Two New Memoirs Detail the Threats to American Democracy

Today is National Voter Registration Day, a chance to unite as a country in our democracy, and around the issues important to LGBTQ people and all Americans.GLAAD polling of LGBTQ voters has consistently shown our top concerns are the same as most Americans: abortion, healthcare, jobs and the economy, and climate change. The lives of LGBTQ people and especially queer people of color are deeply affected by these issues, and they are rooted in values every American cherishes: freedom, health and safety, love for our children, and a desire for a more prosperous future.GLAAD urges the media to include LGBTQ voices in the campaign conversation.

Editor's note: The following contains spoilers about the fifth episode of House of the Dragon, which premiered Sept. 18.(CNN) -- "House of the Dragon's" fifth episode is actually significant for logistical reasons, essentially marking the end of the chapter before the show time jumps ahead, featuring older versions of some characters and somewhat shuffling the deck.Yet the hour could generate as much buzz for a brutal death that occurred, inviting discussion of old concerns and wounds about the way that LGBTQ characters are treated -- and more to the point, killed off -- in TV dramas.The strides made in terms of greater inclusion have coincided with debate about how those characters are portrayed and the fates that they meet, giving rise to a much-discussed trope known as "Bury Your Gays." The phrase refers to a history in which gay characters have disproportionately died as a plot device, creating the impression they are more expendable in the eyes of storytellers.Given that, the "Game of Thrones" prequel potentially waded into controversy with its most recent episode, subtitled "We Light the Way," which again demonstrated, among other things, that in Westeros not much good ever happens at weddings.

Congressional Democrats hope to pick up what seems to be an increasingly attainable seat in California’s 41st district. The incumbent Republican has a remarkably anti-LGBTQ+ policy record, and a gay, out, and partnered Democrat is running against him.Applecart CEO Matt Kalmans said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last week that Democrat Will Rollins has a realistic chance of defeating ultra-conservative Republican incumbent Rep.

Perth Theatre and Pitlochry Festival Theatre are both celebrating their original content winning at the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS).

A post shared by Erick Adame (@erickadameontv) “I have recently been terminated from my job as the meteorologist at Spectrum News NY1 in NYC. I am taking this opportunity to share my truth rather than let others control the narrative of my life,” he began.Related: Hunky gay weatherman fired from his job for standing up to anti-lockdown protestors“My psychiatrist calls my actions ‘compulsive behavior,’ others would call them reckless, stupid or brazen.

Billy Eichner’s rom-com, Bros, is released next month, but how do critics feel about the highly-anticipated film?

Jonathan Van Ness responded to criticism that claimed they and Antoni Porowski queerbaited fans in the announcement of their new business.

Rapper Cardi B responded to some biphobic comments on Twitter that accused her of not publicly dating women.

Joe Biden’s placement at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II yesterday. He went on to claim that if he were President, he’d have had a much better seat.Related: Mary Trump predicts uncle Donald Trump’s next move as his downfall acceleratesTrump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Louth teenager Ruairí Holohan will be advocating LGBTQ+ rights for school students today during this week’s UN General Assembly in New York. The Dundalk native is a UNICEF youth advocate and will be speaking on LGBTQ+ rights for young people at the assembly in partnership with the World Health Organisation. While attending the United Nations […]

On Monday, September 19, the state health department in Montana said it would comply with a judge’s ruling and allow Trans people to rectify their gender in birth records. The new development comes as a result of a lawsuit launched by two Trans women after the state introduced a new rule that violated their rights. […]

FreeState Justice Executive Director Jeremy LaMaster on Monday announced their resignation after they said the organization’s board of directors declined their request to step down.

