about it. I was like, ‘I’m fifteen. What do I know about this?'”

“I developed a hard shell because that was the only way to deal with this. I’m a Persian, gay, fat Muslim. Growing up, my mom had a Hijab. I grew up fasting and praying. That all ‘othered’ me in so many ways. In a weird, very warped way, all of the prejudice I got growing up prepared me for all the hate I got on TikTok.”

Prepared by childhood though he might be, Yass admitted that the comments do get to him sometimes.

“I always tell people online hate is death by a thousand papercuts. It’s all the little things. You’re old. You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re gross. Go kill yourself. They start to add up.”

“People assume I’m a celebrity when they see a video of mine get 13 million views and Will Smith duetting it. But I’m not. And regardless, I’m still a human being.”

When asked whether or not he reports the haters, Yass explained why he found appealing to the platforms themselves futile.

“I stopped reporting because nothing ever really happens. I notice that when I do report something, I get shadow banned. I’m not getting the views I should.”

Editor’s note: Shadow banning is a colloquialism for when a social media platform adjusts the algorithm so that any particular account does not appear in the feeds of as many viewers as before the ban. This results in content going unseen and is potentially harmful to those who rely on likes and views to maintain their brand, image, or message.

“I’ve responded to hate videos, and they (the social media platform) took my video down, saying it was me bullying that person. But the hate video was still up.”

Yass told The Blade that he, like Weho’s Mayor Shyne, wished the platforms would be more proactive about removing hate speech.

“I shouldn’t have to block someone who threatens to slit my throat. This should be taken down.”

But, ultimately, Yass has had to find the strength within himself to overcome the hate.

“In a video of four thousand comments, there will be one thousand hateful comments. I just stopped looking for the hateful comments. I used to look for them and actively pursue them. I would get into these battles of thirty-five comments. But now I just respond with, ‘Thank you so much,’ or ‘I love you so much.’ That kind of humor kind of works. Sometimes my other followers will step in to defend me too.”

Yass also said that while he sometimes is negatively affected by cyberhate, he refuses to allow haters to discourage him from being present and visible online.

“I’ve wanted to delete my account so many times. But why do I have to leave? Sometimes I think it’s important to take up space.”

Marsha Molinari is a transgender activist, actress, prominent restauranteur, and the host of the award-winning podcast Marsha! Marsha! Marsha! She uses her platform to interview prominent public figures and to spread messages of love and inclusivity.

Molinari has also been the victim of cyber hate, doxing (sharing of her address without her consent), and physical stalking.

“I always try to take it with a grain of salt, but it still gets to you,” said Molinari. “Words are energy, and they hurt. When someone is constantly hit with negative comments, that hurts. It just has to.”

“Even this morning, I was looking at a couple of posts, and they were saying things like, ‘Is this a man?’ and ‘You are a man.’ Just being hateful.”

Molinari told The Blade that a lot of this hate also comes from within the LGBTQ+ community. “It’s a form of self-hate,” she said.

“When someone has so much hate towards what you are doing, that might actually be a mirror for themselves and a hatred for themselves.”

Molinari shared a story of one cyberhater who harassed her for years with anti-trans slurs and DMs telling her that her way of life was “wrong.” This person then messaged one day out of the blue, apologizing and saying that they realized that they, too, had been LGBTQ+ all along but had not had the courage to admit it to themselves.

“They said they saw me living authentically, and that scared them. Later, after they had bullied me for so long, the way I live became an inspiration.”

“We see this with anti-LGBTQIA+ government leaders who pose these laws against the community, but meanwhile, they are messaging gay men online and dressing in drag. It’s apparent why these people are coming after the community. Their hate comes from a deep hatred within themselves.”

Molinari shared another story of her friend who identifies as a gay man but drew the line at supporting Molinari’s journey when she came out as transgender.

“He told me the way I was living was unnatural and wrong,” said Molinari. “I told him that is exactly what they used to say about gay men like him. I told him he needed to get on the right side of history.”

Over time though, Molinari learned to let the majority of hateful comments go.

“I used to feel the need to defend myself or explain myself. That caused me to be drained and to be thinking about those comments throughout the day. I don’t do that anymore. People will have their own opinions, and people will be awful.”

“Sometimes though, if it is someone who is consistent in their bullying, then they need to be exposed.”

In these cases, Molinari screenshots and reposts the hateful messages on her story for hundreds of thousands of people to see.

“Whenever I’ve reposted these comments, people have messaged me saying that they, too, have been bullied by this person. Or some people saying they know this person and never thought that they were like this.”

Molinari agreed that while self-love and advocacy are important, social media platforms could be doing more to keep their users safe.

“I think when people are telling you to kill yourself, that needs to be regulated more by social media platforms. There needs to be a higher authority that stops this from happening.”

Gigi Gorgeous Getty is a Canadian transgender YouTuber, socialite, actress, and model. On her channel, Gigi shares everything from personal anecdotes about her transition, marriage, and social life to her favorite hair, makeup, and fashion tips. Through her personability, she continues to be a relatable role model for many young transgender people.

Unfortunately, opening portions of her life to the public has also opened Getty up to hate.

“I think it’s inevitable when you put yourself out there and you are living authentically. This is especially true when you are sharing things that are unconventional. You get a lot of hate and ignorance directed at you.”

Getty told The Blade she was swatted at the age of twenty while living at her father’s house in Canada.

Editor’s note: “Swatting” is the act of prank calling the police as if someone were in direct danger either to themselves or others, thereby causing the dispatch of armed officers to the scene. The prank is far from harmless as it wastes valuable police resources and time, leaving the police unable to care for others who are in true distress. Swatting is a crime punishable by heavy fines and/or even jail time.

“Someone had called the cops and said I had a gun,” said Getty. “The police arrived, and I was handcuffed to the bed while they searched my room. It was horrible.”

After an investigation, they found the perpetrator – a fan of Getty’s who lived in a rural part of America and had no affiliation with Getty whatsoever.

“It’s really important to prioritize what you post,” warned Getty. “If you post where you are while you’re there, people will know where you are. If you can, try to post after the fact.”

“Just always be aware, maybe even hyperaware, that you are being watched. We all post for our friends and families, but at the end of the day, there could always be someone hateful watching.”

When asked how she deals with all the haters, Getty said that she has learned to ignore the bad and focus on the good.

“I used to be a big fan of blocking anyone who posted something negative about me. But now, after being openly trans for almost ten years, I just find that it’s mind over matter. You have to look at the positive. There could be one hundred positive comments and one negative one. It’s better to focus on all the good.”

“People can be so hateful. My husband sometimes takes healthy breaks from social media. I think that’s beautiful because he has the confidence to live his life happily and privately without needing the validation that social media gives to so many of us.”

Getty also shared a final message to anyone thinking of creating a hateful message or post.

“Just remember there are real people on the other side of that hate. Before you hit send, ask yourself if you could turn that hateful message into the opposite message of love. That is the message worth sending.”

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