Blythe del Kuzio

Anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said, in a tweet, that “an insane women” [sic] and “her adult son” attacked and screamed at her while at a restaurant over Greene’s “different political views.” In response, school shooting survivor David Hogg reminded Greene that, in 2018, she publicly attacked and screamed at him over his political views on gun reform. Related Stories Marjorie Taylor Greene held an anti-trans rally at the Capitol & almost no one came A whopping 12 or so people attended. In a Monday tweet, Green wrote, “I was attacked in a restaurant tonight by an insane women and screamed at by her adult son. “They had no respect for the restaurant or the staff or the other people dining or people like me who simply have different political views,” she continued. “They are self righteous, insane, and completely out of control,” said Greene, a 48-year-old woman who once claimed that all school shootings are fake, that space lasers start wildfires to b...

The Jackson County Republican Party of Missouri is considering ways it can punish an openly gay state representative for proposing a constitutional amendment to redefine marriages in the state as between “two individuals” rather than “one man and one woman.” On Monday night, Jackson County Republican committee members met at Tiff N Jay’s sports bar in Lee’s Summit Monday night to vote on whether to censure openly gay state Rep. Chris Sander, a self-described MAGA Republican. Sander had introduced the amendment to bring Missouri into line with federal law, which recognizes same-sex unions. Related Stories California lawmakers move to protect marriage equality in state constitution California is still haunted by the infamous “Proposition 8” that remains in its constitution. Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2004 defining marriage as between “one man and one woman.” In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned statewide bans on same-sex marriage nationwi...

Lauren Boebert (R-CO) says that House Republicans are set to launch a probe into Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s response to the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ congresswoman, who has repeatedly attacked Buttigieg on Twitter, made the announcement via the social media platform on Monday. Buttigieg has faced criticism from Republicans, much of it homophobic, for not visiting the site of the train derailment that occurred on February 3 sooner. The derailment released hazardous materials, potentially endangering the environment and health of local residents. Related Stories Pete Buttigieg says he has no plans to run for president in 2024 “I don’t have any plans to do any job besides the one I’ve got.” Earlier this month, Fox News host Tucker Carlson called the out Biden Administration official “ flamboyantly incompetent. ” Donald Trump Jr. suggested that Buttigieg’s only qualification for his job is that he is gay. A conserva...

A Louisiana librarian says she no longer feels safe in public after the state attorney general and conservative groups accused local librarians of trying to “groom” and “sexualize” kids by offering books with LGBTQ+ themes. “I am scared to go places in public,” Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian in Denham Springs, told PBS News Hour . “I fear for my safety, I purchased a taser. I purchased pepper spray. I got additional security cameras around my home.” Related Stories School bans on LGBTQ books “escalating dramatically” over last year In 98 percent of cases, the school districts didn’t follow First Amendment protections to ensure that government officials don’t ban or punish free speech. Jones, who is also president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians, became a target after she spoke out against book banning at a July 19, 2022, meeting of the Livingston Parish Library Board of Control. At the meeting, she said, “No one portion of the community shoul...

Rockland Palace was filled to capacity. The venue at 155th St. and 8th Ave. in Harlem saw nearly 8000 guests that night. It was March 6, 1936, and the Palace was hosting its 68th annual Hamilton Lodge “Odd Fellows” Ball, an event it had hosted since its inception in the 1860s. Not since 1929 had the ball seen this much action, and visitors came from as far as Chicago, Atlanta, and Memphis to witness the spectacle. Ed Bonelli and his 20-piece Lido Society Orchestra provided a soundtrack for the festivities, and during intermission, the Smalls Paradise floor show entertained the anxious crowd. This night was set to be the biggest yet, and all the ball’s participants picked out only their most extravagant outfits for the occasion. Related Stories 7 of history’s greatest queer couples Let’s travel back in time and remember some of the most fabulous queer couples, some of whom you might never have heard of… This night would be different, however, because a Black queen took ho...

source https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/02/this-gender-non-conforming-blues-singer-was-a-harlem-renaissance-super-star/

