Tag: Homosexuality and Bisexuality

Why Anonymous Sperm Donation Is Over, and Why That Matters

In many states, if you are part of a couple raising a child, and you never marry or you get a divorce, and your partner wants to sever the connection, you can be deemed a legal stranger to a child you helped raise but with whom you don’t share a genetic tie. “I worry that […]

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DeSantis’s Education Policies in Florida Drive Out Liberal-Leaning Professors

Gov. Ron DeSantis had just taken office in 2019 when the University of Florida lured Neil H. Buchanan, a prominent economist and tax law scholar, from George Washington University. Now, just four years after he started at the university, Dr. Buchanan has given up his tenured job and headed north to teach in Toronto. In […]

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We Aren’t Failing Trans Kids by Giving Them the Freedom to Choose

Lately I have been asking people this question: Do you remember the first time someone informed you of your gender? It’s a nonsense question, of course. No one remembers. Mine was first declared to me, and everyone else involved, in the birthing room. Nowadays, for many people, gender is given to them well before they […]

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Russia Asks Court to Label Gay Rights Movement as ‘Extremist’

In recent years, L.G.B.T.Q. people in Russia have lived under increasing fear as the Kremlin has ratcheted up measures curtailing gay and transgender rights in tandem with the repressive search for “internal enemies” during the war in Ukraine. In the latest threat, the Ministry of Justice will seek a court order on Thursday to declare […]

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David Del Tredici, Who Set ‘Alice’ to Music, Dies at 86

David began his piano studies when he was 11 and was 16 when he gave his first public performance, in San Francisco in 1954. By the time he was 18, he had won a handful of scholarships and awards, including the $5,000 John E. Kimber Prize, in 1955, which covered his piano studies for several […]

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Weeks Before Election as Speaker, Johnson Lamented ‘Dark and Depraved’ Culture

Three weeks before he was elected speaker, Mike Johnson joined a prayer call where he lamented that American culture was “so dark and depraved it almost seems irredeemable,” claiming as evidence that attendance at church had reached an all-time low and that 25 percent of high school students identified as “something other than straight.” In […]

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Killing of Mexico’s First Nonbinary Magistrate Alarms L.G.B.T.Q. Community

Jesús Ociel Baena made history a year ago when they were sworn in as the first openly nonbinary person to assume a judicial post in Mexico. On Monday, Mx. Baena, who used they/them pronouns, and their partner were found dead inside their home, stirring calls from Mexico’s L.G.B.T.Q. community to determine if the magistrate had […]

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In Texas, a Fight Over Gender and School Theater Takes an Unexpected Turn

A school district in the conservative town of Sherman, Texas, made national headlines last week when it put a stop to a high school production of the musical “Oklahoma!” after a transgender student was cast in a lead role. The district’s administrators decided, and communicated to parents, that the school would cast only students “born […]

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Who Is Stefanos Kasselakis, the Syriza Leader Upending Greek Politics?

Stefanos Kasselakis was virtually unknown in Greece just six months ago when he was a no-chance election candidate with Syriza, the country’s main opposition party. These days, thanks to an electoral drubbing of that party, a meteoric ascent fueled by a skillful social media campaign, his status as a former Goldman Sachs trader and a […]

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Hungary Fires Museum Director in Crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. Depictions

When a far-right member of Hungary’s Parliament invited the media three years ago to watch her shred a book of fairy tales that included a gay Cinderella, only one reporter showed up. But what began as lonely, crank campaign against “homosexual propaganda” by a fringe nationalist legislator, Dora Duro, has snowballed into a national movement […]

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Vatican Says Transgender People Can Be Baptized and Become Godparents

Pope Francis, who has made reaching out to L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics a hallmark of his papacy, has made clear that transgender people can be baptized, serve as godparents and be witnesses at church weddings, furthering his vision of a more inclusive church. The pope’s embrace of transgender people’s participation in the church was revealed in a […]

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Think You Don’t Like Something? Try Listening Closer

Let’s talk about that first wave of disgust a bit. Initially, hating this song and Abba in general didn’t really feel like a choice. Gagging at the mere mention of this sweet little quartet was just being, you know, normal. And at the time that “Dancing Queen” came out, it wasn’t hard to hate a […]

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I Grew Up in Mike Johnson’s District, Where Kindness Can Mask Cruelty

I don’t know Mike Johnson, the brand-new speaker of the House of Representatives, but I feel as if I do because we’re from the same neck of the woods. He’s from Shreveport, in Caddo Parish, La., where I was born and where one of my brothers died. Johnson’s district encompasses my childhood hometown, Gibsland, about […]

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For Mike Johnson, Religion Is at the Forefront of Politics and Policy

In the moments before he was to face a vote on becoming speaker of the House this week, Representative Mike Johnson posted a photograph on social media of the inscription carved into marble atop the chamber’s rostrum: “In God We Trust.” His colleagues celebrated his candidacy by circulating an image of him on bended knee […]

