Blythe del Kuzio

From New Zealand to Greece to Zimbabwe, LGBTQ+ people worldwide gained key rights in 2022. Diligent, unending work by activists and pro-LGBTQ+ politicians led to victories for LGBTQ+ couples, intersex youth, people living with HIV, and more. Even in countries making significant advances for LGBTQ+ rights, the community still has a long way to go before realizing total equality. Nevertheless, it is essential to celebrate the wins. Here are seven for the international LGBTQ+ community this year. Marriage equality became a reality in Mexico, Slovenia, Cuba, & Chile Shutterstock. In October, Slovenia officially legalized marriage equality and adoption, making it the first country in Eastern Europe to do so. The historic moment came about after a 6-3 Constitutional Court decision in July  said that same-sex marriage and adoption are constitutional rights. The court ordered parliament to add an amendment within six months. In the same month, the entire country of Mexico ach...

The past year has brought unprecedented challenges to transgender rights, but the year included victories too. These are the top moments from 2022 that gave us hope for trans rights. Trans attorneys approach the bench The first ever cohort of trans attorneys was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court. While the National Trans Bar Association acknowledged that they are not the first trans attorneys to be admitted, and will not be the last, the show of representation was a powerful contrast to the anti-trans sentiments expressed by some members of the Court. “It’s vital that we demonstrate to this group of justices, and to the nation, that one’s gender and presentation in no way affects the abilities or performance of that individual,” NTBA co-chair Kristen Browde said, “and, particularly, for those justices who have expressed views hostile to people who are transgender, I think it important to show that we are fully prepared to continue the battle for equality at all levels...

Houma, Louisiana, has never been an easy place to be gay. Located in the murky wetlands roughly an hour Southwest of New Orleans, the Terrebonne Parish town has deep roots in Catholicism, Cajun machismo, and conservative values. The whole area has a genuine “the end is nigh” feel soaked into its marrow, a lagniappe from the catastrophic flooding and hurricane damage which has nearly wiped the city off the map – and killed a number of its residents – multiple times in the last century. It was unsurprising in a place like Houma that The Drama Club, a modest LGBTQ+ bar with a standard issue disco ball hung over its checkered dance floor, became one of the few truly safe spaces outside liberal New Orleans. Unofficial community centers for elder gays and younger queers surrounded by Deep South church rhetoric are essential across the Gulf Coast, and ones with a liquor license are especially appealing. But this unofficial community center was rocked on Christmas Day 2009, when The Drama C...

Chest binding (also known as breast binding) is designed to minimize the appearance of a person’s breasts and create the appearance of a flatter chest. Binding is used by transgender, non-binary, and genderfluid people to make their presenting gender and gender identity more compatible. While binding isn’t used by everyone in the trans community, nor is it a requirement of being trans, it can help people accept themselves and feel more comfortable in their bodies.  “Binding is a practice of using a garment or cloth to compress chest tissue to achieve a flatter or more traditionally masculine chest appearance,” explains Dr. Hana Patel, a London-based general practitioner who works with trans, non-binary, and gender nonconforming patients.  “Each person’s journey and decision on how to affirm their identity is as unique as the individual themselves. Some people choose to bind daily, others don’t do it at all.” She explains that the binder pushes down on the skin and tissue ...

A cisgender female cancer survivor who had her breasts removed said that public restroom users regularly challenge her gender, making her nervous about such confrontations. Tiffany Liles-Taylor — a 43-year-old lesbian woman from the English town of Enderby, Leicestershire, about 96 miles north of London — was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy in 2020. “I’ve had to carry around these really heavy things my whole life,” she told ITV . “I was in my forties and they were starting to get droopy anyway – so I thought ‘these can go’.” After a long recovery, she returned to work as a ward clerk in a local hospital in spring 2021. However, the short-haired woman now finds that she’s regularly misgendered. She said that she gets called “Timothy” more than “Tiffany” and has high social anxiety because she has short hair and is quite masculine, causing others to assume that she’s a guy when they see her together with her wife. “Public toilets are very stressful because...

This year was one for the books, with historic award wins along with movie and TV firsts. Here’s a look back at the biggest moments in LGBTQ+ pop culture for 2022. Michaela Jaé Rodriguez won a Golden Globe Award Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.com On January 9, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez became the first out transgender actress to win a Golden Globe. She took home the award for Best Actress in a TV Drama for her role as Blanca on FX’s Pose (the first Golden Globe win for Pose ). Rodriguez wrote on Instagram : “This is the door that is going to open the door for many more young talented individuals. They will see that it is more than possible. They will see that a young Black Latina girl from Newark New Jersey who had a dream, to change the minds others would WITH LOVE. LOVE WINS. To my young LGBTQAI babies WE ARE HERE the door is now open now reach the stars!!!!!” Amy Schneider’s epic run on Jeopardy! concluded Amy Schneider YouTube screenshot Trans champion Amy Schneider wa...