A few years before palace intrigue and dynastic power struggles both fantastical ( Game of Thrones ) and semi-historical ( The Crown ) became prestige TV fodder, NBC took “a bold swing” with its short-lived series Kings . A new oral history of the show published on Vulture today remembers Kings as “a just-weird-enough-to-work biblical epic that could appeal to both religious audiences and agnostic, liberal viewers,” a play for “prestige and critical acclaim” at a time when traditional networks were losing ground to more daring content on cable. Some of us who watched Kings , however, remember it instead as that bonkers, high-budget show in which Sebastian “Winter Soldier” Stan — who starred in the superhero films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — played a handsome, morally ambiguous gay prince. In Kings , a contemporary re-telling of the biblical story of King David which ran for one season in 2009, Stan played crown prince Jack Benjamin, the only son of King Silas, and heir to ...

LGBTQ+ people and allies at a Maryland library used rainbow-colored umbrellas to prevent anti-queer protestors from invading a drag queen children’s event. Chaya Raichik, who goes by LibsofTikTok on social media, tried to anger bigots into disrupting the event. Anti-LGBTQ+ protestors found themselves outnumbered when they arrived at a Sunday-morning Drag Queen Story Hour event at the Olney Library in Maryland, 20 miles north of the nation’s capital. The LGBTQ+ allies used rainbow umbrellas to block the entrance, a tactic increasingly used and adopted by the pro-LGBTQ Parasol Patrol , a group that protects drag events from far-right disruptors. Related Stories MMA coach & his fighters volunteer to provide security for drag show The show was about to be canceled because of threats, until some MMA fighters stepped up. The umbrella-holders blocked one man, in particular, who held a sign which read, “This. is not amusing children, it’s ABUSING children!” Video of the prot...

“Gun rights are for everyone.” So says Fin Smith, a trans gun rights advocate and gun enthusiast who sees the right to bear arms as a last defense against authoritarianism aimed at the queer community. Related Stories These three drag queens have been targeted by the far-right We spoke with three artists swept up in this unprecedented wave of intimidation to see how they are in the aftermath. “Any law that would disarm anyone no matter how reasonable can be used unreasonably against us,” says Smith, who goes by the Twitter handle Queer Armorer . “Because they are coming to make just existing as us the problem.” Smith runs Rainbow Reload, an LGBTQ+ gun club based in New Hampshire, where he produces firearms instruction videos and news and gaming streams, and lives by an amended state motto, “Live Free or F**king Die.”   On a recent gun club outing to Pawtuckaway State Park, Smith told New Hampshire Public Radio , “If the world is dangerous, then you have to be dange...

Two-thirds of New York state voters, including 58 percent of statewide Republicans, say that Gay Rep. George Santos (R-NY) should resign, according to a new Siena College poll . This poll concurs as a newly unearthed recording found Santos lying to a judge in 2017. The 2017 lie is just the iceberg tip of Santos’s many falsehoods. The poll found that 66 percent of voters statewide said Santos should resign from Congress. The percentage is an increase from the 59 percent of New York voters who said last month that he should resign. Related Stories George Santos cosponsors bill calling for rollback of LGBTQ+ rights No other LGBTQ+ House member backs the bill. “The ‘good’ news for Santos is that even in these hyper-partisan times, he’s found a way to get Democrats, Republicans, and independents to agree about a political figure,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg. “The bad news for Santos is that the political figure they agree on is him, and they overwhelmingly v...

When Barbara Jordan was born in Houston’s Fifth Ward 87 years ago, there weren’t over 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills making their way through Texas’s legislative chambers like there are today, but her state was plenty hostile to Black, queer people like her. Her life in politics—filled with firsts—sought to expand civil rights for all as much as she could.  Jordan was the first Black woman—and one of the first Black people—elected to Congress from the South. Growing up attending segregated public schools in Houston, Texas, it must have seemed like an impossible dream.  Related Stories 10 Black LGBTQ+ heroes honored on stamps With these commemorative stamps, some queer Black heroes are getting special recognition. But “impossible” and Jordan didn’t mix. If it hadn’t been done before, she was ready to be the one to do it.  There hadn’t been a Black state senator in Texas since 1883? Jordan became a Texas state senator in 1966, the first Black woman to ever be a Texas...