meteorologist Erick Adame has issued a lengthy apology on social media after he was fired over his appearance on an adult webcam website.Citing a new lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, the New York Post reported that Adame was terminated from his position after an unidentified person took nude photos of the TV personality on the site and sent them to his boss.Per the report, Adame stated in his lawsuit that the photos were taken without his permission, with the person in question sending the images to his mother and NY1 "with intent of harassing, annoying, or alarming [Adame] and tortiously interfering with [Adame's] employment relationship."Emmy-nominated broadcaster Adame, who had been a meteorologist at NY1 since 2017, is seeking a court order to compel the website—identified as Unit 4 Media LTD.—to reveal the name of the person so that he can sue them.Taking to his Instagram account on Monday, Adame confirmed that he had been dismissed from his position, as he explained he was sharing details of the incident to "share my truth rather than let others control the narrative of my life.""My psychiatrist calls my actions, 'compulsive behavior,' others would call them reckless, stupid or brazen," he wrote in the caption. "I'm not in a position to argue with any of these descriptions.A post shared by instagram"Despite being a public figure and being on television in the biggest market in the country in front of millions of people five days a week for more than a decade and a half, I secretly appeared on an adult webcam website."On this site, I acted out my compulsive behaviors, while at home, by performing on camera for other men.

Key West’s annual 10-day costuming celebration, Fantasy Fest is back in full force October 21-30.Started in 1979 by a group of Key West locals, the party was created to bring visitors to the island in what was a typically quiet season. Since then Fantasy Fest has grown enormously and now draws tens of thousands to participate, with 70,000 turning out for the annual parade.Last year, many of the events were canceled, but the popular LGBTQ+ destination plans to return to a full schedule in 2022.

Mary McAleese has submitted a letter to Pope Francis calling on him to remove what she deems to be “offensive sexist material” from a Vatican website. The former president referred specifically to a document which appears on the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life’s website, a department established by Pope Francis in 2016 […]

When we choose our dream university, cost, ranking, and how close or far from home the school is, are common factors to consider. However, for an LGBT student, the level of acceptance in the workplace is just as important. So we asked ourselves, what are the best cities for gay students?

Sam Smith will play two highly anticipated headline shows at the Royal Albert Hall following the release of their fourth album’s lead single.

Back in the early aughts, when Liz Fairbairn found herself creating costumes for a lucha libre (the term used in Mexico for masked professional wrestling) show in Mexico and dating one of its featured wrestlers, she came up with a brilliant, albeit a bit wild, idea.“My second career is special effects costuming, so I made these baboon costumes [for some of the wrestlers]. I was sent down there to babysit the baboon costumes,” she recalls with a laugh.Even before her “baboon babysitting” days, Fairbairn had lived a storied life.

LONDON: Hackers have stolen digital assets worth around US$160 million from crypto trading firm Wintermute, its CEO tweeted on Tuesday (Sep 20), the latest heist to hit a sector long plagued by cybercrime.

Republicans breathed a sigh of relief this past week when Democrats announced they would postpone a vote on their Respect For Marriage Act in the Senate. The bill, which seeks to enshrine the right to gay marriage in federal law, passed easily in the House of Representatives with the votes of every Democrat and 47 Republican members.

Drag superstar Shangela made her debut on Dancing with the Stars last night, with fans reacting to her historic performance on social media.

marry a gay man because he's her "best friend" has gone viral on Reddit.In a post shared under the username Lost-Ad6537, the 20-year-old woman said her parents have had "these family friends since immigrating to America ages ago," and they have a 22-year-old son. "Both families had decided to marry us off to each other pretty much since my birth."The Redditor said: "He's my best friend, my soulmate, and my ride or die...we're honestly both so excited to do this."An August 2020 small study of 116 Bangladeshi women, published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Psychology, found that regardless of marriage type (be it arranged or "couple-initiated"), women with "greater influence over their partner selection reported higher levels of intimacy, passion, commitment and positive marital quality."The study said: "Results suggest that influence over partner selection is a better predictor of these outcomes than marriage type, with marriage type offering little if any information beyond that provided by perceived influence."A 2012 small study of arranged and love-based marriages among 58 Indian Americans in the U.S.

