Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that could help transgender and nonbinary people receive accurate credit scores.
The Name Accuracy in Credit Reporting Act, introduced last week by Sens. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Tina Smith (D-MN), would amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to require credit reporting agencies to only use a person’s current legal name in credit reports, according to The Hill. In March, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) marked Transgender Day of Visibility by introducing companion legislation in the House.
As Fetterman’s office noted in a press release announcing the introduction of the legislation, people who legally change their names often face challenges obtaining accurate credit reports and scores. When they apply for credit using their new names, credit bureaus create entirely new credit files. These fragmented credit reports can result in a drop in their credit scores, impacting their ability to access loans, rent homes, and get jobs.
Currently, even when trans and nonbinary people update their credit files, credit agencies can continue to use their deadnames in their credit reports, potentially outing them and exposing them to harassment and discrimination. As The 19th* noted, 27 percent of trans respondents to a recent survey conducted by the Center for LGBTQ Economic Advancement & Research and the Movement Advancement Project said they faced discrimination in banking and financial services.
“Amid the ongoing attacks on the LGBTQ community, I am proud to introduce this bill with Senator Smith that is a commonsense measure to make it easier for people who change their names to obtain accurate credit reports and information,” Fetterman said in a statement. “Whether it’s transgender and nonbinary people or survivors of domestic violence, every American should be able to get an accurate credit report and score.”
“Nobody should face unnecessary burdens to receive a mortgage or a car loan, but transgender and nonbinary Americans have to deal with credit agencies that can’t even get their name right,” said Smith. “This bill fixes a simple issue that Minnesotans have been asking me to help fix, and it will help trans and nonbinary Americans clear a hurdle to accessing loans.”
Fetterman previously raised the issue to the CEOs of Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion—the “big three credit reporting agencies—during an April Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing.
Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Ed Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Patty Murray (D-WA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Brian Schatz (D-HI) joined Fetterman and Smith in co-sponsoring the legislation, which has been endorsed by over a dozen LGBTQ+ and progressive organizations.
A Portuguese man says he was arrested and jailed in Turkey for 20 days because he “looked gay.”
During a visit to Istanbul last month, Miguel Alvaro says he was on his way to meet a friend for lunch when he asked police officers for directions. According to LBC, Alvaro was unaware that an unsanctioned LGBTQ+ march was happening nearby. Alvaro says that one of the Turkish police officers order his arrest.
“They grabbed my arms and I tried to free myself. One of them hit me in the ribs, they pushed me against a van, they hit me on the shoulder, which started to bleed,” he told the British radio station.
Alvaro told Portuguese media outlet P3 that he was placed in a police van where he reportedly waited for five hours before officers told him that he’d “been detained because of my appearance.”
“They thought I would participate in an unauthorized LGBTI+ march that was going to take place nearby because I looked gay,” he said. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 149 people were arrested in Turkey, at least 96 of them in Istanbul, during the weekend of June 25, when police violently interfered with Pride demonstrations.
Alvaro says he spent a total of 13 hours in the van before being taken to a police station for processing the next day. According to LBC, he spent several hours in an immigrant detention center where the sheets were reportedly crawling with maggots before being driven 17 hours to a prison near the Syrian border.
Alvaro says that other prisoners threatened him because he was gay and that he barely slept during his stay at the prison for fear of being attacked. He also claims that prisoners were barely given any water.
In early July, he was finally allowed to phone his father, who asked the Portuguese embassy for help. Alvaro was not released until July 12, 20 days after his arrest.
Alvaro told P3 that the ordeal has left him “in a horrible psychological state.”
“I’m very afraid of the consequences in the future,” he said. “I can’t believe this happened to me.”
According to LBC, Alvaro is now warning members of the LGBTQ+ community not to visit Turkey. While homosexuality is legal in Turkey, the country lacks anti-discrimination protections, and same-sex marriage is not legal. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is staunchly anti-LGBTQ+. In 2021, Erdogan withdrew from the Istanbul Convention – an agreement between 45 countries to better protect women from violence – after stating it was “hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalize homosexuality.”
Last year, police in Istanbul arrested hundreds of marchers, protesters, and bystanders in and around Taksim Square, where LGBTQ+ people had gathered for a Pride march that was banned by the local governor.
On the most recent episode of her MSNBC show, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki devoted a segment to exposing the right-wing extremist agenda of the anti-LGBTQ+ organization Moms for Liberty.
