Another blow to queer media
Gay Star News has closed, effective immediately.
I open today with some very sad news.
The prolific outlet Gay Star News, an amazing source of LGBTQ news from across the world, has announced that it is closing quite promptly. The UK-based outlet’s founders (pictured above) explained today that it has faced many financial struggles, in part because business investors have expressed “uncertainty over Brexit” and in part because those investors have increasingly sought to show LGBTQ support in only a “tokenistic” way:
To avoid any doubt, our problem has been entirely financial. By all the statistics, Gay Star News is now more widely read, watched and loved by the international LGBTI audience than ever. It is a sad paradox that our popularity has not transferred into our survival. We are convinced we are closing at a time when more people want and need what we offer than ever before.
I started this newsletter because I saw access to LGBTQ media in decline and I wanted to compensate. For years I’ve relied on GSN’s impressive global coverage, and I’m devastated to see another vital outlet disappear and more brilliant colleagues put out of work.
I can only hope some people out there figure out that LGBTQ media is on life support before it’s too late.
Today’s stories:
Trump’s black friend isn’t a reliable source
As part of his damage control over his latest round of racist attacks against Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), President Trump reportedly met with a group of African-American pastors. The only problem is that the group is a fake remnant of a campaign against marriage equality.
As David Cary Hart noted (and I reported back in the day), the so-called “Coalition of African American Pastors” was devised by the National Organization for Marriage as part of its strategy to “drive a wedge between gays and blacks .” Both the group’s head, Rev. Bill Owens, and his wife were on NOM’s payroll for years. It has absolutely no substantiation as a civil rights organization, considering it was so committed to opposing marriage equality that it actually honored a pro-slavery racist like Roy Moore, the disgrace of Alabama.
Owens’ appearance at the White House also caught the attention of Adam Serwer, who noted his own reporting from 2012, which found that Owens’ record as a civil rights activist didn’t come with receipts:
Lawyers respond to anti-gay district attorney
Last month, it came to light that Craig Northcott, a county district attorney in Tennessee, refused to enforce domestic violence laws for same-sex couples because he doesn’t recognize their relationships as valid. “I say, ‘There’s no marriage to protect.’ So I don’t prosecute it as domestic [assault],” he was heard telling a religious conference.
Now, a group of 330 lawyers has sent a letter to the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility asking for an emergency suspension of his law license. “Any attorney who believes he has the power to ignore the decisions of the United State Supreme Court is in violation of his oath and is disqualified from the practice of law,” the letter reads.
This is exactly the kind of situation in which conservatives would argue Northcott’s “religious freedom” justifies his not having to recognize same-sex couples’ marriages.
Members of the LGBTQ community actually face much higher rates of domestic abuse and need the kind of protection Northcott refuses to provide.
Today in “protect the children” scare tactics
Anti-LGBTQ activists always resort to claiming that children are under threat as their most desperate tactic. Today served up two incredible examples of just how far hate groups will go to make their case.
First up, Alvin McEwen highlights some new propaganda from MassResistance condemning everybody’s favorite threat to society: Drag Queen Story Time! As Alvin notes, “It comes down to the fact that Mass Resistance is angry at drag queens for (wait for it) reading a children's book to children, which is the purpose of Drag Queen Story Hour.”
Specifically, MassResistance was concerned that a queen read the kids’ book, What Color Is Your Underwear?:
At the end the elephant says, “I’m not wearing any underwear.” Is this a subliminal encouragement for the young children?
The scare-mongering is so absurd it almost sounds like parody. Check out Alvin’s post to see more of that nonsense.
Next up via Media Matters’ Kayla Gogarty is Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel (the group that defended Kim Davis). On his podcast, Staver claimed that passing the Equality Act (which creates federal LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections) would enable the kind of child molestation Jeffrey Epstein has been arrested for. LGBTQ advocates are “promoting” pedophilia, he claimed.
This claim is total nonsense, but it’s par for the course for Staver. In addition to the countless examples Gogarty provides, Staver also has a particular fixation with trying to capitalize on prominent child abuse news stories by distorting them into anti-LGBTQ narratives.
Back in 2014, when Staver was fighting bans on conversion therapy, he repeatedly invoked Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach convicted of rape and child sexual abuse. His argument was that pedophilia causes homosexuality, so he’d say things like, “These children have been victimized twice — first by the likes of Jerry Sandusky, and second by legislators and judges.” He was literally claiming that denying kids access to the shame-based torture of conversion therapy was the equivalent of molesting them.
Not to humor the disgusting premise of Staver’s attacks, but if pedophilia causes homosexuality and queer people cause pedophilia, doesn’t that present kind of a chicken and an egg situation?
Gold medal gay
Congrats to Todd Harrity, an openly gay squash player who just won a gold medal at the Pan-American games!
Justin Trudeau visited a gay bar
That’s the whole story. Apparently a Canadian prime minister has never visited a gay bar before, so Justin Trudeau made big news by crossing that threshold. Granting the premise that it’s a big deal, we can boast that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) broke that barrier herself last year.
Polish activists to haters: You need to calm down!
To help challenge the growing tension with anti-LGBTQ extremists in Poland, a group of Polish LGBTQ activists and celebrities joined forced to make a lipsync video to Taylor Swift’s “You Need To Calm Down.” Check out LGBTQ Nation’s reporting to learn more about who all appears in the video and how it came together.
Tune in tomorrow and Thursday, when I’ll once again recap how LGBTQ issues came up in the Democratic debates. You can revisit my recaps from the first pair of debates here and here.
Until then, stay platinum!