The post <em>Heated Rivalry</em> and the Queer Estate appeared first on The Gay & Lesbian Review.

Need a boost to get over Hump Day? The Hot Sheet is Queerty’s midweek pop culture catch-up, highlighting the entertainment stories everyone’s talking about, the ones you might’ve missed, and the notable LGBTQ+ film & TV releases in the days ahead. Here’s everything you need to stay in-the-know:

What To Watch This Week

• Screams From The Tower — Now Available (VOD): Set in the ’90s, this coming-of-age comedy follows two closeted gay friends whose lives change when they host their school’s radio show.
• Margo’s Got Money Troubles — Now Streaming (Apple TV): Elle Fanning plays a mommy-to-be OF star in this quirky comedy with Nicole Kidman, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Nick Offerman.
• Beef, Season 2 — Apr. 16 (Netflix): The anthology returns with new beef between two couples at a country club—& hopefully some homoerotic tension between stars Charles Melton & Oscar Isaac!
• Dust Bunny — Apr. 17 (HBO Max): Queer TV creator Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Hannibal) makes his feature debut with this colorful, quirky action romp that’s all about found family.
• Erupcja — Apr. 17 (Select Theaters): On a romantic vacation with her boyfriend in Poland, a woman (Charli XCX) reconnects with her first love (Lena Góra) in this indie romantic drama.
• Michael — Apr. 17 (Theaters): Will this splashy Michael Jackson biopic pop or flop? Either way, we’re intrigued because it’s got the great Colman Domingo playing his troubled father Joe.
• Mother Mary — Apr. 17 (Select Theaters): A psychological thriller about the thorny relationship between a major pop star (Anne Hathaway) and her former costume designer (Michaela Coel).

Culture Catch-Up

POP EMERGENCY: It’s official, Madonna‘s Confessions On A Dance Floor: Part II—the long-rumored sequel to her iconic ’05 album—is coming July 3. “The dance floor is a ritualistic space,” she writes. “It’s a place where you connect—with your wounds, with your fragility.” In that case, take us to church, Madge! [Pitchfork]

@madonna

Confessions On A Dance Floor: Part II — July 3 2026

♬ I Feel So Free – Madonna

OUTSIDE THE BOX: In a gorgeous new essay, The Pitt‘s Supriya Ganesh opens up about experiencing “gender dysphoria” after moving from India to the U.S. at 18. The queer actress, who uses she/they pronouns, says she felt increasingly disconnected from her body within the American entertainment industry. [Vulture]

FULL DISCLOSURE: Recently, a clip has resurfaced of Jacob Tierney guesting on Zach Noe Towers’ podcast Good Morning, Sodomites! in 2022—well before he began work on Heated Rivalry—which features the actor-filmmaker candidly discussing his HIV status, and fans are applauding his honesty & resilience. [Queerty]

SLAP SHOTS: Meanwhile, Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody is about to drop the puck Off-Broadway, and ahead of its run in NYC this May, here’s your official first look at the production’s “Ilya” Jay Armstrong Johnson & “Shane” Jimin Moon with their jerseys on—and off! [EW]

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NEXT BIG THING: Emerging filmmaker Natalie Jasmin Harris will make her feature debut with Pure, a queer coming-of-age story about two young women (First Kill‘s Imani Lewis & The Equalizer‘s Laya DeLeon) who meet within the world of Black cotillion culture in suburban Maryland. [Deadline]

GOING PUBLIC: Queer actress Ruby Rose shocked the internet this week when she she took to Threads to accuse Katy Perry of sexually assaulting her 20 years ago at an Australian nightclub, sharing the harrowing details, and adding the “I Kissed A Girl” singer is “more than welcome” to try and sue her. [LGBTQNation]

SIMPLY THE BEST: Amidst his whirlwind world tour, Conan Gray has unveiled a concert performance of his new track “The Best,” filmed live at the Kia Forum in LA. The previously unreleased song’s been a fan-favorite at the shows, and soon it’ll appear on Wishbone Deluxe, out April 24 via Republic Records.

BOOKMARK’D: In the new nonfiction book Trans Cinema, author Laura Horak explores how the trans community has told their own stories on screen, which in this exclusive excerpt includes docs like NatGeo’s Gender Revolution and TLC’s I Am Jazz that have helped reframed narratives around trans youth. [Queerty]

CHAMBER PIECE: For his follow up to Tick, Tick… Boom!, Lin-Manuel Miranda is bringing the musical Octet—about a mysterious support group for internet addicts—to the screen, with out actors Jonathan Groff & Tramell Tillman starring alongside Amanda Seyfried, Rachel Zegler, Sheryl Lee Ralph & more. [THR]

ELECTRO-THRASH: Queer pop-rock trio Muna just unleashed “Wannabeher,” the electrifying new single from their upcoming fourth album Dancing On The Wall. Co-written by Leland, it’s an addicting sapphic jock jam that plays like a spiritual sequel to Peaches’ two-decade-old classic “Boys Wanna Be Her.”

THE VELVET VOICE: The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has unveiled the eight acts to be inducted into the 2026 class, including artists the cover a wide range of genres from Sade to Billy Idol to Wu-Tang Clan, as well as soul singer Luther Vandross, who is posthumously understood to have lived his life in the closet. [CNN]

LIVE LONG & PROSPER: Comedian & Star Trek: Starfleet Academy star Gina Yashere boldly went where quite a few have gone before: Costa Rica—only this time, she was there to marry her partner of 13 years, Nina Rose Fisher, in a casual destination wedding surrounded by loved ones. [GayCities]

ALL ABOARD: With each new look at Stop! That! Train!—the first-ever theatrical film from the Drag Race universe—we’re more convinced was have a future Best Picture (or at least camp classic) on our hands. This preview clip features a hilarious musical number with Brooke Lynn Hytes, Symone & Marcia Marcia Marcia!

The Final Hump

As we’ve previously covered, Fellow Travelers—the opera, not the TV miniseries with Matt Bomer & Jonathan Bailey—is in the middle of national tour this year to mark the show’s 10th anniversary. Based on the Thomas Mallon novel of the same name, it’s the story of government employees Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller & Timothy Laughlin, who meet in the 1950s in D.C. and secretly fall in love in the era known as the Lavender Scare, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy led fear-mongering anti-communism crusade.

Though the characters are fictitious, it’s inspired by our many queer ancestors who’ve had to live their lives in the shadows out of fear of repercussions, and the opera has partnered with the the American LGBTQ+ Museum on the Lavender Names Project to honor the real people & their stories. During its Seattle stop, the opera welcomed two such icons to the stage, Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer & Steve Marose, who were both forced out of military service for being gay. You can learn more about their stories and the project below:

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) accused House Republicans of only expressing opposition to sexual misconduct when it suits their political needs.

The representative tore into the GOP for failing to force the resignation of now-former Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) until now-former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) was also forced to resign.

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Both former congressmen have been accused of sexual misconduct, but the accusations against Gonzalez have been circulating for months.

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She said, “This whole idea that we can find and determine expulsions and guilt based on political horse trading.”

“What happened today with Tony Gonzalez was disgusting,” she continued, “because those allegations and that case and that reporting have been out there for months. For months. You have to ask yourself what changed today that he gets to resign today, as opposed to last week, two weeks ago, three weeks ago. And the difference is that they were waiting on some political horse trade of a number. When someone is committing abuse, they should be out. It doesn’t matter whether a Democrat had resigned, a Republican resigned, or some horse trading. If you are guilty of this stuff, that’s it.”

She got emotional when discussing the fact that a married staff member with whom Gonzalez admitted to having an affair took her own life in September.

“It’s really dispiriting to a lot of these people that come forward… this is a young woman who died, and it’s sad, these people deserve justice. It’s really heartbreaking. I’m glad that we’re here… but it shouldn’t have taken this long.”

Ocasio-Cortez spoke on the matter to another reporter as well, this time directly addressing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). She praised Democrats for acting swiftly in holding Swalwell accountable and said Gonzalez’s resignation came “because the Speaker of the House feels like he can play politics with the vote numbers. I’m just calling it how I see it.”

She called the behavior “disgusting.”

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Certified loser JD Vance spoke to a nearly empty arena last night, and still managed to get bodied by hecklers. At a Turning Point USA conference, Vance appeared to threaten Pope Leo XIV after the pontiff’s feud with Tr*mp, spoke back to hecklers accusing him of war crimes, and generally revealed how much of a clown he is, as if we didn’t know.

In a disastrously poor choice of words, Vance cautioned the Pope to “be careful” when talking theology… as if that’s not the Pope’s primary job that he’s been training for his entire life.

Naturally, audience members were not having it. One heckler tried to call Vance to account, screaming “you’re killing children” in the middle of the Vice President’s Godfather-esque warning to the Pope.

How about we take this to the next level?

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Noting that he appreciated the Pope being “an advocate for peace,” Vance still felt comfortable making some weirdly threatening remarks about how Leo should stick to the “truth” of theology. You know, like the stuff about people walking on water and having conversations with flaming bushes in the desert.

The problem here is that the Pope has every right to speak on theology and JD Vance is a ranch-dipped loser who couldn’t figure out how to broker a peace deal with Iran. So it’s less a case of David and Goliath and more a case of Vance refusing to abandon the sinking ship of the Tr*mp presidency.

This L is just one in a host of repeated, embarrassing failures with Vance’s name all over them. His adventures in Greenland last year completely failed, his attempt to push Germany even further to the right also failed, and his recent endorsement of Hungary’s would-be dictator Viktor Orban had the opposite of the intended effect.

Still, Vance insists on persisting.

“How can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword?” Vance asked the audience at last night’s conference, referencing the Pope’s open condemnation of Tr*mp’s massively unpopular war on Iran.

But while Vance may have thought he did something with his examples of the liberation of Nazi camps and the American Revolution, the dwindling TPUSA audience was not having it—and neither was the Pope, who entered the chat last night.

“Democracy remains healthy… only when rooted in the moral law and a true vision of the human person,” Pope Leo wrote in a letter released yesterday by the Vatican. “Lacking this foundation, it risks becoming either a majoritarian tyranny or a mask for the dominance of economic and technological elites.”

The actual Pope getting into an unholy war with Tr*mp’s loser army was not on our bingo card, but suddenly we’re invested, and so were the hecklers who likely made up most of the pathetically-attended TPUSA event last night. Between the shots of unfilled seats and footage of Vance trying (and failing) to keep his cool in the chaos, it’s not looking good for the man who Tr*mp openly plans to throw under the bus for failing to keep the peace in Iran.

“Does Mr. Vance still not realize that the joke is on him?” A New York Times opinion writer asked last week. “The interesting thing is not that he keeps debasing himself but that he gets less and less in return each time.”

You can say that again!

Pretty soon, Vance’s stock will have fallen below the MyPillow level. And speaking of pillows, there’s one thing we’re still dying to know: what is the Catholic Church’s official stance on man-couch love?

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Sign up for the Queerty newsletter to stay on top of the hottest stories in LGBTQ+ entertainment, politics, and culture.

Certified loser JD Vance spoke to a nearly empty arena last night, and still managed to get bodied by hecklers. At a Turning Point USA conference, Vance appeared to threaten Pope Leo XIV after the pontiff’s feud with Tr*mp, spoke back to hecklers accusing him of war crimes, and generally revealed how much of a clown he is, as if we didn’t know.

In a disastrously poor choice of words, Vance cautioned the Pope to “be careful” when talking theology… as if that’s not the Pope’s primary job that he’s been training for his entire life.

Naturally, audience members were not having it. One heckler tried to call Vance to account, screaming “you’re killing children” in the middle of the Vice President’s Godfather-esque warning to the Pope.

How about we take this to the next level?

Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

Noting that he appreciated the Pope being “an advocate for peace,” Vance still felt comfortable making some weirdly threatening remarks about how Leo should stick to the “truth” of theology. You know, like the stuff about people walking on water and having conversations with flaming bushes in the desert.

The problem here is that the Pope has every right to speak on theology and JD Vance is a ranch-dipped loser who couldn’t figure out how to broker a peace deal with Iran. So it’s less a case of David and Goliath and more a case of Vance refusing to abandon the sinking ship of the Tr*mp presidency.

This L is just one in a host of repeated, embarrassing failures with Vance’s name all over them. His adventures in Greenland last year completely failed, his attempt to push Germany even further to the right also failed, and his recent endorsement of Hungary’s would-be dictator Viktor Orban had the opposite of the intended effect.

Still, Vance insists on persisting.

“How can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword?” Vance asked the audience at last night’s conference, referencing the Pope’s open condemnation of Tr*mp’s massively unpopular war on Iran.

But while Vance may have thought he did something with his examples of the liberation of Nazi camps and the American Revolution, the dwindling TPUSA audience was not having it—and neither was the Pope, who entered the chat last night.

“Democracy remains healthy… only when rooted in the moral law and a true vision of the human person,” Pope Leo wrote in a letter released yesterday by the Vatican. “Lacking this foundation, it risks becoming either a majoritarian tyranny or a mask for the dominance of economic and technological elites.”

The actual Pope getting into an unholy war with Tr*mp’s loser army was not on our bingo card, but suddenly we’re invested, and so were the hecklers who likely made up most of the pathetically-attended TPUSA event last night. Between the shots of unfilled seats and footage of Vance trying (and failing) to keep his cool in the chaos, it’s not looking good for the man who Tr*mp openly plans to throw under the bus for failing to keep the peace in Iran.

“Does Mr. Vance still not realize that the joke is on him?” A New York Times opinion writer asked last week. “The interesting thing is not that he keeps debasing himself but that he gets less and less in return each time.”

You can say that again!

Pretty soon, Vance’s stock will have fallen below the MyPillow level. And speaking of pillows, there’s one thing we’re still dying to know: what is the Catholic Church’s official stance on man-couch love?

Related

What is a pillow princess & how do you know if you are one?
If you’ve had this charge leveled against you recently, you might assume it’s a derogatory term.

Sign up for the Queerty newsletter to stay on top of the hottest stories in LGBTQ+ entertainment, politics, and culture.

Former child star Danny Pintauro has revealed that he’s currently making a living as a delivery driver for Amazon Flex. And he’s not ashamed about it, thank you very much!

Pintauro, 50, first found fame as a child actor in the sitcom, Who’s The Boss. It ran for eight seasons, from 1984 to 1992. The show starred Judith Light as Angela Bower, an advertising executive in New York, who hires retired baseball player Vincent (Tony Danza) as her housekeeper. Pinatauro played Light’s son, Jonathan.

Pintauro enjoyed further roles as a young actor but then took a lengthy break to pursue his studies. He found re-entering the world of acting hard. He now mainly works as an acting coach and as a designer of boutique “book nooks.”

In a post on Thursday, Pintauro revealed he’s also delivering packages.

How about we take this to the next level?

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“Working hard while ‘not working’,” he said in a caption alongside a photo of him in a vehicle. Packages fill the back seat.

“The entertainment business has been soooo slow, so I’ve been doing what a lot of people do — figuring it out, showing up, and taking the work that’s there while I keep building the work I really want. 38 packages today!” he said.

“There’s no shame in staying in motion.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Danny Pintauro (@dannypintauro)

Many praised him for his transparency.

“Work is work. Income is income. Good for you,” said one.

Post-fame struggles

Despite an increase in the ways we watch TV, there has been a downturn in production in recent years. Film LA says Los Angeles producers reported approximately 18,560 shoot days in 2021. That fell to 7,716 in 2024.

Talking to Today, Pintauro said he finds driving for Amazon Flex practical. The flexible schedule allows him to audition, and he simply drops off packages and takes a photo, so it’s not as public as other delivery roles.

“I take a picture and walk away. No one sees me.”

He also says he knows of other actors doing the same, even if they’re not publicizing the fact.

“Honest work is not embarrassing.”

Pintauro has faced several challenges since his early fame.

He told People that any presumptions that he still earns good money from his childhood days are incorrect.

“People overestimate what residuals from a sitcom in the ’80s and ’90s look like,” he said. “I invested a good portion of that money, but I also used a lot of it to pay for Stanford and to get through my early 20s, so it’s not like there’s just been endless money sitting there.”