Anyone who has been paying attention to the frequent chaos and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric at school board meetings nationwide and efforts to ban books by and about LGBTQ+ people and people of color, you’re already well aware of what Moms for Liberty stands for.
SPLC said the hate group is “at the forefront” of the “mobilization” of right-wing extremist groups claiming to fight for “parents’ rights.”
But as Psaki noted on the July 16 episode of Inside with Jen Psaki, the organization claims to be non-partisan. That, along with the group’s misleading and innocuous-sounding name, has left many people confused about Moms for Liberty’s agenda — even after they themselves get involved with the group.
“Moms: great, sounds good. Liberty: awesome, who doesn’t like liberty? ‘Moms for Liberty.’ As the mom of two young kids, that even sounds good to me,” Psaki said. “But it’s vague enough, that even some of its own members are pretty unclear as to what the group is really all about, what they’re a part of.”
“Well, I’m here to help,” she continued. “Because as benign as Moms for Liberty may sound, its agenda is unmistakably extreme.”
She went on to catalog the group’s tactics and causes, including leading the movement to ban books, turning school board meetings into screaming matches, and intimidating both local officials and others in their communities.
“Chapters and members across the country have led campaigns targeting community advocates, school board members, and opposing groups,” Psaki explained. “They’ve repeatedly sent intimidating messages, openly threatened officials, and even baselessly leveled charges of child abuse and sympathizing with pedophilia.”
She also noted that one Indiana chapter infamously included an Adolph Hitler quote in a newsletter. The group apologized but later defended the inclusion of the quote.
Psaki also demolished Moms for Liberty’s claim that it is a nonpartisan organization. “Consider this,” she said. “One of the founders, whose name is notably omitted from its website, is a current Republican school board member who is married to the now-chairman of the Florida Republican Party. In 2021, he told the Washington Post, ‘I have been trying for a dozen years to get 20- and 30-year-old females involved with the Republican Party. But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me.’”
“So, below the surface of their friendly-sounding name, and politically vague taglines,” Psaki concluded, “they’re an unapologetically extreme organization that has built a long record of harassment and controversy, in a pretty short period of time.”
The mayor of a California city in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area has drawn criticism from citizens and business leaders after refusing to issue a proclamation recognizing June as Pride Month and describing LGBTQ+ identity as a “choice of lifestyle.”
As the Los Angeles Blade reports, 2023 was the first year since 2014 that the city of Torrance, California did not issue a Pride Month proclamation. While the city reportedly does not sponsor Pride events or fly the Pride flag over its city hall, former mayor Patrick Furey did issue the proclamations beginning in 2014.
But this year, Mayor George Chen, who was elected in 2022 after Furey retired, opted to break with that tradition, frustrating local LGBTQ+ residents and business owners who say the city has seen an uptick in hostility toward the queer community. Last year, Pride decorations outside local businesses were torn down, according to the Daily Breeze.
Early last month, the paper reported that Chen turned down a request to issue the annual Pride Month proclamation. The mayor said that his decision was not meant to be a public condemnation of the LGBTQ+ community.
“To me, it was a proclamation request,” Chen told the Daily Breeze in early June. “I denied the proclamation request because this is a certain choice of lifestyle for some people, and I respect each person’s personal choice. It does not rise to a proclamation.”
However, the choice to play pickleball apparently does rise to that level; earlier this year, Chen issued a proclamation declaring April National Pickleball Month, the L.A. Bladenotes.
Frustrated with the mayor’s decision and last year’s vandalism, members of the Downtown Torrance Association (DTA) reportedly came up with a plan to hang rainbow Pride banners on the downtown business district’s light poles, where vandals cannot reach them. The DTA also drafted its own Pride Month proclamation, which was ratified by all 50 of the DTA’s member businesses, the L.A. Blade reported.
Members of the organization read the proclamation aloud during a June 6 city council meeting. But according to the Daily Breeze, the mayor’s office has the right to decline any proclamation request made by a Torrance resident, per city policy. Chen declined the DTA’s request.
The L.A. Blade reports that the morning after the meeting, security cameras outside one downtown business captured city officials removing the DTA’s Pride banners. At a subsequent meeting after business owners rehung the banners, city representatives reportedly told DTA members that they could face misdemeanor charges if they did not remove them.
Additionally, Chen and the Torrance city council have reportedly failed to issue formal statements condemning anti-LGBTQ+ graffiti that began appearing on city bridges.