Dwayne Wade and Gabrielle Union received the President’s Award recognizing their “special achievement and distinguished public service” at Saturday’s 2023 NAACP Image Awards. The couple — whose advocacy work includes efforts supporting Black-owned small businesses and community organizations, empowering communities of color, and ending gun violence — used their joint acceptance speech to spotlight Black transgender people at a time when trans rights are under attack across the United States. Speaking first, Wade delivered a moving tribute to his daughter Zaya , who is trans. Related Stories Ellen, Gabrielle Union & Dwyane Wade’s chat about trans kids will leave you in tears “So many people … really truly feel like their kids are disposable. If they’re not perfect images of them, they’re not interested. And it’s heartbreaking,” Union told Ellen. “Zaya, as your father, all I’ve wanted to do was get it right,” Wade said. “I’ve sat back and watched how gracefully you’ve...

If you had to pick the two weirdest Democrats in Congress in 2020, it would have to have been Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (R) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I). Gabbard hated American foreign policy and even visited bloody Syrian Dictator President Bashar al-Assad when everyone else was condemning him. Sinema spent her time avoiding her constituents and making life miserable for her fellow Democrats. So it’s no surprise that the two were buddies, even though Gabbard used to spend her time complaining about “homosexual extremists.” What is surprising is to learn, according to a Daily Beast report, is that Sinema has paid Gabbard’s sister Vrindivan Bellord more than $300,000 in both campaign and congressional funds for security since late 2021. She was also reimbursed $240,000 for expenses like lodging, meals, and airfare. Moreover, Sinema appears to be Bellord’s sole client. It’s not that Bellord isn’t qualified to run a security firm. She’s a former U.S. marshall who basically served a...

The international organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Grindr of not doing enough to prevent violence against LGBTQ+ users by anti-LGBTQ+ officials in Africa and the Middle East. In a new report , HRW interviewed 90 LGBTQ+ people who had been digitally targeted on these apps by officials in five countries: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia. HRW also interviewed 30 experts about anti-LGBTQ+ harassment in each country. Related Stories Barbaric “gay tests” are still victimizing men across the world In countries where same-sex sexual activity is outlawed, law enforcement frequently forces men accused of being gay to undergo invasive and degrading forced anal examinations. “Authorities across the five countries manually monitor social media, create fake profiles to impersonate LGBT people and entrap them on dating applications such as Grindr and social media platforms such as Facebook,” HRW wrote. Authorities s...

source https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/02/this-black-lesbian-became-a-giant-in-her-field-no-matter-what-her-critics-threw-at-her/

Out WWE star Daria Berenato – who wrestles under the name Sonya Deville – has announced she is engaged to fitness model Toni Cassano. Berenato proposed on February 15 at a New Jersey wine cellar. Moments after she placed the ring on Cassano’s finger, Cassano pulled another ring out of her purse and gave it to a shocked Berenato. Related Stories Alison Brie may have just come out as bisexual & fans cannot handle it They’re especially excited considering her recent role that involved her making out with Aubrey Plaza. “I proposed, then Toni’s like, ‘Grab my purse,'” Berenato told People. “And she pulls out a freaking ring box, and she’s like, ‘I’ve been carrying this around in my purse for four months. So whenever you proposed, I could give you a ring immediately back.'” Berenato spent months designing the perfect ring for what she hoped would be an “epic” proposal. “I could go on for days about the way I feel about this woman,” she said. “I never knew love c...

A former NFL player was arrested early Tuesday morning after allegedly assaulting his son and his son’s boyfriend outside his Indiana home. NBC News reports that police responded to a “delayed domestic” disturbance at the home of retired Indianapolis Colts lineman and former radio host Joe Staysniak just before midnight on Monday, after a young man called police saying Staysniak had attacked him earlier that night. Staysniak was arrested and charged with a felony count of strangulation and two misdemeanor counts of battery. Related Stories NFL declares “Football is gay” “The NFL stands by the LGBTQ+ community today and every day” they said in a simple yet unprecedented message. According to WTHR , Staysniak said he received a call from a neighbor about a suspicious car parked in his front yard. Staysniak reportedly admitted to approaching the car with his gun. After finding his 18-year-old son and the son’s boyfriend in the car, according to a probable cause affidavit, ...