“This chapter is all about auditioning, teaching for Young Actors Theatre Camp, building my coaching studio The Resonant Actor, creating custom book nooks for clients, and driving for Amazon Flex to supplement my income,” Pintauro said. “There’s no shame in staying in motion while the entertainment business finds its footing.”

Pintauro came out in 1997, but later claimed he was basically outed. He says a reporter from the National Enquirer informed him that it was running a story anyway and suggested it would be better if he contributed to it. Under pressure, Pintauro decided to do so.

“Believe it or not, the ‘National Enquirer’ actually did a really fantastic, heartwarming article about it,” he says. “I was shocked.”

In 2015, he revealed he was HIV-positive. He said he received his diagnosis 12 years earlier, in 2003, and it had left him reeling. He said that he could pinpoint when he acquired the virus, and said it was during a phase when he was using drugs.

“I had just come out of a two-year relationship, and I discovered in that relationship that there was more I wanted to explore sexually. Crystal meth takes away your inhibitions… And if you want to explore that adventurous side, taking the drug is going to put you there.

Wedding anniversary

Pintauro has been in a long-term relationship with partner Wil Tabares. The men married in 2014.

Ten days ago, Pintauro posted a sweet 12-year anniversary tribute to his husband.

“Happy anniversary to my amazing husband. 12 years later, and I’m still so thankful for this life with you. For the love, the memories, the laughter, and the way we continue to show up for each other through it all. I wouldn’t want to do any of this with anyone else. Here’s to us, and to many more years together.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Danny Pintauro (@dannypintauro)

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Sign up for the Queerty newsletter to stay on top of the hottest stories in LGBTQ+ entertainment, politics, and culture.

Former child star Danny Pintauro has revealed that he’s currently making a living as a delivery driver for Amazon Flex. And he’s not ashamed about it, thank you very much!

Pintauro, 50, first found fame as a child actor in the sitcom, Who’s The Boss. It ran for eight seasons, from 1984 to 1992. The show starred Judith Light as Angela Bower, an advertising executive in New York, who hires retired baseball player Vincent (Tony Danza) as her housekeeper. Pinatauro played Light’s son, Jonathan.

Pintauro enjoyed further roles as a young actor but then took a lengthy break to pursue his studies. He found re-entering the world of acting hard. He now mainly works as an acting coach and as a designer of boutique “book nooks.”

In a post on Thursday, Pintauro revealed he’s also delivering packages.

How about we take this to the next level?

Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

“Working hard while ‘not working’,” he said in a caption alongside a photo of him in a vehicle. Packages fill the back seat.

“The entertainment business has been soooo slow, so I’ve been doing what a lot of people do — figuring it out, showing up, and taking the work that’s there while I keep building the work I really want. 38 packages today!” he said.

“There’s no shame in staying in motion.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Danny Pintauro (@dannypintauro)

Many praised him for his transparency.

“Work is work. Income is income. Good for you,” said one.

Post-fame struggles

Despite an increase in the ways we watch TV, there has been a downturn in production in recent years. Film LA says Los Angeles producers reported approximately 18,560 shoot days in 2021. That fell to 7,716 in 2024.

Talking to Today, Pintauro said he finds driving for Amazon Flex practical. The flexible schedule allows him to audition, and he simply drops off packages and takes a photo, so it’s not as public as other delivery roles.

“I take a picture and walk away. No one sees me.”

He also says he knows of other actors doing the same, even if they’re not publicizing the fact.

“Honest work is not embarrassing.”

Pintauro has faced several challenges since his early fame.

He told People that any presumptions that he still earns good money from his childhood days are incorrect.

“People overestimate what residuals from a sitcom in the ’80s and ’90s look like,” he said. “I invested a good portion of that money, but I also used a lot of it to pay for Stanford and to get through my early 20s, so it’s not like there’s just been endless money sitting there.”

“This chapter is all about auditioning, teaching for Young Actors Theatre Camp, building my coaching studio The Resonant Actor, creating custom book nooks for clients, and driving for Amazon Flex to supplement my income,” Pintauro said. “There’s no shame in staying in motion while the entertainment business finds its footing.”

Pintauro came out in 1997, but later claimed he was basically outed. He says a reporter from the National Enquirer informed him that it was running a story anyway and suggested it would be better if he contributed to it. Under pressure, Pintauro decided to do so.

“Believe it or not, the ‘National Enquirer’ actually did a really fantastic, heartwarming article about it,” he says. “I was shocked.”

In 2015, he revealed he was HIV-positive. He said he received his diagnosis 12 years earlier, in 2003, and it had left him reeling. He said that he could pinpoint when he acquired the virus, and said it was during a phase when he was using drugs.

“I had just come out of a two-year relationship, and I discovered in that relationship that there was more I wanted to explore sexually. Crystal meth takes away your inhibitions… And if you want to explore that adventurous side, taking the drug is going to put you there.

Wedding anniversary

Pintauro has been in a long-term relationship with partner Wil Tabares. The men married in 2014.

Ten days ago, Pintauro posted a sweet 12-year anniversary tribute to his husband.

“Happy anniversary to my amazing husband. 12 years later, and I’m still so thankful for this life with you. For the love, the memories, the laughter, and the way we continue to show up for each other through it all. I wouldn’t want to do any of this with anyone else. Here’s to us, and to many more years together.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Danny Pintauro (@dannypintauro)

Related

Former child star Danny Pintauro returns to Hollywood with a fitness glow-up that’s the boss
The 48-year-old ‘Who’s the Boss’ star is back with a new attitude & a ripped physique.

Sign up for the Queerty newsletter to stay on top of the hottest stories in LGBTQ+ entertainment, politics, and culture.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, who Donald Trump appointed as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), said that Trump believes that “freshly squeezed” Fanta can kill cancer cells, and that’s why he drinks so much of it.

“He’ll first start off with candy bars – that little candy jar, he’ll call it,” Oz explained on Donald Trump Jr’s podcast, Triggered. “He’ll hit the red button. And then comes the diet soda pop, which your dad argues that diet soda is good for him because it kills grass if poured on grass, so therefore it must kill cancer cells in the body.”

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Trump Jr shrugged and laughed like it was just a sign of how quirky his dad is.

“I’m not even going to argue this right now,” Oz, who happens to be a real doctor, said. “You know, we were on Air Force One the other day, and I walk in there because he wants to talk about something, and he’s got an orange soft drink on his desk, he’s got Fanta on his desk. And I say, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

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“So he starts to sheepishly grin. He goes, ‘You know, this stuff is good for me. It kills cancer cells.’ And then he tells me, ‘It’s fresh-squeezed. So how bad could it be for you?’”

“Maybe he is on to something!” Trump Jr. exclaimed.

Later in the conversation, Oz, who owes his job to Trump, said that Trump’s testosterone is “through the roof, not taking any supplements!” and pointed out that “there are times” that Trump “doesn’t always eat junk stuff.”

In the comments, some people remembered when Trump suggested people inject bleach to cure COVID-19.

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A transgender Brazilian lawmaker says she refuses to visit the United States while Donald Trump is in power.

“I am afraid of what might happen to someone like me under an administration like Donald Trump’s,” Erika Hilton told the Washington Blade. “It is an authoritarian, anti-democratic government that has no respect for international law.”

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“We’ve seen, for example, how ICE acted with extreme violence against people who held tourist visas and were simply visiting the country,” she continued. “There is a deep-seated fear of how people are treated by immigration authorities and law enforcement. All of this is terrifying, and it has convinced me that I should not set foot in the United States as long as a fascist government is in power.”

Hilton, one of the first two out trans people elected to the National Congress of Brazil in 2022, has made waves for her immense passion for fighting for the rights of marginalized people. The 33-year-old has spoken about wanting to make politics more appealing to young people and was named a Next Generation Leader by Time in 2022.

In April 2025, only a few months after Trump’s inauguration, Hilton was issued a U.S. travel visa listing her gender as “male.”  She had been scheduled to participate in a panel at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s 2025 Brazil Conference, but canceled the trip after receiving her visa.

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“I felt violated, disrespected, and I felt that my country’s powers were being invaded by a completely delusional person, a sick man who occupied the presidency of the United States and feels he owns the truth,” Hilton said at the time. “My Brazilian civil documents were disrespected.”

The incident sparked her decision to avoid the United States for the time being.

This past March, Hilton became the first trans woman elected as chair of the Chamber of Deputies’ Commission on the Defense of Women’s Rights. The role also made her the first trans woman to ever lead a standing committee in Brazil’s Congress.

She told the Blade the election is “a milestone for that dreamy young girl who, at 14, was forced into sex work on a street corner to survive, and who today returns to make peace with her past.”

“But even from where I stand now,” she went on, “I am looking back and pointing toward those who are still out there on those street corners, to remind them: we are capable of so much more. We are capable of building something far greater than the limited spaces that hatred and discrimination have reserved for us.”

While Hilton has found great success and Brazil’s laws are extremely LGBTQ+-friendly, the cultural environment tells a different story. Brazil has long been the deadliest country in the world for trans people.

Hilton has also faced brutal hate and resistance from her far-right colleagues in Congress, and she said it’s clear they have taken their playbook directly from Trump’s culture wars to stoke similar fears around trans people.

“When a government with the reach and power of the United States uses state institutions to roll back rights, it creates a ripple effect that fuels violence worldwide. It feels as if our historic achievements are being systematically dismantled.”

“Since the day after the inauguration, the Trump administration has signed executive orders denying basic rights and issued official statements that dehumanize the transgender community, branding us as ‘enemies of society,’” she continued. “The U.S. government legitimizes, incites, and encourages the hatred directed at a group that is already marginalized. In doing so, it fuels that hatred further, as it takes such rhetoric out of the shadows of anonymity and places it in the mouth of the president of a global superpower.”

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Most of us have experienced our share of diabolical dating app scenarios, whether personally or vicariously. From the tale of the unexpected watersports to the family iPad scandal to the many catfishing controversies that go down on the daily, Grindr can be a scary place, even if it does hold the promise of magic.

But for one user, things got so insane that he had to resort to community theater just to get the guy out of his apartment.

It was the summer of 2019. Narrator Dustin (@darlowbarlow) had just finished his junior year of college and was freshly single after spending the semester in a toxic relationship. He opened Grindr and met the perfect stranger.

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“This man was coming to my house,” Dustin says, “this was the house where we would have all the parties in college and where I went through my entire psychosis and was taken to the hospital.”

Probably not a house with the best juju in the world, but listen, sometimes you’ve gotta work with what you’ve got.

At this point in time, our hero had a problem “picking men that were a reflection of how I viewed myself.” We’ve all been there—but some toxic men are more toxic than others.

“This man was 42 years old, his pictures didn’t look like he was 42 years old, and I was like ‘oh my gosh, he’s taking care of himself.'”

He also conveniently lived just a block or two away, which made for a perfect pump n’ dump situation. Dustin thought it was going to be in, out, and on with the rest of his life. But of course that’s not how it turned out.

When the guy comes over, Dustin clocks that he looks nothing like his photos. A tale as old as time! But he is as old as he claimed on his profile, making him double Dustin’s age. He enters the college student’s room and starts talking about how he’s in a one-sided open marriage: he’s free to see other people, but his spouse is not. The red flags are coming in hot, and Dustin is still trying to figure out how this is going to go down. He’s vanilla, but his date is not.

“He tells me, ‘I like to slap,'” Dustin says, “and before I could even provide a response, he hits me dead on my cheekbone, hard palm smack.”

Well that’s just about as bad as a date can get without needing to get the police involved. At this point, Dustin books it to the bathroom and enlists his roommates. “I need to get this guy out of the house,” he says. Luckily, his roommates instantly understand the assignment. Since all of them are acting majors, they hit upon a plan to stage a fight that will have the hookup running from the house never to return. Which is exactly what happens.

The fake fight starts to rev up, and thankfully this man “starts to act like a 5 year old child.” As he’s dressing to leave, Dustin’s roommate starts “banging and crashing and smashing.” This sends the trade packing—specifically “scurrying” out the door and back to his one-sided open marriage.

If there’s one thing theater kids know, it’s that sometimes you have to put on a show. Which is exactly why commenters were quick to call up the episode of I Love LA that also hinges on a fake fight. It’s a classic early 20s trope: when the going gets tough, the tough start acting.

Luckily for Dustin, everything ended well and he never saw that man again. As an added bonus, the guy blocked him on Grindr.

“If you are this man who slapped me across my face without any of my consent,” Dustin says, “I hope your marriage is going very well.”

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The plot thickens

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Tennessee just passed a resolution declaring June as “Nuclear Family Month,” with the resolution saying that a nuclear family is “one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children.” Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed the resolution last Thursday, April 9, just days after the legislature passed it.

The resolution excludes households headed by same-sex couples and is a rebuke of LGBTQ+ visibility, since June is also Pride Month.

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H.J.R. 182 says that heterosexual families are “God’s design for familial structure” and includes a list of statistics about “fatherless homes.” Anti-LGBTQ+ advocates usually cite the difference in outcomes for kids raised in single-parent households as evidence that same-sex couples are bad at raising children, even though the science shows that kids who come from queer families fare just as well as kids who come from straight families.

The resolution also denounces the “humanistic, globalist ideologies of the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and like-minded organizations that fight for population control.”

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Gov. Lee signed the resolution without issuing a statement.

Conservatives have been trying to create an anti-LGBTQ+ awareness month in June to show their hostility towards LGBTQ+ people. Conservatives have complained for years about June being Pride Month, to the point that the current president has stopped issuing Pride Month declarations, a practice President Bill Clinton began in the 1990s.

Last year, the president issued proclamations for months that honor numerous historically marginalized groups, including Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, National Black History Month, and Women’s History Month.

The Education Department under this administration renamed June “Title IX Month” last year, a reference to the federal law that bans sex-based discrimination in education. Conservatives believe that this law requires schools to deny trans people equal rights, while liberals say that it requires schools to treat trans students equally.

Tennessee passed the same “Nuclear Family Month” resolution in 2025. Lawmakers in Ohio introduced a bill last year to create a “Natural Family Month” split between May and June. That year also saw Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) introduce a federal resolution to designate June as “Family Month.” She said in a statement at the time that her resolution is intended to “reject the lie of ‘Pride’ and instead honor God’s timeless and perfect design.”

These resolutions come after several years of right-wingers freaking out over corporate Pride, often going to stores like Target and filming themselves acting outraged at rainbow T-shirts and posting the videos online.

In his first month in office, the current president banned Pride flags from flying at U.S. embassies, and earlier this year, his administration took down Pride flags at the National Stonewall Monument.

Conservatives have more broadly been engaging in a war on LGBTQ+ visibility, arguing before the Supreme Court last year that there is a constitutional right to shield children from knowledge that LGBTQ+ people exist.

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A Republican lawmaker in Pennsylvania formally apologized to a mom who called him out on social after he asked her 12-year-old daughter about pornography at a school event.

The lawmaker’s comment occurred at a Civics Bee competition hosted by Pennsylvania State Schuylkill University, where 6th grader Mary Anderson made a presentation about book bans.

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State Senator David Argall (R) served as a judge at the Civics Bee.

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“Do you think we should allow pornographic magazines in kindergarten classrooms?” Argall asked Mary, earning a collective gasp from the audience.

Erin Anderson, Mary’s mom, said Argall pressed on after Mary “looked confused and had to ask, ‘What does that mean?’”

Argall told Mary, along with the other preteen contestants and children and parents in the audience, that he meant “naked pictures of people in books and magazines.”

Anderson told Penn Live she approached Argall after the event, and he defended his stance. She said the lawmaker told her “the topics were one and the same, when clearly they are not.”

“I let him know I was very displeased that this was said to not only my 12-year-old, but that I also would have to explain this to my nine-year-old now as well,” Anderson said.

Reaction to Anderson’s account was swift and the story spread online rapidly, earning the senator headlines like, “Argall shames himself at ‘Civics Bee,'” “Senator asked child pornography question at civics event,” and “Pennsylvania state senator asks 6th-grade girl ‘wildly inappropriate’ pornography question at civics competition” — from the rightwing New York Post, no less.

The bad press inspired Argall’s come-to-Jesus apology the next day.