The situation has been devastating for members of the local LGBTQ+ community and their allies.
“I’m seeing people in my community losing hope,” Adam Schwartz told the L.A. Blade. “It’s destroyed people’s trust in the city. A lot of people can hear this and go, ‘Oh, Torrance is such a backward, bigoted place,’ and that hurts everyone in Torrance.”
“It’s frustrating for me to see that I’m still not really welcome,” said Silas Quinn, a transgender Torrance native who moved back to the city last year. “I’m still not really what Torrance wants to be a part of their community.”
But Isabel (Douvan) Schwartz, who helped draft the DTA’s proclamation, remained defiant. “This will not stop the Downtown Torrance Association from finding other ways to celebrate Pride,” she told the L.A. Blade. “Next year, we will find another way to celebrate.”
Two women ruined a San Diego public library’s Pride display by checking out nearly all of its LGBTQ+ books in protest.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Rancho Peñasquitos residents Amy Vance and Martha Martin checked out 14 books included in the display at Rancho Peñasquitos Library in Inland San Diego County because they objected to material that deals with sexual orientation and gender identity being available to children.
“Minor children have the right to belong to a community that respects their innocence and allows families to have conversations about sex and sexual attraction privately, and only when parents deem it appropriate,” the women wrote in a June 15 email to head librarian Misty Jones after checking out the books. “It’s time for the American public libraries to once again be a respectful space for young children to freely explore great ideas that unite and inspire us all, rather than places where controversial and divisive new ideological movements are given free rein to promote their theories and policy positions about sexuality to children without the consent or notification of parents.”
In her response to Vance and Martha, Jones defended the display, which she said was not in or near the library’s children’s section.
“Displays such as the one at Rancho Peñasquitos send a powerful message that LGBTQ+ patrons and their allies are respected members of our community,” Jones wrote. “They also serve to encourage conversations and dispel misconceptions and stereotypes that often surround the LGBTQ+ community.”
“Pride displays are much like other displays that recognize other cultures, holidays or causes so that we can recognize the experiences of others and have a more inclusive and equitable society,” she continued. “We are proud of our position in encouraging members of our community to learn, grow and celebrate our differences.”
“It seems like these two women were trying to hide LGBT people away,” Jen Labarbera, director of education and outreach for San Diego Pride, said. “We’ve fought many years to prevent that. There’s nothing wrong with being LGBT.”
San Diego city councilmember Marni von Wilpert, whose district includes Rancho Peñasquitos, said that she was shocked to see this kind of protest against LGBTQ+ books in San Diego. “Denying others the right to read LGBTQ-affirming books is just another way of telling LGBTQ people they don’t belong — and that’s dead wrong,” she said. “Everyone has the right to read what they want, but absolutely no one has the right to keep others from reading books that reflect their experiences and backgrounds.”
But Jones said that protests in the area against Pride displays and drag queen story time events have gotten progressively worse over the last five years.
Across the country, school and public libraries have increasingly become the focus of conservatives attempting to ban books dealing with the LGBTQ+ experience, while in some states armed members of far-right hate groups have shown up at local libraries to intimidate patrons attending drag queen story time events.
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the library gives patrons five automatic renewals unless another patron requests a book they’ve checked out, so no action will be taken until the books are due back at the branch. If Vance and Martha do not return the books on time, the matter will be taken up by the library’s collections division.
In the meantime, city councilmember Wilpert told the paper she is working with nonprofit groups to raise money to replace the books, which reportedly cost around $235 in total.
Today, the third annual Oakland Black Pride Festival kicks off with a fabulous benefit dinner spotlighting the culinary contributions of queer people of color. It’s the first in a five-day series of events — including workshops, a cookout, and a bar crawl—that Oakland Black Pride founder and CEO Olaywa K. Austin says are aimed at serving the particular needs of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Black queer community.
The festival has its roots in the summer of 2020, when Austin and friends began trying to figure out how to celebrate Pride amid the COVID-19 lockdowns.
“As we were quarantined and I was trying to figure out things to do and how to express my queerness, I was like, ‘How come all of these things can’t be done in festival style?’” Austin told LGBTQ Nation. “These were things I would love to see in a Pride celebration. I would love to see educational things; I would love to see the transgender community making friends with the unhoused community before you make them leave the streets because your parade is coming down the street.”