Fox News host urged parents to "fight back" against teachers engaged in what he described as the "sexualizing" of children.Carlson criticized a transgender teacher and showed footage of her wearing large, prosthetic breasts. He also played clips of teachers talking about how they had discussed LGBTQ issues with their students and compared it to meeting a stranger in the park."If you were walking through the park with your kids and a stranger came up and started talking to them, say to your fifth grader, your five-year-old, even your 14-year-old about sex, what would you do? Well, you would call the police, of course. That's not allowed, it's a crime," Carlson said."But teachers are allowed to do it and then to brag about it.

Cardi B had the perfect response to a tweet about her bisexuality, which fans have hailed as the "bisexual awareness week tweet we needed."The "WAP" rapper went viral after she retweeted a Twitter user who seemingly called out artists who identified as bisexual.Along with a photo of Harry Styles, Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and Cardi B, Twitter user @Thelightiscumin caught the hip hop star's attention with their controversial caption."Celebrities that came out as bisexual but never dated someone of the same gender," they captioned their post.Cardi quickly clapped back saying she does not have to prove her sexuality to anyone."I a*e b****es out before you was born .....Sorry I don't have razr phone pics to prove it to you," Cardi wrote.She also later retweeted a fan who asked, "didn't you have a girlfriend in high school?" Cardi replied to that fan saying, "Lmaaooo yes when I was freshman."Fans were quick to defend Cardi and celebrated her response."Bisexuals don't owe you a rundown of their sexual and romantic histories," wrote one fan.Author Lane Moore added: "the bisexual awareness week tweet we needed.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese-owned video streamer iQiyi has confirmed that it has blocked access in Singapore to ten gay-themed TV series. But it says that the move is temporary. “The content was temporarily removed in compliance with the Infocomm Media Development Authority’s guidance towards R21 content,” a company spokesman told Variety by email. R21 restricts viewing to people aged over 21. The shows blocked include iQiyi’s Thai-language original “KinnPorsche and “Until We Met Again” that fall into the ‘Boys Love’ or BL genre. Soft-core romances between (mostly young and handsome) men have become hugely popular in Southeast Asia. And much of the audience for them is adult and female.

Thirty four years ago a young newly graduated police constable Tim Dooley arrested LGBTQI activist Rodney Croome, who was calling for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Tasmania. Last week the two met for the first time after over three decades in very different circumstances. This was just the second encounter between Cooley, now a Commander with the Tasmanian Police, and Croome, a former Tasmanian of the Year, who was appointed Member of Order of Australia for his LGBTQI activism in 2003. Croome recalls that in 1988 the LGBTQI community’s relationship with the local police were “at a low ebb”. In 1988, Tasmania’s LGBTQI community started their decade long battle to call for the repeal of the law that criminalised homosexuality with up to 21 years imprisonment.

An Emmy nominated, out gay New York-based Meteorologist and TV presenter, Erick Adame, said he was fired from his “dream job”, after someone took screenshots of him performing on an adult cam website and sent it to his mother and employer. Adame, who has over over 15 years broadcast journalism experience, was the resident weatherman on the ‘Mornings On 1′ show on weekdays on Spectrum News’ NY1 channel since 2017. He was part of the NY1 team that was nominated twice for the Emmys for their coverage of Hurricane Ida and Tropical Storm Isaias. “Despite being a public figure and being on television in the biggest market in the country in front of millions of people five days a week for more than a decade and a half, I secretly appeared on an adult webcam website,” Adame revealed to his social media followers. “On this site, I acted out my compulsive behaviors, while at home, by performing on camera for other men.

SEOUL: South Korean prosecutors have asked Interpol to issue a fugitive alert for the founder of Terraform Labs as they investigate a US$40 billion crash of the firm’s cryptocurrency that devastated retail investors around the world.

After finishing the 2022 season in third place in the WNBA Western Conference with an 18-18 record, the Dallas Wings are looking for a new head coach, according to a press release today (Monday, Sept. 19) from the team’s head office.

Original Sin was recently renewed for a second season on HBO Max. Yay!

Justin Dixon

The Roy and Jeanne Grogan Historic Plaza on the campus of Weatherford College (Photo via WikiData)

I'm excited for Billy Eichner's Bros, the Judd Apatow-produced rom-com that is being billed as the first gay entry in the field to be released by a major studio.