“During last night’s local round of the National Civics Bee, I posed a question as a volunteer judge to a participant that was not age-appropriate for this setting,” Argall said in a statement. “I apologize to the young lady, her family, and all the participants who worked hard to get to this point, with excellent presentations by the students who submitted entries on book bans and many other important subjects.”

But Argall couldn’t help adding a defense for what Anderson described as his “appalling” question.

“I was attempting to ask if some books and magazines are not appropriate for some age groups, a subject which has received considerable attention in the General Assembly in recent years,” the senator added. “In hindsight, my obvious mistake was in citing an example that was itself not appropriate for this age group, a mistake which I will not make again.”

For Mary’s mom, Argall’s hedged apology may not suffice.

“If a public official cannot exercise good judgment and basic appropriateness when speaking to children, especially in a civic education setting, then it raises serious concerns about their ability to serve,” Anderson said.

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A federal appeals court judge has warned that her court’s recent decision against a gay Black Lives Matter activist could discourage people from organizing or attending protests, effectively chilling the Constitution’s free speech and assembly guarantees.

Last month, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 decision allowing police officer John Ford to continue his lawsuit against DeRay McKesson, a gay Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist.

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McKesson and his team of anti-racist activists reportedly assisted with organizing a July 9, 2016, protest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, against the lethal police shooting of 37-year-old local Black man Alton Sterling. During the protest, someone threw a concrete object at Ford, knocking out some of his teeth, injuring his jaw, and giving him a concussion, the court decision said.

Ford didn’t accuse McKesson of throwing the object, but he did say that McKesson should be held liable for negligence because he organized and led the protest without dutifully exercising reasonable care to ensure that no fellow protestors committed violence during the event.

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A district court issued a summary judgment (a ruling on the material facts of the case without a full trial), dismissing Ford’s lawsuit. The judgment found no evidence that McKesson led the protestors, and as a result, no evidence that he owed Officer Ford any duty of care to ensure his safety.

However, the appeals court disagreed with the court’s ruling, saying that Ford’s legal claim against DeKesson deserved to have a trial.

“We concluded that a jury could find that he breached this duty by leading the protest in a manner in which it was reasonably foreseeable that the protest would lead to a violent confrontation with police,” the appeals court’s majority wrote in its decision.

The majority ruling said McKesson was a leader of the event, citing witness reports that he led the crowd onto an interstate highway to block traffic and noting that he later self-identified as a leader when he filed a lawsuit against the local police for their illegal and forceful arrest of protestors.

The appeals court’s ruling claimed that McKesson “did nothing to discourage protestors from assaulting police officers, looting a store, and engaging in other lawless acts.” The ruling also said he has refused to condemn the use of violence during past interviews and participated in other BLM protests where police officers were injured.

While the court’s majority opinion was authored by appointees of Republican former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, the lone dissenter, Judge Carolyn King, was appointed by Democratic former President Jimmy Carter.

In her dissent, King wrote that allowing Ford to proceed with his trial has “imperil[ed] First Amendment liberties.”

JT Morris, a lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), agreed, writing in a recent op-ed that the appeals court decision “threatens our prized freedom to protest, exposing protesters to vast damages for acts they didn’t commit and chilling Americans from making their voices heard.”

Morris said the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware decided that (with a few exceptions) the First Amendment shields protest leaders from lawsuits resulting from some protestors engaging in violent acts.

“If protesters face six- or seven-figure damage awards for acts they didn’t commit, the inevitable result will be to chill Americans from participating in the very protests upon which our nation is built,” Morris wrote.

McKesson, who is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a statement, “This decision is disappointing not only for me personally, but for each and every person who cherishes the right to protest.”

“The purpose of this lawsuit was not just to silence me, but to make people afraid to show up to protests because they might get sued for someone else’s behavior. That is an affront to our First Amendment freedoms,” he added. “Even after nearly 10 years, I will not stop fighting this ludicrous suit in order to protect all of our rights to protest, organize, and imagine a world beyond policing.”

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On TikTok these days, you’ll see a lot of intriguing terminology get thrown around. Some of it has been around forever, and some of it is quite self-explanatory (we all know what a screenager is!) But if we’re looking specifically at the queer community, some terms, though well-worn, deserve a fresh explainer.

The idea of a pillow princess, for instance. If you’ve had this charge leveled against you recently, you might assume it’s a derogatory term. But au contraire! All it means to be a pillow princess is that you’re someone—probably a lesbian or sapphic-of-center identified person—who prefers receiving instead of giving in the bedroom.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t potential problems with being a pillow princess—but as with everything, it depends on your relationship expectations.

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Recently, Tyler, a stud on TikTok, explained that she’s getting a little bit fed up with certain pillow princesses who expect to receive without giving anything in return. “If you’re a pillow princess, bro,” she says, “I believe you should just be with a touch me not.”

Which brings us to another question: what’s a touch me not? Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Certain partners—usually but not always masc-identified sapphics—prefer not to be touched at all, making them the perfect match for a pillow princess, along with service tops, who do exactly that. It’s not a problem to have any of these identities, obviously—but as Tyler explains, it’s a problem when two partners have sexual expectations for each other that don’t meet up.

That said, pillow princesses aren’t “lazy” in bed—that’s a gross misinterpretation of the identity, as another TikToker explains here:

It’s not about being unable or unwilling to do something—it’s more about knowing what you like and knowing what your preferences and boundaries are in bed.

And in case you were wondering, yes, men can be pillow princesses too! There are gay men (and bisexual men, and probably straight men as well) who also claim this identity, and they are valid!

Of course, compatibility issues are always going to present themselves in certain cases. But the main takeaway here is that there is nothing wrong or “selfish” about wanting to receive, just as there’s nothing inherently selfless or hard-working about wanting to give pleasure. As with most relationships, it’s all about finding a dynamic that works for you. And when a pillow princess meets a service top—that’s a match made in heaven.

Being a pillow princess simply means that you know what you want, you know what you’re about, and you’re not going to tolerate anything less than perfection. Which is your god given right as a gay person!

The bottom line is this: it’s okay to prefer getting topped, and it’s okay to prefer doing the topping, and it’s basically okay to do whatever you want to do with a partner, as long as there’s clear communication. It’s when there are unmet expectations that the real problems with pillow princesses seem to arise.

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*NSYNC. The Backstreet Boys. Boyz II Men. 98 Degrees. O-Town. The late ’90s into the early 2000s saw a boom in pop music, particularly around boy bands whose smooth harmonies, synchronized dance moves, and boys-next-door appeal ignited fandoms that turned them into international superstars.

But if you grew up fawning over these groups, you probably already know that, beneath their squeaky-clean facades & frosted tips, there was a whole lot darkness going on backstage and behind-the-scenes.

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Much of that gets explored in the new Investigation Discovery docu-series Boy Bad Confidential, which begins streaming on HBO Max this week, and goes even deeper into the drama featuring new interviews with the now-grown men who lived through it, from 98 Degrees’ Nick Lachey to *NSYNC’s Lance Bass.

Of course, the latter’s involvement most piqued our interest, considering the singer’s magazine-covering coming-out in 2006 felt like a watershed moment for gays in pop music—even if his group was already on an indefinite hiatus at that point.

The first episode of the doc traces *NSYNC’s beginnings under the guidance of future convicted felon Lou Pearlman, which saw original member Jordan Galasso drop out over his reticence to become a teen idol, leaving the group without a bass singer.

Enter Lance Bass—whose note-perfect last name was purely coincidental—a 16-year-old from ultra- conservative rural Mississippi, plucked out of show choir obscurity to join the band.

In his interview for Boy Bad Confidential, Bass recalls feeling like an outsider among the quintet considering the other four had already been training together: “This 16-year-old kid that’s never left their town, all of the sudden pretending their a great singer, pretending they’re a great dancer. I just felt like I was pretending the whole time… which suited me because I was pretending to be a lot of things at the time.”

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As he tells it, some of his earliest memories were of sensing he was “different,” of having a crush on a boy in class in recognizing that was wrong. So he hid that part of himself for as long as he could, even if it meant a constant feeling of shame & loneliness.

Again, there are ways in which the boy band lifestyle suited Bass being in the closet. After all, it was strongly implied they keep their private lives private, no matter who they were dating: “If we were to come out as gay—or even having a girlfriend—that would hurt our career. That needed to be hidden,” he shares. And so he resigned himself to keeping it that way.

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The first person involved in the *NSYNC world to catch on to his secret was Joe Mulvihill, who was working as the band’s personal assistant in 1997 before they really broke big in the U.S. Strangely enough, he realized Bass was gay thanks to PB&J.

In the doc, the two recall a moment where Mulvihill was making the sandwiches for the guys and Bass showed him his method of mixing the peanut butter and the jelly together before spreading it on the bread, to which Muvihill replied, “This is the gayest thing I’ve ever done!” (Classic ’90s guys response.) Naturally, Bass turned red & ran away.

The moment Joey Fatone knew Lance Bass was gay

But his bandmates still hadn’t caught on to the truth—yet. Some time later, after a night out, Joey Fatone crashed in Bass’s guest room, only to wake up at 3am and realize he should get home.

“I’m like, ‘Ah, I gotta leave,'” Fatone, who is also an executive producer of Boy Bad Confidential, remembers. “I go to his bedroom, open up the door, and there’s nobody in there. Then I got to his office and I open up the door, and he’s sitting there and there’s guy straddled on top of him.”

Unsurprisingly, Bass remembers it all quite vividly, too. It was his first-ever boyfriend, and though they were actually fully clothed when Fatone walked in, it was still pretty obvious evidence that he was gay.

Though Fatone says he made a joke that Bass’s mom was “going to kill” him, Bass also notes that he said, “Oh please, I don’t care!”

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A post shared by Lance Bass (@lancebass)

It was a small gesture, but one that made all the difference for Bass, mortified as he might’ve been in that moment of getting caught: “I knew he wouldn’t care, but it was just so nice to hear those words, and finally [have] one of the members of your group know and be like I don’t care.”

Apparently Fatone promised to keep Bass’s secret—even from the other guys in the group—until he was ready to share: “I go, “Lance I love you, you’re my brother. You let me know when it’s right for you to tell, I’m not saying nothing to the guys because I found out by accident.”

The doc doesn’t quite get into when the rest of *NSYNC found out or how they responded, but Bass was lucky to have Fatone as an ally. It’d be nearly a decade of chart-topping hits, world tours, and speculative rumors before Bass finally came out to the world.

“The thing is, I’m not ashamed – that’s the one thing I want to say,” he told People at the time. “I don’t think it’s wrong, I’m not devastated going through this. I’m more liberated and happy than I’ve been my whole life. I’m just happy.”

The final two of Boy Bad Confidential‘s four episodes air tonight on Investigation Discovery. The first episode is now streaming on HBO Max, with the remaining episodes coming to the platform later this week.

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The Tr*mp administration appears to have backed down over its removal of the rainbow Pride flag from the Stonewall monument in New York City.

The small square in front of the Stonewall Inn became a national monument in 2016. It honors the historic Stonewall uprising of 1969, regarded by many as the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

In February, the National Park Service removed the prominent rainbow flag that stood in the square. It said at the time the flag did not represent the administration’s “official sentiments.”

The removal came as other parks across the nation experienced a purge of anything related to DEI or “woke.”

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Outraged campaigners protested the flag’s removal and hoisted a replacement. They also launched legal action to challenge the National Park Service’s actions.

Yesterday, the NPS filed a settlement proposal. It agrees to fly the rainbow flag alongside the U.S. and agency flags, except when maintenance or other practical needs require otherwise.

Within a week, it will officially hoist up a new Pride flag, positioning it below the U.S. flag, in accordance with U.S. flag code, and above the park service flag.

It has offered no explanation for the change of heart.

Mamdani and others welcome the decision

Among those to welcome the news was NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. On social media, he said, “This is a victory for the LGBTQ+ community and for our entire city. It’s a reminder that New Yorkers won’t let our history be rewritten. Our administration will keep working to ensure LGBTQ+ New Yorkers can live safely and with dignity in our city.”

This is a victory for the LGBTQ+ community and for our entire city. It’s a reminder that New Yorkers won’t let our history be rewritten.

Our administration will keep working to ensure LGBTQ+ New Yorkers can live safely and with dignity in our city. https://t.co/KKfZQtXvum

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) April 13, 2026

Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who is gay, said on X, “We fought the Tr*mp administration and won. Pride will continue to fly at Stonewall.

“We as an LGBTQ community celebrate the legal climb-down by the gutless Tr*mp Administration on their contemptuous attempt to erase queer people from American history at Stonewall, the birthplace of the worldwide LGBTQ human rights movement.”

Posting a video later, Hoylman-Sigal said the Tr*mp Adminstration “blinked” and “backed down”.

Let’s be clear.

The Tr*mp Administration blinked and Pride will permanently fly at Stonewall. pic.twitter.com/yoGknQluTq

— Brad Hoylman-Sigal (@bradhoylman) April 13, 2026

“Where it belongs”

State Senator Erik Bottcher posted a statement to social media saying, “The Pride flag is where it belongs at Stonewall National Monument, and it never should have been taken down in the first place. This wasn’t an isolated decision, it was part of a far-reaching and coordinated effort to chip away at the progress our community has fought for over generations and to erase the very history that defines us.

“We will keep fighting, together, until every one of our rights is protected and our history is honored.”

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The Gays Won. https://t.co/KXdpHPf3kX pic.twitter.com/hlZkNqCS65

— greg. (@mistergeezy) April 13, 2026

The removal of the rainbow flag follows other recent attempts by the administration to erase LGBTQ history. Last year, the Department of Defense renamed a Navy boat previously named in honor of Harvey Milk.

Last February, the National Park Service’s website also altered its description of the Stonewall Monument. It removed the words “transgender” and “queer” and amended “LGBT” to “LGB” or “LGBQ”.

Other sites overseen by the National Parks Service have also removed displays about indigenous people and the climate crisis.

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If you’re still reeling from Bryon Noem’s big busty bimbofication bonanza earlier this month, gird your loins, because there’s even more weirdness coming down the pike.

Fired DHS secretary Kristi Noem might claim she was “blindsighted” and humiliated by her husband’s kink coming to light, but apparently it’s Bryon’s family who feels the full weight of the shame. They’re reportedly calling for him to leave his wife in the wake of the scandal, after staying in what seems to have been a loveless marriage for the sake of their shared Christian faith alone.

“We will see if he sticks with her now,” one anonymous family member told the New York Post in the wake of the scandal.

“I think he’s ignored reality,” another said. “Maybe he has to face it now.”

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Noem’s family aren’t the only ones openly criticizing Kristi’s in-name-only marriage.

“So much better than your wife, aren’t I?” one of Bryon Noem’s escorts said in private chats recently unearthed by the Daily Mail. Under the screen name of “Shy,” one of the sex workers Bryon allegedly hired is spilling the tea, and what she has to say could very well prove to be the final nail in the Noem marriage coffin.

Not only did Shy, who sports an F cup bra size, reveal that Bryon put down his wife in their private sessions, she also claims that Bryon expressed a desire to be seen as a woman named Crystal.

“I will be your trans girl,” Bryon allegedly told Shy. “Long hair, big lips. B—-. Pierced b—-.” He also went through the gender-affirming surgeries he wanted to get to please his mistress, including hair removal, “huge fake t*ts, [butt] implants” and HRT injections.

While this is definitely a satisfying karmic twist in Kristi Noem’s deeply anti-trans political career, we still have to be careful not to assume that Bryon Noem’s talk of transition in a kink context is anything other than that: a kink. While some trans people may begin experimenting with different gender expression via the playful, private realm of kink, a desire to become a hyper-sexualized version of a woman is not necessarily any proof of Bryon Noem having a trans identity.

Noem was reportedly attracted to self-described “trophy bimbos” and the related kink of bimbofication, whereby women undergo a real or imagined process of becoming more cartoonish and Barbie-like. It seems that an added kink of financial domination, or findom, goes along with this urge.

“Bryon was addicted to my bombshell Barbie curves and enormous breasts,” another sex worker told The Daily Mail. “He gave me whatever I wanted – shoes, handbags, even bigger breasts. He wanted me to be his ultimate bimbo bride.”

To this end, Bryon Noem paid a reported sum of $25,000 to keep upping the ante on her bimbofication.