Austin began to envision a Pride celebration that was more community-focused, that centered the needs and contributions of Black and brown queer and trans people while bringing the community together both to celebrate and to develop solutions to the challenges facing them. Austin found themself drawing up bylaws for a nonprofit organization and in June 2021 launched the first Oakland Black Pride Festival.
The event has grown exponentially in just a few short years. As the festival enters its third year, LGBTQ Nation spoke to Austin about this unique and vital Pride celebration.
LGBTQ NATION: What sets Oakland Black Pride apart from other localized organizations and festivals?
OLAYWA K. AUSTIN: One of the biggest takeaways, obviously, is that it’s Black-led. But because it is a festival, we take five full days. We don’t just have a big weekend, we stretch it out over five days, and within those five days we throw a lot of educational stuff in there. We use Pride and the festival as our greatest opportunity to disseminate information to our community. So, we throw panels in there and we throw online workshops, therapy, mental wellness rooms, and things like that leading up to the big celebration. I’d like to say that we’re probably 70 percent educational, 30 percent party, which sets us apart from a lot of the Pride celebrations that I’ve seen of late—which is fine. Celebrate how we celebrate, I love that.
LGBTQ NATION:Was there a gap you were trying to fill or a need that other Pride celebrations weren’t meeting?
OA: Absolutely. The one thing that has always been my gripe, if you will, with Pride celebrations is that they don’t sort of acknowledge the roots of Pride, other than maybe saying Marsha P. Johnson’s name. But what she was about was so much more than a float, you know what I mean? So, I stopped going, because once you’ve been in a parade, you’ve been in a parade. It doesn’t really change.
There were so many things that just didn’t sit right with the way Pride [celebrations] were being run. And to be honest, I didn’t see a lot of myself in the celebrations. I didn’t see a lot of acknowledgment of the historians and the architects of Pride. I wanted to bring that back, the history and the contributions of African Americans, transgender and nonbinary Black people, their contribution to the gay Pride movement. I didn’t see enough of it. And we celebrate differently, especially Pride.
LGBTQ NATION:What do you mean by celebrate differently?
OA: We celebrate differently than being on a float because we’re celebrating something different. It’s an acknowledgment, the way we celebrate, and it’s a safe way we celebrate. We pull ourselves into spaces where we know we will be taken care of. A lot of times when we go into other Pride arenas, we don’t always feel safe. We want to be in a space where we don’t have to explain ourselves, you know? And we don’t sort of have to have one eye on the door, and those spaces are very, very few and far for us these days. As a community, we are under attack 365 days, so it is important that we do carve out safe spaces for ourselves so our celebrations can be as vast and as beautiful as we are as a community.
LGBTQ NATION:In the last few years, there seems to have been more pushback to the official Pride celebrations. New York has the Queer Liberation March in addition to NYC Pride’s parade. Is that something you’ve noticed as well beyond what you’ve done with Oakland Black Pride?
OA: Absolutely. I started noticing it in 2018 and 2019 when there was some disruption of the San Francisco Pride parade for the very reasons that we spoke of — the fact that they don’t make people of color feel safe, they don’t prioritize Black transgender safety, for the way they treat the unhoused leading up the parade, how they displace the unhoused and don’t really provide any solutions to that. New Orleans Black Pride has done something similar. I had folks from San Diego asking me questions about how to strategize and build on our model, and even in Phoenix, people reach out. So, there are more people looking to build more community-based, festival-style celebrations, things that make us feel more like a community and that speak to the marginalized within the community.
Bryon Malik/courtesy of 25SecondPRAttendees dancing at an Oakland Black Pride Festival event.
LGBTQ NATION:You mentioned the workshops that have been a part of Oakland Black Pride since the beginning. Why have they been such a big part of your festival?
OA: Part of our mission is to look for nuanced solutions to service the needs of the people in our community, and so a lot of times, systems make it difficult for us to get what we need and we have to figure out for ourselves how to come up with ways to get what we need. That’s the inspiration behind it. There are things that, our community at this intersection of Blackness and queerness — and Brownness and queerness — in the Bay area, that don’t affect white queerness. So, we have to seek solutions that speak to that intersection, and that’s really why the workshops exist, that’s something that you don’t normally see, and the Pride celebrations that you normally see are not catering to my demographic. So, when I’m serving my community, I have to think of ways to reach them, and so I ask questions.