Community members have rallied around a store owned by a married same-sex couple after vandals repeatedly tore down rainbow flags displayed outside of their business. Shortly before the December 7 opening of the Bees Knees General Store and Bakery in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the bakery’s owners — Sue Littleton and her newlywed wife Candice Zaina — found that the rainbow flag outside of their storefront had been ripped down, the Canada Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported. “We thought, ‘Well, it’s just kids being mischievous in the middle of the night’,” Littleton told the CBC. “We didn’t think too much of it.” But then, their replacement flags were vandalized three more times. The most recent time occurred on Christmas Eve. On that occasion, someone ripped down their Pride flag and their Mi’kmaq flag, a Christian flag representing regional Native Canadians who first came into contact with European settlers. Whoever ripped the flags down also placed human feces on to...

Congressional troll Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is such a font of idiocy for bigotry, disinformation, and conspiracy theories demonizing LGBTQ+ people that it’s difficult to pick which are the most hateful and offensive. Nevertheless, here are some of her worst. She supports overturning same-sex marriage rights While speaking at an event held by the America First Warehouse in Ronkonkoma, New York, Greene nodded while her interviewer referred to same-sex marriage as “toxic.” When the interviewer asked her about the Supreme Court possibly overturning marriage rights, she said , “We have a better chance there with the balance on the Supreme Court as it stands right now,” adding, “Now we know that the Bible tells us marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman. That’s what marriage is.” Greene is one of the few Republican legislators who said she specifically opposed the Respect for Marriage Act because she’s against gay couples getting married. She’s #1 for spreading ant...

Anthony Bowens is currently one of the most popular people in wrestling and made history this year as the first out gay wrestler to become an All Elite Wrestling (AEW) champion. In a recent podcast interview, he opened up about his all-consuming fear of coming out and how he feels about it now. “It makes me feel proud because, you know, there was a time, I said that in a promo, I didn’t think I’d be able to have a moment like that, ever,” Bowens reportedly told Alison Rosen on the podcast, Alison Rosen is Your New Best Friend. “I would sit in my room, in my car, and just cry thinking if I came out, you know, my career is over, fans would hate me, wrestlers would hate me, a national TV company wouldn’t take a chance on me. So, there was all this fear, you know, all this fear and anxiety that I look back on now.” Bowens also said he hopes “to be able to be somebody that people can watch on television, hopefully connect to and relate to, to give them that sense of hope that, I made ...

Last year, country music superstar Dolly Parton was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people. Included in the issue was an essay about her influence penned by Miley Cyrus in which Cyrus wrote that Parton “has diligently celebrated the queer community” as one of the admirable things that has made her an icon. “People look to Dolly for guidance, and she knows that. She wears that responsibility with the same grace and pride she rocks a two-piece Nudie suit,” Cyrus added. Parton, a country music legend, has long been known as a humanitarian. She gave a million dollars to help fund coronavirus vaccine research that helped develop the vaccine produced by Moderna. During the pandemic, she  has also read books to kids  on social media to help comfort them. Parton also has Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, an initiative of the Dollywood Foundation to support youth literacy that gives books to children from low-income families. This year, Parton continued to surpris...

The Great British Bake Off (GBBO) has an undeniably strong gay fanbase. We can’t say for certain what it is about baking, or Paul Hollywood, that the queer community loves – maybe it’s those blue eyes, maybe it’s the soggy bottoms and firm wobbles. But, we do know the show has given us some gems of gay moments over the years. So we decided to pick out some of our favorite gay moments after 12 years of loving the tastiest show on TV. Mary Berry’s carpet eating admission Mary Berry said “I’ll eat a bit of carpet” on Bake Off https://t.co/SQXqOqLUYx #GBBO pic.twitter.com/WtCyvUTiAa — BuzzFeed UK (@BuzzFeedUK) August 31, 2016   Now, GBBO is no stranger to innuendos, and Mary Berry provided the ultimate chuckle when 2016 winner Candie Brown made a gingerbread pub in homage to her parents’ pub where she grew up. As the judges decided which part to eat first, the Queen of Baking herself declared: “I’ll eat a bit of carpet,” and, well, the memes were born. Henry’s large org...