In terms of how much findoms get from clients, it’s a pretty sturdy number. The question here isn’t how Bryon spent this much—it’s how did he spend this much without his wife knowing about it.

So far, Kristi Noem has denied having any previous knowledge of her husband’s affairs or kinks. But even an in-name-only marriage has to deal with some level of shared finances, if only for tax purposes. According to one insider, Noem and her husband knew about each others’ secrets, with Noem allegedly telling a reporter that her husband was “gay” not too long ago.

Whether or not she knew or understood her husband’s complex sexuality, it’s coming back to bite her where it hurts, and we’re loving every minute of it.

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It happened to me: I was told on Grindr that I “look good for 33.” Granted, that is a compliment, but still… rude!

Grindr screenshots are so prevalent in the gay community, they act as their own form of currency. People often post the cringiest messages they’ve received and are met with affirming responses. While liquid courage is definitely real, the cloak that digital anonymity provides allows cruisers to be even more brazen.

Hookup apps are ubiquitous, and so are the uncomfortable moments. With nearly 15 million active monthly users worldwide, there are an unlimited number of chances for gays to get their freak creep on.

This week, we want to know: What’s the weirdest Grindr message you’ve received? CLICK HERE TO LET US KNOW… and don’t be shy! We will publish the best responses!

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Bryon Noem, the cross-dressing husband of transphobic former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, reportedly told an online dominatrix named Shy Sotomayor that he wanted to leave her and become a transgender woman, according to The Daily Mail. The allegations are notable considering Kristi Noem’s transphobic policy stances.

He reportedly told Sotomayor that he wanted to go by the name “Crystal” (his online chat screenname was “Chrystalballz666”), the aforementioned British tabloid reported. He also reportedly told Sotomayor that he could “see us leaving our spouses for each other” and said he wanted to be dominated by a large-breasted woman resembling the “bimbos” that he cross-dressed as.

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“I need to be your trans bimbo slut,” he allegedly wrote Sotomayor, before asking her, “Do you want me to be a woman?” When Sotomayor reportedly answered, “Do you want to be a woman for me?” the 56-year-old man reportedly responded, “I think I do.”

His responses are notable considering that his wife has previously supported bans on drag performances and laws against transgender people while previously serving as the governor of South Dakota.

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While overseeing the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem also followed the president’s policy of placing trans female detainees in male detainment facilities, something which may violate federal legal protections against gender discrimination as well as Constitutional protections against due process and cruel and unusual punishment.

Earlier this month, the U.K.-based tabloid The Daily Mail published a photo showing Bryon Noem wearing pink hot pants, a skin-tight bodysuit, and enormous balloons mimicking large breasts. The photo reportedly came from his chats with online female fetish models as part of his “bimbofication fetish,” an erotic fascination with women who have augmented their bodies to achieve a “Barbie doll”-like appearance.

Bryon Noem reportedly paid at least $25,000 to the models (paying $25 per minute for the online conversations). One of the webcam models, who goes by Lydia Love on the website CamSoda, told the Times of London that Bryon Noem enjoyed playing a submissive role in his online sessions, spoke in a “feminine voice,” and had a “kink” for yoga pants.

Axios White House reporter Marc Caputo said that the exposé may have originated from an immigrant sex worker who wanted to expose Bryon Noem’s fetish in retaliation for his wife’s enforcement of the president’s immigration crackdown, The New York Post reported. However, Caputo was unable to verify the claim.

One of the models told The Daily Mail that Bryon Noem knew of his wife’s alleged ongoing affair with her adviser, Corey Lewandowski. When asked about it, Bryon Noem reportedly responded, “I know. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

When asked about the alleged affair in a recent congressional hearing, Kristi Noem replied, “I am shocked we’re going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee,” but she didn’t deny it.

The aforementioned tabloid asked Bryon Noem whether his fetish and his comments about his wife could “[endanger] national security by exposing her to the threat of blackmail,” and reportedly responded, “Yeah, I made no comments like that, that would lead to that. I deny the second part of that.”

A spokesperson for Kristi Noem told The New York Post that the Noem family was “blindsided” by The Daily Mail‘s report, and added, “They ask for privacy and prayers at the time.” Bryon Noem has said he will publicly speak about the allegations “at some point.” 

Numerous online commenters have cited Bryon Noem’s cross-dressing fetish as proof of his wife’s hypocrisy, as she has previously supported bans on drag performances and laws against transgender people.

Kristi Noem has a long public record of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and policies during her time as South Dakota governor. She signed laws banning gender-affirming care for minors, celebrated the passage of a bill barring trans women and girls from sports, and signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which sanctions discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. She also opposes marriage equality. 

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Are we sure it’s only Tuesday?

Because there’s something in the air (and across all our crushes’ social media feeds) that’s making it feel a LOT more like Hump Day.

Your day is about to get a little hotter

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But before you start accusing us of some inappropriate WDH — work day horniness — we’d like to point out that it’s not our fault, it’s Mother Nature’s.

According to The Weather Channel, a “record-breaking heat wave” is bringing “summerlike” weather across the country, with temperatures expected to rise 15 to 30 degrees above average, and everyone knows that hot weather just makes everyone hornier.

NYC is feeling it extra hard.

Scientifically speaking, there’s something about the increased levels of Vitamin D, serotonin, and blood flow that gets the human libido going.

Of course, five of our favorite hunks going all sporty on social media and breaking a sweat certainly helps, too.

Below, we break down the hottest gym pics of the week for the heatwave.

Hudson Williams goes for a run

Heated Rivalry hunk Hudson Williams, a David Bowie tune, and an empty gymnasium with the humidity cranked all the way up — what more could we ask for? It’s safe to say Peloton knew exactly what they were doing with their new ad, which encourages users to, “Let yourself go.” Duly noted.

In some especially tight white shorts, the soaking wet 25-year-old lifts weights, runs on a treadmill, boxes, and multiplies sixfold, which sounds like the beginning of a dream we had the other night….

Needless to say, everyone on Gay Twitter X is heated.

pic.twitter.com/itEvK93Qzi

— lanamia (@lanamiaya) April 13, 2026

Bad Bunny takes a sweaty selfie

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A post shared by Manager | Ayerim Basto (@badbumypr_)

Puerto Rican musician and certified thirst trap expert, Bad Bunny, shared this simple, shirtless, and sweaty mirror selfie on Instagram with the caption, “Day 2 of gym done.” Understandably, the word “papi” appeared in the comments section more than once.

Of course, it’s only fitting that he recently won a Grammy for his album Debi Tirar Más Fotos, which translates to “I should have taken more photos.” Because, uh, that’s exactly what we’re begging him to do every time he takes his top off.

Benson Boone tries his arms at golf

Benson Boone took a break from the backflips and getting sticky in the kitchen for some shirtless golfing in a post he shared on his Instagram Stories. “First time golfing today, this is monumental (I’m awful),” he captioned the post.

OK, so it doesn’t look like the “Mystical Magical” singer is headed to the Masters anytime soon, but between his backwards cap, well-fitting jeans, and bulking biceps, he’s getting a hole in one on Gay Twitter X’s score card.

Me disguising myself as a blade of grass on the field so he steps on me pic.twitter.com/qWhsxZQTJa

— tom (@coldbloodedtom) April 14, 2026

Nicholas Galitzine shows off his sword

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Holy abs, He-Man! If you needed any further proof that Nicholas Galitzine has been busy in the gym since he wrapped filming Red, White & Royal Blue, this new photo of him for Entertainment Weekly will certainly suffice. In the digital cover, he flexes his arms and grabs his large sword with two hands while his blond bangs blow lightly in the wind.

Suddenly, it makes sense why the 31-year-old’s new movie, Masters of the Universe, arrives on June 5 — right in time for Pride Month.

Charles Melton beefed up, literally

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A post shared by Men's Health (@menshealthmag)

After getting all oiled up for i-D Magazine, Charles Melton showed us that he’s the picture of men’s health by gracing the cover of, well, Men’s Health. Throughout the spread, the 35-year-old laid out on the beach, played some tennis, and blew off some steam in the locker room. Whew!

That said, the hottest part might be the behind-the-scenes footage, in which the Beef Season 2 star invites you to get the perspiration going to work out with him and “find a flow together.”

If you’ll excuse us, we need a minute.

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While his vice president’s wartime negotiations with Iran were falling apart on Sunday night, President Donald Trump was at an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event complimenting a male competitor’s handsomeness.

Trump shook the hands of UFC fighter Paulo Costa, who won his light heavyweight match against Azamat Murzakanov by TKO in the third round. Following his victory, Costa jumped out of the fighting cage to greet and shake hands with Trump, who was seated cageside.

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Video showed Costa telling the president, “Thank you for everything you’re doing.”

Trump replied, “You’re a beautiful guy, great fight… You could be a model, you look so good… You’re too good-looking to be a fighter. You are some fighter. Thank you, man.”

Trump has long expressed admiration for men whom he sees as powerful, including authoritarian dictators. In fact, in February 2024, then-presidential candidate Nikki Haley trolled Trump with homoerotic Valentine’s Day cards to his favorite dictators.

Meanwhile, the failed negotiations between the Trump administration and Iran have resulted in the U.S. conducting a naval blockade against Iranian ports, something that is considered an act of war under international law. The blockade could effectively signal an end to the two-week U.S-Iran ceasefire (despite being announced barely a week ago).

Trump’s illegal war in Iran has resulted in at least 2,076 deaths and 26,500 injuries in the country so far, according to Al Jazeera News.

President Donald Trump’s lesbian niece, Mary Trump, recently noted that his most loyal and sycophantic high-profile supporters — like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Candace Owens, and Megyn Kelly — are starting to question his fitness to lead the country.

But while Mary Trump hopes that their opposition to Donald Trump signals the tipping point toward ending his presidency, she also believes his supporters shouldn’t have their bigoted views pardoned just because they oppose him now — especially since his leadership has literally helped kill hundreds of thousands of people.

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In a recent newsletter, Mary Trump noted that several massively popular MAGA broadcasters have recently begun criticizing the president’s “increasing instability and lack of judgment,” which suggests to her that “they haven’t been paying very close attention over the last several decades.”

Homophobic former Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently said, “People who are in direct contact with the president need to say, ‘No, I’ll resign. I’ll do whatever I can do legally to stop this because this is insane. And if given the order, I’m not carrying it out,’” when discussing the president’s genocidal threats against Iran.

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White supremacist Nick Fuentes recently said, “The antichrist is president. The red heifer has been born. We are at war with Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is closed,” referring to the Iranian waterway that has been choked off since the start of Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran, sending food and fuel costs skyrocketing.

Racist former Fox News broadcaster Megyn Kelly recently said, “I don’t know about you, but I am sick of this s**t. I’m sick of it. Can’t he just behave like a normal human?” after he issued unhinged tweets threatening genocide.

Transphobic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens said, “The 25^th Amendment needs to be invoked. He is a genocidal lunatic. Our Congress and military need to intervene. We are beyond madness.” The 25th Amendment allows the vice president, a majority of the president’s Cabinet, and Congress to forcibly remove the president by declaring him disabled

Mary Trump noted that each of these broadcasters have “enormous followings,” writing, “Tens of millions of people are still influenced by the likes of [podcaster Joe] Rogan and Carlson and Owens; if they can open some eyes, that’s a good thing.”

“[It] may embolden other Republicans who’ve been questioning Donald’s judgment behind the scenes for years now… [and chip] away at the myth that Donald is forever impervious to negative publicity, invulnerable to criticism, and incapable of being held accountable,” she added.

However, she continued, “We cannot allow any of [Trump’s MAGA critics] to be rehabilitated or given credit for saying the right thing. They are the worst of us — racists, Christian Nationalists, fascists — most of whom have been spreading hatred, bigotry, and propaganda long before Donald won the 2016 election.”

Mary Trump says this is especially important considering that plenty of the president’s “evil and mad” actions have killed hundreds of thousands since his first term, including his mismanagement of the COVID epidemic, his illegal dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), his illegal extrajudicial military attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea, and his extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens and migrants under the pretense of immigration control.

“The high-profile loyalists who cheered Donald on while he was committing all of those horrors can spare me their outrage,” she wrote. In the past, she has called the president “deeply unhealthy” and said he has a pathetic need for others’ approval.

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As previously reported, Luke Evans is currently making his Broadway debut with a starring role in the revival of The Rocky Horror Show. Evans plays the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

Evans appeared on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen last night to promote the Broadway revival. Given that Evans is playing a character known for his libidinous ways, Cohen took the opportunity to ask the Welsh actor and singer how he’d describe himself, in three words, as a lover.

Evans opted for “attentive, passionate, and sensual.”

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You can also enjoy watching Evans and fellow guest Rachel Dratch playing the WWHL glory hole game below. Evans had to put his hand through the hole and guess objects just by touch. Kudos to Evans for accurately guessing the tin of tuna!

Watch below.

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Broadway body

Evans began his career on the stage but then focused on movies and TV. He returned to the stage in 2023 with the lead role in the comedy Backstairs Billy in London. At the time, he posted a photo to reveal his dramatic weight loss, saying, “Wanna burn body fat fast? DO A WEST END SHOW!!! Dropped 8kg in 10 weeks!!”

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A post shared by Luke Evans (@thereallukeevans)

It appears that doing eight shows a week on Broadway has a similar impact. Evans returned to Instagram yesterday to demonstrate his Broadway body.

“Cardio??? Nah…” he said in an accompanying caption. “Broadway show??? Yeah..!!!”

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A post shared by Luke Evans (@thereallukeevans)

One person questioned whether his physique was purely down to diet.

“Nothing to do with diet,” replied Evans. “Try bouncing around the Stage for two hours and 7 1/2 inch stiletto boots eight times a week.”

The video followed a photo Evans also posted yesterday of himself as Dr. Frank-N-Furter. The show is currently playing to capacity crowds in previews.

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A post shared by Luke Evans (@thereallukeevans)

The Rocky Horror Show officially opens at Studio 54 on April 23, when the reviews will appear. It was originally set to run until June 21 but has already been extended through to July 19 due to high ticket demand.

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Just days after conservative influencer and anti-trans advocate Charlie Kirk was killed last September, journalist Ken Klippenstein warned in two reports that the Trump administration was not only stripping trans communities out of government assessments of anti-LGBTQ+ community threats, but was also targeting political dissent over “common beliefs” associated with “anti-Christian,” “anti-American,” and “anti-capitalism” opinions, including beliefs out of alignment with the gender binary.

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“Gender extremism” was now to be equated with domestic terrorism.

The justification was laid out in what administration insiders called “NSPM-7,” or National Security Presidential Memorandum 7.

“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism,” Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said at the time, referring to the memo’s issuance amid the pitchfork-carrying response to what MAGE referred to as Kirk’s “left-wing” assassination.

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Among the government’s “terrorism” targets: transgender people, whom the far-right have erroneously blamed for an epidemic of mass shootings, including Kirk’s. Tyler Robinson, charged with Kirk’s murder, is a cisgender man who has a transgender girlfriend.

But now Miller’s paranoia about trans left-wing terrorists is getting a budget.

In the recently released Fiscal Year 2027 FBI Budget Request to Congress, the Department of Justice (DOJ) spells out a Miller-esque framework to address threats to “the Homeland” and our “way of life” in a section titled “Domestic Terrorism.”

“Domestic terrorists — who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States — pose an elevated threat to the Homeland,” the DOJ details.

“Commonly, [their] violent conduct relates to views associated with anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the U.S. Government (USG); extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality,” the request claims.

Citing Trump’s “NSPM-7,” which directs the FBI to coordinate a “comprehensive” response to this “threat,” the DOJ requests funding for the recently created Joint Mission Center (JMC), a Joint Terrorism Task Force on steroids which coordinates “personnel from 10 agencies who possess [counterterrorism] and criminal operational and analytical expertise” to combat Miller’s “left wing terrorism” bogeyman.

Included in the Joint Mission Center’s remit: “proactive” internet surveillance of anyone in opposition to those “traditional American views.”

“Domestic terrorists exploit a variety of popular social media platforms, smaller websites with targeted audiences, and encrypted chat applications. They use these platforms to recruit new adherents, plan and rally support for in-person actions, and disseminate materials encouraging radicalization and mobilization to violence,” the request explains.