World leaders joined the British royal family and 2,000 other dignitaries for the hourlong state funeral service of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey Monday.

Lil Nas X was unfazed by homophobic protesters camped outside his recent show in Boston, instead extending an olive branch in the form of pizza.The rapper (real name Montero Hill) performed at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway last Sunday (September 20). Across the street from the venue’s entrance, a small group of Christian protestors convened to spout their bigoted messaging at those lined up for the show.Reposting a video taken by one of his fans, Hill joked that the protesters offered “really good promo”, noting that he’d “just told my team to send them pizza”.

ABOVE: Sean ... Sean.

Editor's note: Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat), a frequent contributor to CNN Opinion, is professor of history and Italian studies at New York University and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. She publishes the newsletter Lucid on threats to democracy. The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.(CNN) — "Florida is fighting back," Gov.

New York City gay nightlife entrepreneur Michael J. Cohen is being accused of sexual misconduct by numerous young queer men, NBC News reported Thursday.These include “accusations that he groped or pressured men to have sex or send nude photos, as well as a claim of sexual assault,” according to NBC.

ABOVE: Do look back.

Mar-a-Lago has been making a lot of headlines lately. And it’s about to make even more.In the new book “Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor,” out next month, author Andrew Kirtzman spoke at length to the disgraced former New York mayor’s third ex-wife, Judith Giuliani, who revealed some truly bizarre details about Donald Trump‘s recently FBI-raided Palm Beach residence.Related: Melania’s ransacked closet at Mar-a-Lago is becoming almost as infamous as her murdered rose gardenJudith was married to Rudy from 2003 to 2019 before she decided she’d had enough and divorced the guy.

There were mixed results for LGBTQ+ candidates in Tuesday’s primaries in New York and Florida, with a notable loss for Mondaire Jones, one of the first Black gay members of Congress.Jones, first elected in 2020 from a district in the suburbs north of New York City, had moved to run in a newly created congressional district, the 10th, covering parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. He was one of several U.S. House members affected by court-ordered redistricting in New York State.

placed in the same district as fellow Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, another openly gay member of Congress — and powerful head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.Despite living in the new 17th Congressional District, most of Maloney’s old constituents live in the new 18th District, yet Maloney insisted on running where he resides. Rather than challenge Maloney in a primary, Jones decided to relocate to the new, incumbent-free 10th Congressional District located in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

ABOVE: What else is there to say?

ABOVE: Cops are just assholes. I'm sorry, but they just are. There's no need for crap like this, yet they live for it. Chalking a sidewalk is vandalism?

(CNN) Organizers have canceled a free concert at New Orleans's upcoming LGBTQ+ festival Southern Decadence due to the threat of monkeypox.The larger six-day festival, September 1-5, will continue as planned, as it always has since 1973 with the exception of when there were hurricanes and the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The popular event typically attracts about 250,000 people.

Bob McCranie

Randy Rainbow has a hilarious new video out, skewering Donald Trump for the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election — and his inability to pronounce “yesterday” when recording at sort-of apology/explanation video the day after.In the parody of the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” Rainbow also addresses the recent FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and encourages Attorney General Merrick Garland — who Rainbow calls “Judy” at one point — to be swifter in taking action against Trump.“Plain to see / how he screwed with our democracy,” Rainbow sings about the man he calls the “former fake president.” “Bingeing Big Macs while he watched TV / this jizz stain on our history.”“Does it really take the FBI to verify he tends to lie?” Rainbow asks.He then tells Garland, “Step on it, sis,” about a possible indictment of Trump.

Randy Rainbow comes for both sides of the aisle in his newest parody song. But in the end, the real message is for Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice: “Get your s— together” and criminally charge Donald Trump.Of course, the video kicks off much the same way all of Rainbow’s songs do; he comes for the right first. This time, instead of taking on his usual persona of an anchor for “Fake News Channel,” Rainbow fills in for Liz Cheney, presiding over the Jan.