And I serve myself too, because I need to. I had a lot of loss in 2021 and 2022. So, when we aligned ourselves with GetSomeJoy, our creative wellness partner, without me mentioning the grief that I was going through, [founder] Alex Hardy said, “You know, we have this workshop, ‘How to Navigate Grief and Loss Through Joy.’” As soon as we started developing the program, the community was like, “Thank you for this!”
LGBTQ NATION:I’ve been asking a lot of people about this lately. Given what feels like this resurgence of anti-LGBTQ+ political animus in the U.S., does Pride hit differently for you this year?
OA: It’s hit different every year since the pandemic, since 2020. Every year there’s something different about the approach. There’s something different about the air. But it never dampens the community organization. The people show up, and when they show up there’s always something looming over our celebrations, whether it’s a George Floyd situation or LGBTQ rights being under attack. And I think that fuels us.
Last year, we had the Proud Boys threaten to show up at our bar crawl. We have a pub crawl where we go around to different LGBTQ and Black-owned bars, and they said they were going to show up and that they had every right to show up. So, we had to tell our community that that was happening. We had to tell the city and the police that this could potentially be a thing. The community of Oakland showed up to our bar crawl in support, just to walk with us. So, yes, there’s always something that feels different about Pride, but whatever that is it always sort of brings us together a little deeper, it brings us a little closer.
LGBTQ NATION:I hate that we even have to think about that kind of thing, but are you anticipating anything like that again this year?
OA: We don’t anticipate it, but we always anticipate it. We’re dealing with a targeted community as it is. We vet our venues very closely and we work very closely with the city of Oakland and that ensures our safety. Last year when we had a verbalized threat, we communicated with our community. We try not to live in the shadows, but at the same time, sh*t’s real. People are getting harmed out here. I think we do a really good job of taking care of each other here.
LGBTQ NATION:Talk to me about curating this year’s festival. Were there any particular issues or themes you had in mind and wanted to highlight with the 2023 lineup?
OA: So, this is our third year. Because I was grieving, I did feel a need to offer my community a safe space to feel the same way. Because I see it. I often go to Facebook and Instagram and check the temperature of the collective, and a lot of folks are grieving and mourning. Particularly in my community. So, I felt it was necessary to allow us a space to do so. It’s a necessary part of life, and that was the precipice of the conversation with Alex from GetSomeJoy.
And in my community, there’s a lot of talk about sex work and how it affects the queer Black community. I wanted to decriminalize and destigmatize sex work. Sex is just a taboo cross-culturally, but I think that gets us into trouble. You get shamed and so you hide, and when you hide, you’re not necessarily careful about what you’re doing. I feel like a lot of the health issues in our community, we can come to an understanding if we talk about some stuff that we wouldn’t normally be able to talk about. That’s why we have this educator-led kink workshop. We’re going to talk about interactive exploration. It offers us a safe space led by a person of color who’s educated in the sex world.
LGBTQ NATION: While there’s a growing call to bring Pride back to its roots as a protest, I think a lot of people still want it to be a time to celebrate the community. How do you balance those two impulses to make Pride both a protest and a party?
OA: Our slogan this year is, “Celebrating the Magic of We.” And we’re always reminded of how it started, and that’s a very simple thing to do within the Pride arena. Every Pride arena should start with how it started. That’s a great way to keep people grounded and aware of what we’re really out here for. Yes, we’re gonna have fun. It’s gonna be a blast. But let’s just be intentional about speaking to the very beginning, why we’re really here.
Another Florida town has canceled an upcoming Pride event after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed several anti-LGBTQ+ bills into law this week.
On Wednesday, Tampa Pride announced that it had canceled its annual Pride on the River festival citing H.B. 1438, an anti-drag law signed by the governor earlier the same day, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
H.B. 1438 is one of five anti-LGBTQ+ bills signed into law by DeSantis this week in what Equality Florida senior political director Joe Saunders called the largest slate of anti-LGBTQ+ bills to be signed in a single legislative session in Florida’s history. The new law allows state boards to revoke the business licenses of any venues that allow minors to see “an adult live performance.” While the text of the bill does not mention drag, a handout from the governor’s Wednesday news conference stated that drag shows are considered adult live performances “without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value,” NBC affiliate WFLA reports.
In past years, Tampa’s outdoor, family-friendly Pride on the River event featured fireworks, drag brunches, and drag performances along the downtown Tampa Riverwalk. For the September 2023 event, organizers aimed to create an adults-only area where drag performances could take place, as they had for their Pride parade in March but were unable to find a location that could be fenced off, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
“We just said, you know what, we are afraid if we did go through with this [DeSantis] would come in with his Gestapo… not Tampa Police, because we’re working with them, but maybe another group, and they’d all just pull the plug on it,” said Tampa Pride president Carrie West.