“The JMC is working to counter [domestic terrorism] and organized political violence by integrating intelligence, operational support, and financial analysis to proactively identify networks and prosecute domestic terrorist and related criminal actors,” it continues. 

The DOJ requests $166 million to fund the JMC for the 2027 fiscal year. Lawmakers have until October 1 to approve the request.

“NSPM-7 is a deliberate attempt to sow fear and intimidate and silence opposition to the president’s abuses,” Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, wrote in October 2025 following release of the memo. The DOJ’s request uses much of the same language as in the NSPM-7.

Shamsi called it “a fever dream of conspiracies, outright falsehoods, and the president’s distorted equation of criticism of his policies by real or perceived political opponents with ‘criminal and terroristic conspiracies.'” NSPM-7 added a whole new class of “common beliefs” to an ever-growing list of what Trump calls the “enemy within.”

Trump’s latest project persecuting the left “ignores what any responsible understanding of actual political violence would make clear: political violence does not fit into neat ideological buckets,” Shamsi said.

“After all, the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by the president’s supporters is a paradigmatic example of actual political violence, but NSPM-7 pointedly fails even to mention it,” Shamsi added

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Mother Madonna Louise Ciccone is about to give birth… to a new era in pop music.

The world has been waiting with bated breath ever since the Queen of Pop sent shockwaves last September announcing she would be delivering a sequel to her 2005 disco opus Confessions on a Dance Floor at some point in 2026.

Well that time appears to be upon us, mortals.

How about we take this to the next level?

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On Tuesday, April 14th, Her Madgesty engaged in the tell-tale sign of launching a new era by completely wiping her Instagram.

As if that wasn’t enough, she added a blurred profile photo and changed her bio to read, “Time goes by slowly…,” an obvious reference to Confessions lead single “Hung Up”.

Let the Rapture commence.

While clearing social media is normally enough to incur a pop diva earthquake, Madonna teased her disciples further by leading them on a scavenger hunt with a link to her official website. ‘Memba those?

When you arrive to Madonna.com, the site flashes the Queen of Pop’s name along with Confessions II (COADF 2) branding. It seems that will in fact be the title of her 15th studio album.

But what came next is what has left everyone gooped and gagged.

For those that wondered if a 67-year-old icon could still step her p*sssy up, the album’s fierce new M logo answered that bluntly.

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With fishnet stockings reminiscent of the Hung Up video, lace-up stiletto boots and legs spread open around an old school speaker, Madonna is serving charisma uniqueness nerve and talent for your nerves!

And the children are not taking it lightly.

So when will a new song actually drop? While nothing is official, many believe the album’s lead track is coming this Friday.

This would coincide with earlier reports of Madonna filming her “biggest music video ever” after images leaked from the UK set featuring her stunt double and a star-studded cast that included Game of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie, Benedict Cumberbatch and supermodel Kate Moss.

Adding to the new album’s promo hype are rumors that Madonna will join Sabrina Carpenter for the second week of her Coachella headlining gig.

Many were hoping she’d turn up for the “Espresso” singer’s bombastic first weekend at the desert festival, but since that didn’t materialize die-hards are holding out that Madonna is the big surprise this Friday.

And then there are the reports that Madonna and Lady Gaga are putting aside any differences with a song on The Devil Wears Prada 2 soundtrack.

The collab is reportedly called “Kiki” and allegedly samples the Scissor Sisters. This sounds like wishful thinking. Would Madonna really undermine her first album in 7 years by simultaneously releasing a bop sharing the spotlight with the heir to her pop throne?

Guess we will find out.

What we do know about Confessions II is that it reunites Madonna with Stuart Price, who produced most of the OG Confessions.

And it marks M’s return to Warner Records, where she spent the first 25 years of her career up until 2008’s Hard Candy.

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“From being a struggling artist in New York City to signing a record deal to release just three singles, it seemed at the time my world would never be the same again and in fact that couldn’t have been truer,” Madonna said last year.

“Since the beginning, Warner Records has been a real partner with me. I am happy to be reunited and look forward to the future, making music, doing the unexpected while perhaps provoking a few needed conversations.”

We love when Madonna provokes!

While we wait to see what Madonna gives us next, check out some more reacts to her latest reinvention…

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On Friday in Senegal, a 24-year-old man was convicted of public indecency and committing “unnatural acts” under a new law doubling the punishment for homosexuality in the West African country.

The local laborer, Mbaye Diouf, was sentenced in the High Court of the Dakar suburb of Pikine-Guédiawaye to six years in prison and fined approximately $3,570 US.

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It’s the first sentence handed down after Senegal President Bassirou Diomaye Faye signed the law in March, raising the punishment for homosexual acts to 5-10 years in prison and doubling fines.

The courts made quick work of Diouf’s case; just 10 days elapsed between his arrest and sentencing.

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Diouf was detained by police on April 2 after a witness said he saw two men “in a compromising scene” in a garden across from the National Arena in Pikine, outside the capital Dakar, according to reporting from Senenews and Block TV Gambia. He filmed the encounter before approaching the men.

One of them fled the scene, said the witness, leaving Diouf with his trousers around his knees and unable to run. He was taken to the central police station in Guédiawaye.

In his interrogation, Diouf admitted to having sex with the other man and said he agreed to the encounter in exchange for 2,000 CFA francs, or about US $3.57.

Diouf said he was unaware his actions were illegal and pleaded for mercy from the court. His alleged partner, named by prosecutors, remains at large.

The bill doubling penalties for homosexual acts was passed by Parliament in early March by a near-unanimous vote and followed campaign pledges from both the president and prime minister in Senegal’s latest elections to crack down on homosexuality in the Muslim-majority nation.

Thirty of Africa’s 54 countries have laws criminalizing homosexuality or same-sex acts. In Uganda, Somalia, and Mauritania, offenses can carry the death penalty. Uganda passed the most notorious of the so-called “Kill the Gays” laws in 2023.

Friday’s conviction follows months of arrests of gay men and anti-LGBTQ+ protests by religious groups demanding tougher penalties for homosexuality in Senegal.

Social media has been flooded with homophobic messages outing gay people, while mainstream media has rage-baited the public with headlines like “Big homo clean-up” and “Bisexuals, walking dangers.”

The government’s wave of arrests began in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, in February, with the detention of two of Senegal’s highest-profile celebrities, among 12 people rounded up and charged with committing “unnatural” acts and other crimes.

The new law also punishes what it calls the “promotion” or “financing” of homosexuality, seen as an attempt to crack down on groups that support sexual and gender minorities.

Human Rights Watch researcher Larissa Kojoué told the AP on Monday that the law has created a climate of “constant fear” in Senegal, and arrests have become more aggressive “because now there is backing from the state apparatus.”

UN rights chief Volker Türk called the new law “deeply worrying,” saying it “flies in the face of the sacrosanct human rights.”

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Yesterday, during a publicity stunt that was supposed to be about taxes, Donald Trump just randomly brought up how much he doesn’t like it when transgender women play sports.

“Do you think that men should play in women’s sports?” he asked the DoorDasher, who was there to talk about “no tax on tips.”

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“I really don’t have an opinion on that,” she responded. Trump pressed her on it. He wanted a reaction, and he wasn’t willing to accept that she – like most people, actually – just plainly doesn’t care about this issue.

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One way to read the interaction is that Trump really doesn’t like trans people, and he wanted her to join him in his two-minute hate. But another (better, I will argue) way to read it is that Trump likes getting applause, and he wanted something – her agreeing with him while laughing, perhaps; her thanking him for his executive order banning trans women from some sports; maybe even her pulling a shiny trophy out to give to him… – but she didn’t give him the reaction he wanted. So the situation got awkward until he moved on to another topic.

This wouldn’t be worth remarking on if it didn’t happen a lot, but Trump brings up trans issues for no reason while talking about unrelated topics quite often. It happens so often that we don’t cover each instance of it at LGBTQ Nation because we couldn’t possibly devote time to every instance.

He has been doing this since at least 2022, about a year after the anti-trans moral panic started sweeping the nation, with red states passing bans on trans health care and trans sports participation — things that they didn’t feel the need to regulate in previous decades.

At one rally in 2022, Trump even commented about how attacking trans people gets him applause. He was listing things that he didn’t like about Democrats, and when he got to “transgender insanity,” he got wild applause. Many of his MAGA supporters even got out of their seats to give him a standing ovation.

“I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy,” he remarked at the time. “Who would have thought? Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.”

After that, attacking trans people became a mainstay of his rallies. That included his impression of a woman powerlifter, which was widely mocked by liberals since it looks like he was… not getting enough fiber. He would perform this impression to show that cis women are bad at sports, then he would do his impression of a trans powerlifter picking up the weight with ease, since to him, trans women are men, and men don’t even need to try to beat women at sports.

Liberals made fun of him for doing this impression so many times, but Trump’s need for approval is so great that he wasn’t going to be deterred by some TV mockery. He wanted applause, and his MAGA audience kept on giving it to him. Why be innovative when he’s getting what he wants?

But this isn’t just because he hates trans women. We know this because he wasn’t so outwardly transphobic even a couple of years before transphobia became his go-to applause line.

In 2016, he criticized the state of North Carolina for trying to pass a trans bathroom ban. That was during his first Republican primary. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), his main opponent and a more typical Republican politician, stood solidly against letting trans people use the restroom associated with their gender, but not Trump, who said during an interview that trans people should “use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate” because “there has been so little trouble.”

He was asked on the Today show whether Caitlyn Jenner could use the women’s room in Trump Tower, and he replied that he’d be fine with it.

During his 2020 reelection campaign, he talked so little about trans people that Christian conservatives even got frustrated with him. Religious conservative activist Terry Schilling had his organization, the American Principles Project, pay for campaign ads about trans women in sports just to try to get Trump’s attention on the issue.

“What I’m hoping is that once we release these ads and numbers start to move, the Trump campaign will see it’s a powerful issue that the Republican Party can use to its success,” Schilling told Politico at the time.

While Trump didn’t exactly fly the trans flag during his first term in office, he wasn’t as focused on trans issues as he is now during his second term. It took him months to even try to ban trans people from the military in 2017. Even then, he left it up to his vice president to come up with the actual policy over a year into his term.

In his second term, he was signing anti-trans executive orders on his first day in office.

What changed was the applause that started coming during his four years out of office, as the GOP base worked itself into a frenzy at the idea of trans people being treated equally.

Trump has a pathetic need for approval from others, and he has only gotten more obvious about it as his cognitive decline has led to him dropping his inhibitions. It has become the joke of his second term that all powerful people need to do to sway him is get a shiny metal object made for a couple of hundred dollars and hand him the “FIFA Peace Prize” or whatever, and he’ll eat out of the palms of their hands.

His clinical psychologist niece, Mary Trump, wrote about this in her book, Too Much and Never Enough. She said that her uncle was severely neglected by his parents when he was a toddler, so he “never felt safe, he never felt loved, and I think if you start from that kind of deficit and you never find somebody to fill in the gaps or to heal you, then you are at the mercy of anybody who may find you of use.”

“Nothing is ever enough,” she continued. “This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism. Donald is not simply weak. His ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved.”

That’s what motivates him to attack trans people. Sure, it has been over half a decade now that he has been using these attacks to get him the approval he desperately craves, so he might have sipped the Kool-Aid enough times and become a true believer himself.

But he wouldn’t be so hateful towards trans people if his fan base hadn’t encouraged him for years.

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Out hockey player, Luke Prokop, was the latest guest on the ‘No Straight Answers’ podcast. Hosted by fellow queer hockey player Zoe Boyd, the podcast has, to date, primarily focused on interviews with female athletes. Prokop was the first male guest.

Prokop, 23, came out in July 2021 when he was a prospect for the NHL team, the Nashville Predators. He’s now playing for the Bakersfield Condors, the AHL affiliate of the Edmonton Oilers.

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Unsurprisingly, Prokop has experienced greater interest in his story following the success of Heated Rivalry.

In June, he has a documentary premiering about his career, entitled The Hockey Player. He told Boyd that the Heated Rivalry phenomenon helped get his own documentary over the finish line, financially.

Boyd posted a clip from the podcast to social media that doesn’t actually appear in the finished interview.

She asked Prokop if he’d ever had a ‘Heated Rivalry’ moment with a guy he’s played against or alongside.

“No,” replies Prokop, before quipping. “Like, we do some really gay sh*t in hockey.”

“I bet,” replies Boyd, suggesting a**-slapping.

“All the time,” confirms Prokop. “Like, guys will talk about the size of everyone, and like … sometimes I’m standing there, this is all happening around me, and I’m like, ‘You guys are gayer than me.’ Honestly, some of them are. And it’s every day, too. They’re talking about each others ***** [the word is bleeped out with a cockeral emjoi over Prokop’s mouth] every day. It’s so weird.”

Boyd says women teams are the same when it comes to locker room exchanges and showering.

Coming out

Although we couldn’t find this particular exchange in the finished interview, we’d encourage you to watch or listen to the episode.

Prokop talks about coming out to his sister and then his mom before anyone else. He later came out to his four closest straight male friends around the kitchen island at his home.

“They were like, okay, we’re going to leave, and I was like, can you guys, like, wait. I want to tell you something. And then it was just like silence for like 10 minutes.”

Prokop struggled to get the words out.

“And so they were all just, like staring at me like, ‘Are you okay? Like what’s going on?’ And then I told them. ‘Uh, I’m gay.” And again, everyone was, like, really quiet.

“Two of my buddies were real heavy Christians. So… I don’t know how they’re going to take this. But my one friend, we were sitting in silence for probably 5 to 10 minutes, and then he was like, ‘I have a question.’ So he broke the silence with that. And I’m like ‘yes.’ And he was like ‘Okay, so you’re gay. When can we start hunting for men?’ And he just said it in the weirdest tone … I was like, that’s so sweet, but also like also hilarious.”

Prokop says his group chat with his buddies is now titled ‘I have a question’ in honor of that moment.

“Make fun of me”

Prokop said humor had also eased any awkwardness when he joined new teams.

“A lot of guys on the team forget that I’m gay. Which is how I wanted it to be because I never wanted it to be awkward or weird for anyone else. I also wanted to make sure, like, I’ve told my teammates, if there’s an opportunity for you to make fun of me, do like a gay one-liner, ‘cause I do them all the time. I’m like, if there’s something where you can make fun, do it, please. That’s how I find that it gets less awkward for people at the start and stuff like that. Like my team in Milwaukee, it was awesome. They were so good about it. Everyone was making fun of me. I was making fun of them. It was just, like, fantastic.”

Boyd nods in agreement, suggesting that laughing together fosters bonding. She goes on to say (at the 46-minute mark) that she has a theory about people who are very vocally homophobic.

“They’re for sure gay,” says Boyd.

“100% gay,” agrees Prokop. His smile suggests it’s a semi-serious response.

“Luke, I’m telling you, man. I swear to God, every homophobic b*tch I come across, she ends up being f*ckin’ gay. And I’m sure it’s with men, too. Why else are you so resistant to that idea?” says Boyd.

“Yeah. It’s almost like … the ones who are super vocal about it. It’s like they’re almost too vocal,” says Prokop, “It’s like, why do you care so much about this?”

Watch the whole interview below.

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The following is an excerpt from the new book Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds by Laura Horak and available now from University of California Press.

Since the 1990s, a largely underground upwelling of trans creativity has helped new trans identities, communities, and political movements come together. In Trans Cinema, Horak provides an entryway to the wildly diverse and creative cinema made by trans creators, including those who are BIPOC. Overlooked until now, this rich collection of media ranges in genre from romantic comedies to horror films and asks essential questions about how to be human and how to craft a livable life in a world on fire.

Using the fundamentals of film studies, Horak reveals the innovative approaches taken by trans and gender-nonconforming artists to explore how we relate to other people, what it’s like to have a body, and how we survive in an oppressive society. These filmmakers tackle the challenging paradox of representing trans lives when greater visibility is associated with ever-increasing levels of harm. In the process, they produce art that emphasizes trans survival and resilience and imagines a more expansive world for trans communities.