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Mike Johnson Is a Right-Wing Fever Dream Come to Life

Last week, on the eve of his first attempt to become speaker of the House, allies of Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio confidently predicted that his more mainstream and institutionalist opponents would cave rather than resist his ascent. Jordan’s allies were wrong about that particular caving. But they were right that those same moderates and […]

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Where Mike Johnson Stands on Key Issues: Ukraine, LGBTQ Rights and More

Speaker Mike Johnson, the little-known congressman from Louisiana who won the gavel on Wednesday, is deeply conservative on both fiscal and social issues, reflecting the G.O.P.’s sharp lurch to the right. Mr. Johnson, a lawyer, also played a leading role in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, helping to push […]

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The Marie Laurencin Exhibition Making the Case for Art Without Men

“One issue that Laurencin did have with being taken seriously by, say, feminist art historians in the ’90s is that she was so feminine,” she said. “They just couldn’t get it.” After Laurencin’s death, her work fell into an especially peculiar trap: It was dismissed for its femininity and criticized for its supposed lack of […]

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India’s Top Court Rejects Gay Marriage, While Voicing Sympathy

India’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a plea to legalize same-sex marriage, a stinging setback for gay people seeking equal rights in this socially conservative country of 1.4 billion people. A five-member bench of judges ruled unanimously against the petitioners, with the chief justice saying it was up to Parliament to create any laws recognizing […]

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It’s Not OK to Police Co-Workers’ Pronouns

Some reading suggestions: “On Intersectionality: Essential Writings” by Kimberlé Crenshaw; “Feminism Is for Everybody” by bell hooks; “Women, Race & Class” by Angela Y. Davis; and “Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot” by Mikki Kendall. Working With a Debbie Downer My colleague at work is a real downer. It’s impossible to […]

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Vatican Conference Draws All Stripes to Rome, Welcome or Not

Rome is a Catholic menagerie these days. An excommunicated woman dressed in red bishop’s robes is marching toward the Vatican behind a procession of would-be female priests. Conservative culture warriors are headlining theaters, delivering screeds against Pope Francis before marginalized cardinals and exorcists sitting in velvet seats. The abortion-rights leader of Catholics for Choice is […]

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Justin Torres Finds Inspiration in the Erasures of Queer History

Any sense of anonymity that Justin Torres had enjoyed as an author was on the verge of vanishing. Shortly before the release of his debut novel, “We the Animals,” in 2011, critics were starting to praise him and his slim, semi-autobiographical book about childhood, family and sexuality. Overnight, he was considered an authority. Just as […]

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A New Way to Prevent S.T.I.s: A Pill After Sex

Why It Matters: Rates of S.T.I.s are skyrocketing. In 2021, there were 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, more than 700,000 cases of gonorrhea and nearly 177,000 cases of syphilis in the United States, together tallying up to $1.1 billion in direct medical costs. (Rates of babies born with syphilis also soared that year, with nearly […]

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Same-Sex Behavior Evolved in Many Mammals to Reduce Conflict, Study Suggests

In more than 1,500 animal species, from crickets and sea urchins to bottlenose dolphins and bonobos, scientists have observed sexual encounters between members of the same sex. Some researchers have proposed that this behavior has existed since the dawn of the animal kingdom. But the authors of a new study of thousands of mammalian species […]

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What Is a Synod in the Catholic Church? And Why Does This One Matter?

Even for a Roman Catholic Church rife with esoteric terminology that often defies comprehension by the uninitiated, this month’s Synod on Synodality at the Vatican — essentially a major workshop for church leaders and lay people on how to work together for the good of the church — has proved mystifyingly meta for many of […]

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Running San Francisco Made Dianne Feinstein

When I was interviewing Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2011 for a book about San Francisco’s tumultuous history from the 1960s to the ’80s, she suddenly began to tear off her microphone and terminate the exchange. My offense? I asked about her decision as mayor of the city to veto a 1982 ordinance that would have […]

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Anthropology Conference Drops a Panel Defending Sex as Binary

For a big annual conference on anthropology, Kathleen Lowrey, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, put together several panelists around a controversial theme: that their discipline was in the midst of erasing discussions of sex, which they believe is binary — either male or female. Dr. Lowrey invited a slate of speakers and […]

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QI.X, a Queer K-Pop Group, Wants to Change South Korea

At a bar in Euljiro, one of Seoul’s up-and-coming hip neighborhoods, two voices intertwined in a duet. One was high-pitched, the other an octave lower. But there was only one singer, a 27-year-old named jiGook. The other voice was a recording made years ago, before he began his transition and hormone therapy deepened his voice. […]

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Statin May Lower Heart Disease Risk for H.I.V. Patients

Americans with H.I.V. are achieving the once unthinkable: a steady march into older age. But beginning around age 50, many people living with the virus face a host of health problems, from heart disease and diabetes to social isolation and cognitive decline. And so the medical research community, which some three decades ago developed lifesaving […]

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