West noted that people travel to Tampa for the event, which has in the past featured appearances by RuPaul’s Drag Race alums like Alyssa Edwards, Ra’Jah O’Hara, and Jiggly Caliente. According to West, past festivals have attracted 15,000 to 20,000 visitors to the area. Tampa Pride will lose nearly $100,000 by canceling, and the city will no longer economically benefit from the festival or its sponsors, WFLA reports.
“It’s disappointing to hear Tampa Pride on the River is canceled,” said Tampa Mayor Jane Castor. “But it doesn’t change the fact that Tampa is and always will be an inclusive, diverse, and welcoming community.”
Organizers said that the Tampa Pride Parade is still scheduled to take place next spring, and they plan to bring back Pride on the River in 2024.
The festival isn’t the only Florida Pride event to be canceled this year. Last month, a Pride organization in St. Lucie, Florida, was forced to cancel its parade and restrict its festival to ages 21 and up in anticipation of DeSantis signing the anti-drag bill.
Meanwhile, Pride organizations across the country have had to re-think their events or cancel them altogether as Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states have introduced bills aimed at banning drag shows.
Lizzo brought an army of drag performers to the stage at her Knoxville, Tennessee, concert on Friday night to protest the state’s anti-drag law.
RuPaul’s Drag Race alums Aquaria, Kandy Muse, Asia O’Hara, and Vanessa Vanjie Mateo joined the singer onstage at the Thompson-Boling Arena along with over a dozen local Tennessee drag performers.
Kids need protection from poverty, not drag queens, she said.
“Support your drag entertainers!” Lizzo told the crowd at the end of the show-stopping number.
In early March, Tennessee became the first U.S. state to pass a law aimed at banning drag performances in public spaces when Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed the state’s Senate Bill 3 into law. The law would ban “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest” from appearing “on public property” or “in a location where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is not an adult.”
A federal judge in Nashville temporarily blocked the law on March 31, ruling that the law “is likely both vague and overly-broad” and that it would bar businesses that host drag performances “from engaging in protected First Amendment expression” under threat of criminal penalties.
The law has received widespread condemnation from LGBTQ+ advocates and allies. During her Friday night show in Knoxville, Lizzo explained her decision to perform in Tennessee despite calls to boycott the state.
“In light of recent and tragic events and current events, I was told by people on the internet, ‘Cancel your shows in Tennessee,’ ‘Don’t go to Tennessee,’” she told the crowd.
“Their reason was valid,” she added, telling the crowd not to boo the request. “But why would I not come to the people who need to hear this message the most? The people who need to feel this release the most. Why would I not create a safe space in Tennessee where we can celebrate drag entertainers and celebrate our differences and celebrate fat Black women?”https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrWHQziuqMc/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=14&wp=1080&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lgbtqnation.com&rp=%2F2023%2F04%2Flizzo-brought-an-army-of-queens-to-protest-tennessees-anti-drag-law%2F#%7B%22ci%22%3A1%2C%22os%22%3A726%2C%22ls%22%3A120%2C%22le%22%3A580%7D
“Thank you so much for standing up for your rights, protecting each other, and holding the people accountable who should be protecting us,” she concluded.
Over the weekend, Lizzo posted several video clips and backstage photos from the Knoxville show, thanking all the drag performers who joined her onstage.https://www.instagram.com/p/CrWC2dpsuGl/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=14&wp=1080&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lgbtqnation.com&rp=%2F2023%2F04%2Flizzo-brought-an-army-of-queens-to-protest-tennessees-anti-drag-law%2F#%7B%22ci%22%3A2%2C%22os%22%3A728%2C%22ls%22%3A120%2C%22le%22%3A580%7D
“Thank you so much for the platform for me and the Drag Race girls and especially for uplifting the queens on Tennessee!” Aquaria commented on one post. “Those ladies are all so strong and brave and I know tonight was definitely the best of a tricky situation for everyone. Thanks for shedding light for our friends who definitely need our hand these days. We appreciate it.”
On Twitter, Daily Wire host and professional transphobe Matt Walsh reposted video from the concert.