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Audiovisual media plays a key role in the fights over trans children and youth. Since the 2010s English-language media coverage of trans issues has focused on trans youth, likely because youth are imagined to be the most spectacular and scandalous trans topic for cis viewers. This coverage also sometimes includes intersex youth—youth whose bodies don’t align with typical male or female bodies, even though they are largely missing from contemporary political discourse. For example, National Geographic’s 2017 “Gender Revolution” special issue featured a nine-year-old white transfeminine child with pink hair and pink-leopard stretch pants looking at the camera on one version of the cover and a feature article interviewing trans nine-year-olds around the world.

The feature-length National Geographic documentary that accompanied the issue featured news anchor Katie Couric interviewing scientists and parents about trans—and also intersex—children (with about fifteen minutes of testimony by actual trans youth). The film plays on inaccurate assumptions about history, starting out by saying, “It used to be so simple. You were a girl, or you were a boy,” and concluding, “That was then, and this is now.” As Gill-Peterson observes, this narrative implies that trans kids are a new phenomenon and focuses on white, middle-class children with access to transition-related health care, which is not the predominant experience of trans childhood. (Elegance Bratton’s Pier Kids [2019], a documentary about BIPOC trans and queer unhoused youth in New York City, is a welcome exception to this trend.)

Another typical example is the HBO documentary Transhood (2020), shot over five years in Kansas City. It follows four young people who start the film at ages four, seven, twelve, and fifteen. Three are white and transfeminine (including the girl who appeared on the National Geographic cover), and one is transmasculine of color.

While the film is sympathetic to the children, it focuses on medical aspects of transition (opening, for example, with one subject’s first day on puberty blockers), an approach that responds to cis curiosity about trans bodies but represents only a small part of trans people’s existence. It also includes uncomfortable scenes in which the children cover their faces or tell the camera to stop filming, but the camera instead zooms in and lingers. The film raises sticky issues of consent. The youngest subject was four when filming started and nine when it ended. Do these children and youth under-stand the way the film will expose their private lives to the public, including to antitrans viewers, for the rest of their lives? Do they understand that their stories will be shaped by the filmmakers, perhaps beyond their recognition?

The trans child (now young adult) whose life has been most shaped by media is Jazz Jennings, star of TLC’s reality-TV show I Am Jazz (2015–23). Jennings began appearing on television at age six and, at age eleven, starred in a documentary. She began her reality show at age fourteen and continued until age twenty-three. The show has followed the ins and outs of her life over the years, including details of her medical transition, dating life, and struggles with an eating disorder. It follows many of the conventions of the transition documentary that I explore in chapter 8, but because it’s so long, it can’t help but fill in the rest of the details of Jazz’s life before, during, and after her medical transition. Transition is just one event among many for Jazz and not the end of the story.

Trans children and youth are much more visible now than they’ve ever been. This visibility is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, trans children and youth can find others like them and feel connected to a larger community. Their parents too can find community and learn how to support and advocate for their trans child.

But, at the same time, trans children have been put into the crosshairs of the culture wars and are paying the price. When they appear in the media, they become part of other people’s agendas, and they give up their privacy, capturing transitory, difficult, and embarrassing moments that would otherwise be forgotten. Media appearances can make them and their family the target of threats, harassment, doxing, and even physical violence. Conservatives fear that positive representations of trans youth will “seduce” children and youth into identifying as trans, and they often attack trans YouTube and TikTok influencers. (Conservatives grant media a lot of power, even though the dominance of cis straight media has not made everyone who watches it cis and straight.)

Furthermore, trans youth suffer anxiety and depression in response to the political backlash against them. According to the United States’ “2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health,” “93% of transgender and nonbinary youth said that they have worried about transgender people being denied access to gender-affirming medical care due to state or local laws.” When mainstream media creates representations of trans kids without trans creatives involved, it tends to make the kids into spectacles and to focus on medical aspects of transition. When trans creatives make work with and about trans youth, it tends to look very different.

Reprinted from Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds by Laura Horak, courtesy of the University of California Press. Copyright 2026.

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The Tennessee House and Senate have now both passed a bill that, among other anti-LGBTQ+ harms, will help them to create a registry of trans people, including what gender-affirming care they have sought, and when they received it. While the bill’s sponsors claim the information will not include identifiable information, experts have suggested it would feasibly allow government agents to identify members of the state’s relatively small trans population

“This is a bill that gathers data on trans and gender diverse patients throughout the state, as well as providers,” said Chaplain Dahron Johnson, the co-chair of the Tennessee Equality Project’s Nashville chapter, ahead of the Senate’s passage of the bill. “It asks for details around prescriptions, around what’s discussed in medical visits, around how long somebody has been in treatment or has been having gender care discussions with their providers.” 

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The bill was primarily sponsored by Tennessee Representative Jeremy Faison (R) as H.B. 754. It passed the House on March 26; yesterday it passed in the Senate as SB 676. While the bill now has to go back to the House for a concurrence vote on minor amendments added in the Senate, that is effectively a formality, and there is no sign that Gov. Bill Lee (R) will not sign it into law as soon as it reaches his desk.

Primarily, the bill masquerades behind concern for those (extreme few) who regret a medical transition and detransition.

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“What about the poor folks that took up this transition nonsense and they transitioned to a sex or a gender that they thought would solve their problem, and they just want to be left alone?” said the bill’s champion in the Senate, Sen. Brent Taylor (R).

This takes the form of forcing clinics that accept state funds for gender-affirming care to eat the cost of any “detransition procedures” and mandating insurance companies that cover gender-affirming care to also cover those “detransition procedures.” The bill also acknowledges that this will increase insurance premiums for trans people, and seems to be inspired by similar bills from Texas and Utah.

However, that aspect of the bill hides the even more toxic elements of the bill. The bill as passed also puts a prohibition on any localities within Tennessee from enacting a conversion therapy ban. With the Supreme Court’s recent ruling against conversion therapy bans, that measure is an additional blow that’s causing concern.

“It is unfair for us to legislate in a way that allows or bans the banning of behavior or treatment that could be harmful to someone,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D). “There is ample evidence on the dangers of conversion therapy. There are dangers in forcing these young people to go into these programs.”

The bill also calls for a “right to public transparency” around gender-affirming care with the idea that they might find a higher rate of detransition than has been reported in countless studies. That transparency will take the form of providers having to report a wealth of data about their trans and non-binary patients to the Tennessee Department of Health, sparking fears for trans people’s privacy and safety.

That information is set to include the date of any “gender transition procedure” being prescribed or referred for, the patient’s age, sex, and type of procedure, what drugs were prescribed and how, a list of any diagnoses for “neurological, behavioral, or mental health conditions.” While the bill says that reports must not include “individually identifiable health information,” with the relatively small size of the trans population, privacy experts have suggested that individuals might still be identifiable from this information.

While Texas’ attorney general has created a list of trans people with names and their requests to update the gender marker on their licenses, this list will include personal details about medical procedures that can be tied to individual people living in the state. It is often time to worry when the government makes lists of the marginalized.

The data will also be published to a public government website, in accordance with the bill. While earlier versions of the bill said the data would not be aggregated (making it possible to identify people), a later summary seems to have corrected that language to suggest it will be aggregated. However, the latest version of the bill simply says the data will be reported, without mentioning aggregation. This confusion has prompted concerns about this data not only being held by the government, but potentially becoming a public registry of trans people in Tennessee.

The bill also goes as far as to ensure that medical providers can’t reasonably avoid reporting the information of their trans patients. Not fully reporting the required data can result in a provider’s license being suspended for six months or longer, their employers facing up to $150,000 in fines, and all medical providers involved being subjected to an investigation by the attorney general.

One final amendment in the Senate removed the requirement that providers include the state county in which their patient resided. Protestors outside the Senate pushed the fact that some counties had such small populations that identities would be far too easily calculated, and the amendment was a direct result. That didn’t stop Tennessee state troopers from forcibly removing a protester for shouting from the House gallery after the bill was passed.

In expressing his apparent concern for people regretting their transitions and defending his bill, Faison compared trans identities to lobotomies, saying, “I believe that we as a society are going to look back on this time that really burst out in 2014 and think, ‘Dear God, what were we thinking? This was as dumb as frontal lobotomies.”

Tennessee has passed a huge number of anti-trans bill in recent years. Additionally, in 2023 the state’s attorney general was able to force Vanderbilt University Medical Center to hand over the complete medical records for trans patients.

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A coalition of conservative parents is suing a Wisconsin school district over its trans-inclusive policies that allow students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Wisconsin has no state law banning trans people from doing so.

New Richmond Parents for Strong Schools (NRPSS) filed its lawsuit on April 10th, only a month after it formed, against the New Richmond School District, accusing the district of violating Title IX.

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“This case seeks to protect the right of girls to privacy, dignity, and equal access to school facilities,” the suit states, claiming the district “has violated those protections by enforcing a policy that allows male students to use girls’ bathrooms based on gender identity rather than biological sex.”

NRPSS also claims that “female students” have been paying the price as they “now avoid restrooms, miss class time, and experience anxiety and loss of privacy, while being directed to use separate, single-stall bathrooms if they are uncomfortable.” The suit continuously misgenders trans girls as boys or males.

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The group also discusses the experiences of several members’ daughters. One student, referred to as A.D., allegedly feels “significant discomfort” whenever she uses the bathroom because there is a trans student who also uses it.

“A.D. reported that the student frequently remains in the restroom beyond simply using the facilities,” the suit said, going on to explain behavior typical of any girl in a bathroom: “The student stands at the mirror adjusting hair and makeup, adjusting bra padding, and using a cell phone, and the student has been observed using the phone camera.”

“Due to use of the cell phone, A.D. is concerned that the male student in the girls’ bathroom may be taking photos or videos of the female students,” the suit states, without any evidence this is actually happening or any explanation of why cis girls doing it would be any better.

It also claims A.D. has a right to kick the trans girl out of the bathroom because the student is taller and “physically larger” than most of the girls, which makes them feel unsafe.

The suit comes after the Department of Education (ED) announced in March it was investigating the New Richmond School District for “allowing biological men to use female restrooms.” The current administration has weaponized the ED to investigate and threaten schools with trans-inclusive policies.

NRPSS is represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. “Girls should feel safe at school and their privacy should be respected,” Deputy Counsel Cory Brewer said in a statement. “New Richmond schools left parents and young girls no choice but to go to court and sue to end this ridiculous policy allowing biological boys into the girls’ bathroom.”

A high school junior in the district, Ella Frei, who is involved in the lawsuit, also spoke out against trans inclusion: “Protecting girls by not allowing boys in the girls’ bathroom shouldn’t be controversial – it should be common sense,” she said. “We are not going to abandon our identity as girls or ignore the real privacy concerns the school district has forced on us.”

The bylaws of NRPSS state its sole purpose is to “preserve sex-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms” in Wisconsin public schools and “to protect children… from being forced to share private spaces… with members of the opposite biological sex.”

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So remember those twin twinks who were feuding on TikTok awhile back, and how they both had separate OF pages? There’s an interesting development in the case, but it’s not what you think. It does, however, involve their daddy. Well, one of their daddies.

“A lot of people think that we’re faking it, that we’re gaybaiting,” explains Drake Von in a recent video starring himself and his older “daddy” boyfriend Mark LAX. But according to them, it’s all genuine. They just happen to also make content about their intriguing age gap dynamic.

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On TikTok, Von and LAX keep their profiles separate, but in private life, the two mix it up—and make a lot of money from their intriguing dynamic. After a quick glimpse at the two of them together, it’s not hard to see why.

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While Von and LAX come from pretty different worlds—LAX from the world of SlopTV and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire” music video and Von from the Baconator Twins OF page—they found each other, and the relationship has been defying their expectations ever since.

“We thought we’d end up with women,” Von stated in a recent interview about their connection. “But here we are together.” The two met on the set of a spicy video, where the 42-year-old Mark was impressed by the 23-year-old Drake’s onscreen presence.

Von has been making a name for himself on OF, where he once made content with his twin brother Silas Brooks before the drama happened. Since then, he’s tried to out-blow OF icon Bonnie Blue by taking on a thousand bottoms in the space of a single day. But somehow he still made time to come home to his hubby who—plot twist!—is also a bottom?

“I am considered the internet’s leading Daddy figure,” LAX states—though honestly, Pedro Pascal would like a word about that. But if there’s one thing the wide world of OF tells us, it’s that daddies need love too, and LAX is getting it from an unlikely place. “People think I’m trying to prey on someone half my age,” he continues, “when really Drake’s the boss.”

Both men have extensive backgrounds in the Men.com extended universe, but Drake’s prowess as a legendary top has made him a household name among OF connoisseurs… in spite of the drama around his brother’s claims of gay-for-pay queerbaiting. But to LAX, Drake is more than just a partner. He’s a daddy in the bedroom and a mentor in the boardroom. “I learned from Drake about all the industry stuff,” LAX says. Drake insists that as far as spicy time goes, “I’m the daddy and I like to take control.”

It’s definitely a much more wholesome approach to daddies than we’ve seen recently on OF. Though that’s not to imply that the two don’t deal with their share of drama. Between haters in the comments, envy in the industry, and a whole lot of family feuding, it’s not easy for them to stay focused on their commitment. But so far, they’ve made it work. “The judgment that we receive has made us really strong,” Von says.

The one thing LAX and Von don’t do is let their work get in the way of their relationship, or let their careers define their sexuality. “Sometimes I feel like I’m pansexual,” Von says, “sometimes I feel like I’m money-sexual.”

In 2026, that’s a huge mood.

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The Texas Tech University System is shutting down all its academic programs “centered on” sexual orientation and gender identity.

In an April 9 memo, Chancellor Brandon Creighton, a former Republican state lawmaker, gave provosts at the system’s five universities until June 15 to conduct reviews “to identify specific degree programs, official tracks, majors, minors, and certificates that meet the ‘centered on’ threshold” and to submit their lists of programs to the Office of the Chancellor, the Texas Tribune reports.

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The memo defines “centered on” as “when sexual orientation or gender identity serves as the primary subject, main theoretical framework, central narrative, or driving pedagogical purpose” of course content, readings, assignments, or lectures.

It also explicitly prohibits university instructors from teaching that gender identity is fluid and from endorsing “the existence of more than two genders, or decouple gender from biological sex as a factual or scientific baseline.” Instructors are still allowed to teach the biological reality of “chromosomal variations, Differences of Sex Development (DSDs), and intersex biological conditions,” but are not permitted to “use these biological conditions to advocate for or validate sociological frameworks of fluid gender identities.”

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Women’s and gender studies undergraduate minors and graduate certificate programs at three of the university system’s schools are the most likely to be affected by the new policy, according to the Tribune. The memo does include exceptions for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in which subjects are inseparable from sexual orientation or gender identity — like the AIDS epidemic — and temporary exceptions for currently enrolled students’ graduate theses and dissertations. Current faculty can also continue to research and publish “topics of their choosing,” the memo says.

However, it also instructs schools to freeze admissions and halt current students from declaring majors until targeted programs are phased out, and notes that “future faculty hiring guidance will prioritize recruitment in alignment with this memorandum,” the Tribune reports.

Texas Tech associate professor of psychological science Paul Ingram told the outlet that he has already heard from students who say they now regret enrolling at the school. One graduate student, he said, has already dropped out, and university faculty are openly discussing looking for new jobs.

Antonio Ingram, a senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told the Tribune that the memo raises serious constitutional concerns around viewpoint discrimination. The memo, he said, appears to target perspectives involving gender identity and sexual orientation for political reasons.

“I think in many ways, this is a doubling down on a political project that is not meant to help students. It is really meant to uphold a political worldview that, you know, Chancellor Creighton couldn’t enact legislatively and is now doing through his role as chancellor,” Ingram said.

The new guidance comes after Creighton instituted a systemwide review to identify courses that cover race, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation last December.

Creighton was named chancellor of the Texas Tech University System in November, after serving in the Texas House of Representatives from 2007 to 2014 and in the state Senate from 2014 to 2025. During his time in the state Senate, he introduced a number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills, including four that stripped LGBTQ+ people in the state of local anti-discrimination protections. In 2023, he authored a bill that banned diversity, equity, and inclusion activities in the state’s colleges and universities. Last year, he sponsored a bill, signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, that bans clubs “based on sexual orientation or gender identity” in Texas schools.

Speaking at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s summit in Austin last week, Creighton claimed that “academic drift” has resulted in “quite a bit of garbage” in American university curriculum, according to the Tribune. He also said that Texas Tech would use “an AI algorithm” to review courses.

Creighton claims the changes to Texas Tech’s offerings will better prepare students for high-paying jobs. But Jen Shelton, an associate professor of English at Texas Tech, told the Tribune that new policy undermines higher education’s role in teaching students to understand the world and would “impoverish” graduates “as human beings.”

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Puerto Rican singer José Alfredo is stepping fully into his power.

The gay pop star has been making bops since dropping his 2011 debut album Valiente, which appropriately enough translates to brave in English. Last year, he released his fifth album Mercurio Retrógrado.

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Despite being out for years, Alfredo has recently become embolden with a feeling of newfound self-assurance that is being reflected in his latest music. In an industry that often fails to celebrate queer male singers (Coachella, anyone?), the 32-year-old has released his boldest track yet — the Spanish-language empowerment anthem “Perro”.

“After everything I’ve been through, today I feel more like myself than ever, and this song is exactly that: 
a fearless affirmation of who I am,” Alfredo told the Spanish outlet Shangay.

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A post shared by José Alfredo (@josealfredomusica)

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A post shared by José Alfredo (@josealfredomusica)

Reclaiming “perro”

While the term “perro/perra” literally means dog, it has been used as a pejorative hurled at gay men in many Spanish-speaking countries.

With writing the track, Alfredo described reclaiming the word and no longer feeling the need to hide any aspect of himself.

“When you take a word that has historically been used to hurt you and make it your own, you take away the power of those who used it against you,” he added.

“Perro is about that: about redefining words from a place of desire, from a place of security, from a place of play. It’s a way of saying, ‘I’m no longer defined by what you wanted me to be; I define myself.'”

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A post shared by José Alfredo (@josealfredomusica)

Sexy and he knows it

Part of Alfredo’s new attitude entails allowing himself to be more audacious with his sexuality, which is reflected in the song’s playful lyrics (“I wag my tail when I want”) and visuals. He’s not shying away from being sexy and nor should he have to.

“We come from a culture where discretion is often demanded of us to be ‘acceptable.’ I wanted to break with that,” the Boricua hottie told the outlet.

“The brazenness here isn’t gratuitous, it’s liberating. It means playing, provoking, taking ownership of my body and my narrative without guilt. Although there’s also a touch of mischief; not everything has to be solemn.”

Get it, papi!

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A post shared by José Alfredo (@josealfredomusica)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by José Alfredo (@josealfredomusica)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by José Alfredo (@josealfredomusica)

Over the weekend, Alfredo debuted the track with a live performance during Miami Beach Pride as it marked the beginning of the next chapter in his music career and personal life.

“Perro is a declaration made without asking permission. It’s the point where I stop softening myself to fit in and start embracing who I am in all my dimensions: as an artist, as a gay man, as someone who has lived through intense experiences and now feels free,” he added.

“It’s not just a song, it’s an attitude: here I am, unfiltered.”

We’re excited to see what comes nest as Alfredo plans to continue into his fearless era with more musical surprises in the near future.

Check out José Alfredo being his authentic baddie self in the music video for “Perro” below.

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Steven LaBrie, the gay bearded daddy in Il Divo, is ready for his solo close-up
Steven LaBrie joined the classical quartet Il Divo in 2023.

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This article first appeared on Mother Jones. It has been republished with the publication’s permission.

Blair’s mom had been cautious when she first brought her 6-year-old to the LGBTQ clinic at Cleveland’s MetroHealth hospital, “trying to figure out why he felt different inside,” as she puts it. She didn’t want to rush her child into treatment. So she was grateful to find the clinicians there took a slow and careful approach to Blair’s health care. Over the years they provided open-ended counseling, monitored his hormone levels and bone development, and only progressed with puberty blockers when it was clear that transitioning was making him happier and more confident. “That was my barometer for doing the right thing,” she tells me.

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The ugly history behind the Olympics’ new gender test

Today, at 16, Blair (a pseudonym to preserve his privacy) has been going to the clinic for a decade, and, by his mom’s account, thriving. Even when Ohio banned transgender medical treatments for minors in 2024, he could stay on his medication thanks to a grandfather clause in the law. But a few months ago, his mom got a message from MetroHealth alerting the family to a new threat.

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On December 18, 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a declaration that rebranded transgender medical care as “sex-rejecting procedures” and claimed, erroneously, that the treatments “fail to meet professional recognized standards of health care” when given to minor patients. That same day, his agency proposed a pair of regulations that would curtail access nationwide. The first would forbid federal insurance programs that cover kids in low-income families from paying for puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and the surgery used in rare cases to treat gender dysphoria. The other would deliver an ultimatum to hospitals: Stop providing the treatments to trans kids, or else get kicked out of the federal Medicaid and Medicare programs.

The rules were designed to be a “nuclear weapon” against trans youth health care, a former Trump domestic policy assistant explained at a recent event. Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements cover nearly half of all hospital-care spending. “Hospitals just are not in a position to say, ‘You know what? It’s really important to us that we continue to provide this care, and we’re going to forego payments from the federal government,’” says Lindsey Dawson, director of LGBTQ program at the health policy research firm KFF. The rules are not yet final, but they’ve already sent shockwaves through the health care system. Since the start of the year, at least nine hospital systems stopped providing puberty blockers and hormone therapy—including Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago and Rady Children’s Health in San Diego, according to a STAT News analysis.

For a teenager struggling with gender dysphoria, a break in treatment could mean their body proceeds with the puberty of their birth sex, with potentially severe mental-health consequences. Blair’s mom worried not just about her son losing his medication, but also the counseling, regular blood tests, and side effect monitoring he received from his team at the MetroHealth clinic. So, after taking some time to think, she wrote a comment on Regulations.gov, beseeching the government to stay out of her family’s personal business.

“I have learned that my original vision of what my child’s life would look like is very different from reality—and yet, this version is just as beautiful, if not more so,” she wrote. “That is why I find it so hard to understand why the government would try to interfere in such personal and medically complex matters.”

She’s not the only parent pleading with HHS not to cut off their child’s treatment. “Every decision I have made as a parent is to keep my kid healthy and safe,” wrote one of the 30,000-some public commenters on the proposed regulation. “In an emerging culture where parents’ choice is so important to school and child development policies, why is my choice to consult with my child’s medical team and make informed decisions being taken away and infringed on?”

The answer is bound up in a Trump Era political crusade against transgender people, one that has the backing of a small cadre of academics and clinicians who disagree with the position held by virtually all leading US medical groups that gender-affirming treatments are medically necessary for some kids. In its latest attempt to wipe trans health care off the map, the administration drew on a report authored by these opponents—none of whom have direct experience providing hormone treatments to trans children, and some of whom have a background in anti-trans activism.

Right-wingers began drafting the earliest bans against transgender health care around 2019. Since then, following a coordinated campaign, 27 states forbid doctors from following mainstream medical standards that regard puberty blockers and hormone therapy as reasonable treatments for teens with gender dysphoria. Such treatments are rare even among the tiny fraction of minors whose doctors have coded them as trans; only about 5 percent of them take puberty blockers and 11 percent take cross-sex hormones, per one study of insurance data. Gender-affirming surgeries, also forbidden under the state bans, are even more uncommon. These treatments remain available mostly in Democratic-led states, 14 of which have passed “shield laws” protecting providers from other states’ crackdowns.

The Trump administration’s latest rules would reach past those shield laws by cutting off insurance coverage and threatening hospital balance sheets, creating yet another “significant barrier” to care, according to KFF’s Dawson. Families like Blair’s would need to find new doctors unaffiliated with hospitals—a daunting prospect—and pay out-of-pocket or with private insurance. “The people who are going to have the hardest time accessing care moving forward are the people with the fewest resources,” Dawson says.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been laying the foundation for this specific attack since his first day back in the White House. That’s when he issued an executive order instructing federal agencies to “take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the Federal funding of gender ideology.” A few days later came another order that characterized gender-affirming treatments for minors as “blatant harm [that] cloaks itself in medical necessity” and told HHS to do everything in its power to shut down treatments.

But to so dramatically change the way the federal government viewed trans health care would require expertise. So Trump’s order also instructed the agency to produce a report examining evidence and best practices for treating children who present with gender dysphoria or, in its words, “identity-based confusion.”

That May, HHS published a several hundred-page document written by anonymous authors whom the White House described as “distinguished scholars.” The report, which HHS said was “informed by an evidence-based medicine approach,” scrutinized the decade-plus of research previously used to support transgender health care for minors, and ultimately declared most of the treatments unethical. It suggested that kids with gender dysphoria be treated only with psychotherapy rather than a mix of therapy and hormone treatments medical providers sometimes prescribe. (The report specifically defended the use of so-called “exploratory” psychotherapy, an approach embraced by modern-day conversion therapists that seeks to identify the supposed cause of a client’s transgender identity.) The report didn’t stop there; it also went so far as to question whether the concept of gender—as opposed to sex—was even real.

The report read like “an anti-trans fever dream,” Kellan Baker, a trans health care policy expert and advocate, told me on the day of its release. To Baker, the whole exercise seemed like a charade—“a post-hoc justification for a political agenda they wanted to pursue anyway.”

The HHS report served as the foundation for the new, pending Medicaid rulings that threaten to end pediatric transgender care at hospitals. Who were the “distinguished scholars” who authored the document, and what experiences informed their analysis? In recent months, more details have come to light, giving more weight to Baker’s and other critics’ charge that the project was political from the start.

In November, HHS announced the names of its nine authors. The ringleader was Leor Sapir, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank perhaps best known in recent years for stoking a right-wing panic around “critical race theory” in schools. Sapir has long made clear his stance opposing trans rights; in his political science PhD 2020 dissertation from Boston College, he argued that the federal ban on sex discrimination in schools should not be interpreted to also ban anti-trans discrimination. Since joining the Manhattan Institute in 2022, he’s written essay after essay criticizing pediatric transgender health care and its supporters.

Then he got the call to spearhead the creation of the new HHS report and recruit its team of authors, as he explained on a recent episode of the Manhattan Institute podcast. The idea was to produce a US version of the Cass Review—the controversial 2024 report commissioned by England’s National Health Service that found a lack of methodologically rigorous evidence around medical treatments and social and psychological interventions for kids with gender dysphoria.

But the Cass Review took four years; Trump wanted a report within months. “We basically had about eight weeks, nine weeks,” Sapir says on the podcast. “[The Trump administration] wanted to be able to cite it in their regulatory action,” he goes on to explain. “It’s obviously going to be central justification in the administration’s various actions on this issue.”

Sapir says he assembled his scholars with an eye for the optics. “I didn’t want this to be perceived as some hit job by a bunch of MAGA-aligned conservatives,” he said on the podcast. Yet he chose eight individuals who all already held positions against gender-affirming treatments for minors, as documented in court testimony, writing, social media posts, or public speaking. Not a single report author was transgender or had direct experience treating trans kids with puberty blockers or hormone therapy.

“Having Sapir at the helm of this project absolutely and completely discredits it as a work of scientific scholarship worthy of the agency,” says Khadijah Silver, director of gender justice and health equity at Lawyers for Good Government. (Sapir declined to comment.)

The nine authors included Duke University professor Farr Curlin, a Christian palliative care doctor who has been arguing since at least 2017 that medical transition for youth is morally problematic and repeatedly testified in favor of banning it. Others were philosophers: MIT professor Alex Byrne, who in 2023 published a book challenging the concept of gender identity, and Colorado State University professor Moti Gorin, who writes frequent commentaries in academic journals criticizing different justifications for transgender care for minors.

Another of the HHS report’s authors was Michael Laidlaw, a private practice endocrinologist who has been publicly speaking against transgender health care since at least 2018. He’s called gender identity “a fantasy or superstitious belief” and said that providers of transgender health care were “deluded by their gender identity phantoms.” At various points, he’s been a member of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), a small but influential group of religious-right doctors originally formed to oppose gay and lesbian couples adopting children, and the Kelsey Coalition—a now-defunct activist group of parents who argued against accepting trans children’s gender identities.

Laidlaw also consulted on one of the earliest bills to ban gender treatments for minors in South Dakota. “These are not physician-patient relationships at all, they are criminal-victim relationships,” he argued in a 2020 email to the bill author. Doctors who provide such care “must be prosecuted by the law,” he insisted.

Laidlaw, with his ties to ACPeds, represents the old guard of religious-right doctors who can be counted on by think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and legal groups like Alliance Defending Freedom to produce research backing conservative social policy on matters like LGBTQ rights and abortion.

But among opponents of transgender health care, there’s also a new guard—neither overtly religious nor partisan. Helping lead it is the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, or SEGM, a controversial advocacy group of clinicians who are highly critical of gender-affirming treatments for minors. Several of the HHS report’s authors have ties to SEGM. Founded in 2019, the group “frames itself as a secular alternative to the major medical, mental health professional associations’ line on gender-affirming care,” says Joanna Wuest, a scholar researching the anti-trans movement at Stony Brook University.

SEGM argues that gender-affirming treatments for youth have an unfavorable risk-benefit ratio: the benefits of treatment are “uncertain,” while the harms, such as the loss of fertility in some cases, are “more certain.” Mainstream medical associations have long taken the opposite stance, citing the evidence that gender-affirming treatments improve mental health and wellbeing for youth with gender dysphoria, as documented in a 2024 review by the University of Utah.

On its website, SEGM says it “opposes all politicization of transgender care” and does not take a position on bans. Yet the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified SEGM as a hate group and described it as the “hub” of an anti-LGBTQ “pseudoscience network” (characterizations SEGM rejects.) According to an analysis by the watchdog group Documented, a trio of therapists who advised SEGM for years have collectively been affiliated with at least six other organizations whose main purpose is to criticize transgender medical care for minors or to promote non-affirming alternatives.

One of SEGM’s cofounders, William Malone, was involved in early anti-trans legislation; he once suggested language for an Idaho bill forbidding trans people from changing their birth certificates. In 2019, Laidlaw wrote in a letter to Malone that one of his long term goals was to make sure that the Endocrine Society, which publishes clinical guidelines for transgender hormone treatments, was “publicly humiliated and sued mercilessly.”

“It might take years, but we’re going to get them,” Malone replied.

One of the HHS report’s scholars previously worked with SEGM to evaluate the evidence for pediatric evidence for gender dysphoria. Three others have reportedly presented at SEGM conferences. And another author is a SEGM cofounder: Evgenia Abbruzzese, a health care researcher and consultant. (In a statement, the organization said it was “not involved” in producing or directing the HHS report. “This is a relatively small and specialized field in which leading researchers and clinicians frequently know one another and regularly present at the same conferences, including those hosted by SEGM. “)

It was at one such conference, in 2024 in Paris, that Abbruzzese pushed the theory that gender-affirming care for minors has become more common not because it’s helpful but because it makes money for doctors and LGBTQ rights organizations. “These same organizations now are fighting to let lesbian girls remove their breasts by calling them trans men,” she argued, “and by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars in litigations when states step in and say no, minors should not be receiving mastectomies.”

Abbruzzese is right about one thing: Supporters of LGBTQ rights do intend to keep fighting back in court—including against the proposed Medicaid regulations. “I feel very confident that if the rules come out as they were in the draft forms, that they’ll be challenged,” says Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law. “There are limits to the federal government’s ability to coerce states to regulate medicine in a particular way.”

To Levi, the potential damage of the Medicaid rule goes beyond the loss of health care for trans kids. “Of course it dramatically harms the transgender community,” she says. “But it ultimately erodes public health because you have an HHS that ignores science. That’s bad for public health. It’s bad for all medical care for anyone.”

Advocates like Levi have already succeeded at countering some of the administration’s attacks. Last year, a federal judge blocked Trump’s original executive order threatening to cut federal funding for providers of trans health care, ruling that it likely was unconstitutional because it violated the separation of powers and discriminated on the basis of sex. Lawsuits have halted at least eight subpoenas sent by the Trump administration to hospitals, seeking trans kids’ sensitive medical records. Then, in March, in a response to a lawsuit brought by 21 states and Washington DC, a federal judge in Oregon ruled that RFK Jr. overstepped his authority when he declared unilaterally that pediatric gender treatments “fail to meet professional recognized standards of health care.”