Lizzo isn’t the first high-profile musician to protest the Tennessee law. In March, Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan and James McNew appeared in drag onstage at a show at Nashville venue The Basement East. Sheryl Crow, Maren Morris, and Hozier were among the line-up at the March 20 “Love Rising” concert benefiting Tennessee Equality Project, Inclusion Tennessee, Out Memphis, and the Tennesee Pride Chamber in Partnership with the Looking Out Foundation at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. Meanwhile, Madonna recently added a Nashville stop on her upcoming “Celebration” tour with opener Bob the Drag Queen specifically calling out the state’s anti-drag law and pledging a portion of the proceeds from the show to organizations advocating for transgender rights.
City officials in Port St. Lucie, Florida, have canceled a planned Pride parade in anticipation of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signing into law a bill aimed at banning drag shows and, in the words of one state Republican, “erasing” the LGBTQ+ community. Ongoing festivities scheduled to take place this weekend will now be restricted to those who are 21 and older.
On Wednesday, Pride of the Treasure Coast, Inc., announced the move in a Facebook post, citing the current “political climate” in Florida.
Florida’s biggest LGBTQ+ organization says their state “may not be a safe place” anymore.
“After multiple meetings with city officials, it is with a heavy heart that Pride Alliance of the Treasure Coast has to announce that this weekend’s Pridefest will now be a 21 and older event,” the post read. “The city has decided that with the likelihood that the Governor will sign the latest bill into effect this evening, that we will need to be on the side of caution and has required us to make this necessary change.”
As of Friday morning, DeSantis has yet to sign the bill into law, though he is widely expected to.
“We are obviously upset and dishearten that it has come to this,” the post continued. “We also regret to announce that we will have to cancel our plans to bring back our beloved parade.”
Pride of the Treasure Coast added that they will be announcing “a family friendly Party in the Park where our youth can celebrate who they are.”
S.B. 1438, which was passed by the Florida House of Representatives in an 82–32 vote on Wednesday, prohibits government entities from issuing permits to organizations that may hold “adult live performances” in the presence of minors. The bill defines “adult live performance” as “any show, exhibition, or other presentation in front of a live audience which, in whole or in part, depicts or simulates nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or specific sexual activities… lewd conduct, or the lewd exposure of prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts.”
While it does not specifically mention drag, Republican politicians across the country have increasingly targeted drag performances and family-friendly events like drag queen story hours, characterizing them as sexually explicit adult entertainment.
As The New Republic notes, the language of the Florida bill is so vaguely worded that Pride organizations across the state have expressed concerns that they could lose permits for their upcoming events a little over a month before the start of LGBTQ+ Pride Month in June. The American Civil Liberties Union has called the bill “an extreme governmental overreach of power.”
Friends and family are mourning Ashley Burton, a Black trans hairstylist who was murdered earlier this month.
Atlanta police reportedly found the 37-year-old’s body shortly after 4:30am on April 11 in the breezeway of her apartment complex. Investigators say she was shot inside her home before fleeing outside, where she collapsed. So far a suspect has not been named, but according to 11 Alive, police believe this was a domestic-related shooting.
One activist said she is even considering detransitioning for her own safety.
A friend told Fox 5that Burton, a South Carolina native who moved to Atlanta to pursue a career as a makeup artist and hairstylist, “was a very sweet young lady. She was very full of life really. It was always smiles and laughs with us whenever we work together.”
Burton’s mother and brother said they were unaware of any enemies she may have had and that they do not believe her gender identity had anything to do with her murder.
“Ashley was very loved all the way across the board, like from South Carolina to Atlanta,” Burton’s brother Patrick said. “The way my sibling moved in life, it was…take it or leave it. ‘This is how I am.’ You can respect it or neglect it, but Ashley put it out there and let that person know. It’s not going to be a secret.”
“I just want justice for my cousin,” she said. “I’m tired of all these incidents with transgender women just being pushed up under the rug. We are human beings.”
Burton is at least the ninth trans or nonbinary person to die by violence in the U.S. this year, according to Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents. The blog also notes that Burton was initially deadnamed and misgendered by both law enforcement and media following her death.
“I agree with Ashley’s cousin,” York said, “we are tired of the murders of trans women being pushed under the rug. They deserve justice, and their family, friends, and loved ones deserve closure. Local law enforcement must make solving the murders of trans people and protecting the community a priority. Our trans brothers and sisters deserve to live their lives without fear.”
Atlanta police are requesting that anyone with information about Burton’s murder call 404-577-8477.