That ruling will prevent HHS from pulling federal funding from providers—for now. But when the Medicaid regulation is finalized, it will create a new pathway for HHS to go after hospitals. “We see the fellow federal administration trying every which way and center to shut down the care,” Levi says. The sheer number of attacks could help prove in court that the government is motivated by antipathy to trans people, she adds.

The Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services could issue a final version of the rules at any time. When it does, HHS is required to evaluate and respond to the public comments on the regulations. That includes the feedback from Blair’s mom, along with the letters written by other parents, doctors, teachers, and allies.

“My entire job as a pediatrician is to ensure that kids are cared for during some of the most vulnerable times,” wrote a commenter. “I believe this decision is being driven by rhetoric and politics, not what is in the best interest of our kids and their families.” “Please do not do this,” another commenter begged. “You are politicizing my child’s mental and physical health.”

Some commenters who identified as trans kids themselves penned pleas. “Gender affirming care is a step to me feeling that I am safe in my own body,” one wrote. “I have this body for a lifetime, why not make it feel like home?”

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As a queer high school freshman, Geo Tucker did not feel welcome in STEM. He says he endured “a lot of bullying and harassment” for it and that, in his experience and the experience of his peers, queer students are often left out of STEM spaces. 

But with a new initiative that Tucker helped launch, everything has begun to change. “We saw those issues and decided to take some action,” he told LGBTQ Nation. That action is paying off.

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Tucker is now a member of the student-led Tempe, Arizona-based teen robotics team, AZTECH. In addition to building their bots, representing their high school, and fulfilling club duties, the members of AZTECH have also launched Rainbow Robotics, a student-led initiative funded by a grant from the It Gets Better Project that brings STEM opportunities to queer spaces and teaches inclusion and acceptance in STEM. Tucker serves as Business President of AZTech and Initiative Manager of Rainbow Robotics.

LGBTQNation caught up with AZTECH in the middle of a busy day, as they competed with their latest build and also spread some rainbow-tinged cheer. The group has been busy taking its show on the road, hosting booths at events, flyering, and presenting to communities about the Rainbow Robotics initiative, even reaching out to other teams on social media. 

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“My favorite part is talking to other people about it,” says Duncan Stapleton, AZTECH’s Program Lead and the activity book director for Rainbow Robotics, “especially at competitions and other robotics events and LGBTQ events, just talking to people about it and talking about how this is a struggle, but there’s something we can do about it. We’re changing lives and making people feel better about themselves. I struggle with trying to be open on the team, and I think that’s something I really enjoy, seeing people feel like they can be themselves.”

There are multiple prongs to the Rainbow Robotics initiative, including hosting queer-affirming STEM programming and launching an alliance of robotics teams. On April 3rd, Rainbow Robotics is hosting a Teen Resource Fair in partnership with Phoenix Pride, featuring 18 organizations. 

From their efforts, five robotics teams across Arizona and counting have joined the alliance. Tucker says the group has spoken to teams across the country and has been met with excitement. The alliance is also working with one·n·ten, the largest organization in Arizona for LGBTQ+ youth, to bring STEM programming to more communities.

“Whenever we talk to a team who joins the alliance,” Tucker says, “there’s always one student who’s like, ‘I’m queer in STEM and this is amazing to feel represented and have my identity accepted for who I am.'”

Tired of being online

Ariella Assouline, Senior Manager of Programs and Operations at It Gets Better, says so much of the narrative surrounding LGBTQ+ youth involves a life full of crisis. The initiatives funded by the Changemakers grant program create another narrative to impress upon not just local legislators or parents, but on the youth themselves. This story shows queer kids as the messy, multifaceted, changemaking people they are, people who also enjoy life.

“We only hear about the negative bills that are impacting them and the hardship,” Assouline said. “LGBTQ+ youth are varied, they are interesting and they live full and beautiful lives, [and] these lives include creating books that other kids can read, working on 3D-printed dragons. I get chills talking about it.”

Over the past five years, It Gets Better’s Changemakers program has funded 170 youth-led and youth-run projects totaling $1.6 million, but Rainbow Robotics is the first STEM-related initiative. “It was super exciting for our team to see a group of students so dedicated to making sure all students have access to a safe environment to do robotics and other STEM-related ideas,” Assouline says.

In addition to funding, It Gets Better provides structure, reporting, and thought partnership, but it leaves the ultimate vision up to the youth executing the projects. Assouline is consistently impressed by the bravery, creativity, and focus on community of the most recent cohort of Changemakers grantees, Rainbow Robotics included: “Kids are really getting involved in their communities, they’re saying, ‘We’re tired of being only online, we’re tired of not being physically there with our peers.”

In-person connection is a theme throughout the rest of the recent grantee cohort, too. The organization’s first-ever Alaska-based grantees launched a public zine project in which they create monthly art pieces and distribute them across the state to build connections, particularly among Indigenous LGBTQ+ youth. In the St. Louis area of Missouri, students held an LGBTQ+ youth leadership conference that closed out with a drag show.

In Washington, LGBTQ+ youth ran an affirming third space project for their peers. When the recent government shutdown led to a lapse in SNAP benefits, the students switched tactics, using the community space and outreach infrastructure they built to collect nonperishable food, menstrual products, and other supplies for neighbors in need, amassing 2700 pounds of donations for two local food pantries. 

“Kids, they see a gap that needs to be filled and instead of being like, ‘Who’s gonna fill it?’ they’ll say, ‘I will do that,’ and they inspire one another to do the hard work of helping their communities,” Assouline says. 

Initially, the Changemakers grant was restricted to middle and high schools only, in an effort to reach LGBTQ+ youth where they are. As political attacks have escalated against LGBTQ+ people over the past several years, Assouline says recipients have had a more difficult time applying for the funding and implementing programs, especially in more politically restrictive areas. In response, It Gets Better expanded eligibility to nonprofits, allowing youth implementing their initiatives – including the AZTECH team – to continue their work outside the restrictions affecting schools.

Empowering the next generation

While building the bridges between Arizona’s growing tech and engineering communities and LGBTQ+ organizations has been fulfilling, the process of seeking out partners hasn’t been without struggles.

 “We’ve been trying to get local community colleges at the resource fair, but because of how DEI crackdowns and how cutbacks work on the federal level, they’re unsure they’re able to host a booth,” Tucker says. “They want to, but they may receive funding cuts or potentially other issues even if they just show up as an engineering group.”

One of the efforts the AZTECH crew is most excited about is Huehue Finds A Way, a children’s book they are writing. It features illustrations by a Rainbow Robotics member and focuses on perseverance through challenges, collaboration, and understanding differences. The team is still finalizing drawings and dialogue for Huehue Finds A Way and its accompanying activity book. 

Huehue’s name is derived from a previous AZTECH robot, Huehuecoyotl, named for the Aztec trickster god (many of AZTECH’s creations reference Aztec/Nahua language and culture), and the robot’s newfound friends are named for other creations by Rainbow Robotics teams. Huehue begins the story in their shop inside AZTECH’s school. When a big dust storm blows off part of the roof, Huehue travels the Arizona Trail, meeting friends from other robotics teams across the state to work on engineering and sustainability tasks.

Tucker says it was important for the team to highlight Arizona because the state is frequently left out of conversations about the queer community and STEM, especially as budget cuts impact robotics programming across the state. “We’re a giant hub for STEM, and we’re a purple state, so we’re not being in the news for the great stuff or anything awful,” he says. “But we have a giant community, and it’s about getting those teams more exposure.”

The book underscores the intergenerational nature of what Rainbow Robotics is trying to achieve, making it accessible to both young children and adults in the industry. The team is committed to empowering the next generation.

“When those young students start to hear about STEM from that young age, they’re able to start getting into those spaces even sooner,” says Delia Jarvis, AZTECH’s Media Director. “When we’re doing events at our local libraries, using the book or other STEM resources, we’re getting them familiar with the fact they can do those things. Little kids can start to imagine and start figuring out how to solve problems in the world.”

But as exciting as those projects are, the real impact of AZTECH and Rainbow Robotics can often be found in their presence at events and day-to-day interactions with their peers. AZTECH brings pads and tampons to stock all bathrooms at events regardless of how they are gendered, and Jarvis says this has sparked many thoughtful discussions with peers about menstrual equity and access. 

AZTECH is not an entirely queer team, but Tucker estimates around 10 to 15 percent of the 70-person club identifies as such. But as the initiative grows and the Rainbow Robotics leaders have more conversations, they say their classmates and robotics teammates feel empowered to advocate for their queer and trans peers.

“There’s been students on our team who not only learn how to stick up for their LGBTQ+ peers, but also learn a lot about themselves and about preconceived notions of queer spaces,” Jarvis says. “There’s a lot of stereotypes and things that people come into the club with. As we go to LGBTQ+ spaces and get really in the weeds, a lot of people have talked to me about how they’ve learned a lot about not just LGBTQ spaces, but about themselves and how they experience gender and sexuality.”

Inclusivity remains the North Star for the group, especially as a STEM space.

“This is only my second year on the team,” Jarvis says. “If I didn’t have people on the team who accepted me and wanted me there, I wouldn’t be able to make the impact that I have now.”

But challenges remain. Gender and anti-LGBTQ+ bias can appear in subtle ways, like assigning team roles based on stereotypical gendered expectations or assigning lodging for a competition in a way that may not be safe or affirming for an LGBTQ+ team member. 

“A lot of times when we talk about bullying, it feels like an old issue,” Jarvis says. “We’re more accepting, a lot of spaces are more accepting, that bullying doesn’t happen in school or feels like it shouldn’t, but it continues to happen.”

Jarvis and her peers encourage adults who want to be allies to LGBTQ+ youth to be aware and reach out to marginalized students or students who may be separated from their peers to ensure they are being included. “Be active, not passive in your support,” she says. “Make sure you are not only an ally inside, but this is an outward message.”

Tucker emphasizes the importance of proactively reaching out and expressing support for trans youth, who are often silenced or scared into staying closeted due to the hostile national environment and discriminatory policies. AZTECH’s home school, for example, has a gender support plan for trans students, but this cannot be advertised well due to stigma. “Little things like that create massive roadblocks for LGBTQ students,” Tucker says.

Assouline from It Gets Better advises adults who want to put their allyship in action to start with hyperlocal engagement. 

“The school board around you is the most influential force,” Assouline says. “Being able to show up and petition there, that’s what’s actually able to affect kids in public schools and their curriculum.”

Both Assouline and the student leaders of AZTECH and Rainbow Robotics emphasized that it’s going to take everyone to affect the kind of change that LGBTQ+ youth need right now.

“We can be a leader of a culture shift in our entire community, which is incredible,” Stapleton says. “We can’t do that with any single group or single person.”

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After a series of disastrous policies and public delusions of grandeur, Tr*mp tried to call on old habits to regain some good will with voters. But surprise! It didn’t work, and now everyone is seeing the Marie Antoinette parallels that have been there all along.

Yesterday, the White House collaborated with the delivery service DoorDash to stage a dropoff of some Whoppers for Tr*mp, delivered by none other than the viral “DoorDash Grandma,” Arkansas resident Sharon Simmons, who MAGA keeps trotting out whenever it suits them.

But after learning Simmons’ full story, the stunt took on a bleaker cast.

The photo op was meant as a celebration of the “no tax on tips” initiative included in Tr*mp’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” but for Simmons, a grandmother of 10 who has made over 14,000 DoorDash deliveries to afford treatment for her husband’s stage 3 cancer diagnosis, even a tax-free tip doesn’t go far toward the mounting costs created by a broken healthcare system.

Politics, but make it gay!

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Tr*mp’s stunt was a sad attempt to restore his “man of the people” image, but everyone watching saw the same thing: Marie Antoinette reincarnated in 2026.

“A lot of people online are now saying, we would rather have Sharon be at home with should she want to, and instead of having her DoorDash for her husband’s treatment, make her husband’s treatment more affordable,” reported Aaron Parnas.

Leaving aside the fact that no one should have to put in grueling hours delivering food to the wealthy to afford life-saving care for your family, the fact that Tr*mp tipped Simmons $100—a sum that can barely cover half a trip to the grocery store at this point—felt like yet another insult to the millions of Americans in Simmons’ position. “I wouldn’t stand next to him for $100 let alone at a press conference,” said one commenter.” You and me both!

But even worse than all that was the interaction itself. When Tr*mp asked Simmons if she voted for him, she said “maybe,” which most have interpreted as a polite way of saying “Hell no!”

Tr*mp also used the photo op to try and milk an incendiary quote out of Simmons about trans women in sports. Thankfully, Simmons had no comment, because like most Americans, she has way bigger problems than the fake, made up “issue” of trans participation in school sports.

“I really don’t have an opinion on that,” she said. “I’m here about No Tax on Tips.”

On top of everything else, the sh*t really hit the fan when viewers learned that Tr*mp’s no tax on tips initiative seems to only apply to cash tips—an amount which, according to Dashers, makes up less than 1% of the total.

Let them eat DoorDash, I guess!

Sadly, even with Simmons pimping herself out for a pathetic Tr*mp policy, she’s still far short of her goal for her husband’s treatment. While Simmons is proud of her “work ethic,” for many people in her exact position, it doesn’t matter how hard you work. Nearly half of all Americans are just one emergency away from losing their entire life savings, and with rising grocery and gas costs, the problem isn’t going to get better anytime soon.

Related

Marjorie Taylor Greene says Tr*mp’s latest unhinged post displays “Antichrist spirit”
Tr*mp portrayed himself as Jesus in a now-deleted social media post and blasts the Pope as “weak”.

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A CSPAN clip is making the rounds on social media for representing just how bonkers the world has become during the second Trump administration.

In the clip, a monotone voice calmly describes a bizarre series of events: “President Trump spoke to reporters outside the Oval Office after having McDonald’s delivered via the online food ordering service DoorDash.”

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Trump bizarrely brought up trans women during DoorDash stunt & it got awkward

“He then took questions from reporters on several topics, including the ongoing conflict with Iran, and a recent Truth Social Post depiciting himself as Jesus, which he denies, saying he thought it depicted him as a doctor.”

The tone presents the information as entirely routine, which has sent folks into a tailspin over what America has become.

Watch Ricky Martin’s new fiery remake of one of his sultriest ’90s twink videos, then catch up on the latest from Gay TikTok:

Thai men dodged the military draft.

@mothershipsg may the odds be ever in your favour The Thai military conscription lottery, which determines whether eligible men must enter active military service, saw many anxious men awaiting their fate. Each man draws either a red or black card — red signals conscription, while black means exemption from military service. The lottery is held across the country each April, with this year’s running from Apr. 1 to 12. According to The Nation, those required to report this year include Thai men born in 2005, as well as those born between 1997 and 2004 who have never previously undergone military selection, or whose cases have not yet been completed. #mothershipnews #mothershipabroad ♬ original sound – Mothership

Judah made an iconic entrance.

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Paul Marsell gagged the girls.

@paul.marsell.mode Paul Marsell Models Academy & Agency Miami. #professional #model #miami #fashion #show ♬ original sound – Paul Marsell Model's

Andy Hanzlik made dinner.

@pizza_daddy What do you do to unwind after a 12 hour shift? #thoughts #food #spring #fypシ゚viral #thirsttrap ♬ original sound – pizza_daddy

Ian Paget did legs.

Antoni Porowski wore grey sweatpants.

@antoni

creamy Dijon chicken on a bed of melty leaks, chanterelles and prosciutto

♬ original sound – Antoni Porowski

Bubble Buddy did a handstand.

@bubblebutty

♬ Release Me – Agnes

A real life meet cute blossomed at the Heated Rivalry lookalike contest.

@cnn

A “Heated Rivalry” lookalike contest in DC turned into a real-life meet-cute after a viral onstage kiss, with the winners going on an eight-hour date the next day.

♬ original sound – CNN

Jacob Hoff spent the day with his wife and baby.

@jacobmhoff Follow! Like! Share! @Samantha Wynn Greenstone ♬ original sound – Jacob Hoff

Grant Gibbs moonwalked in The Cottage. Yes, that cottage.

And Aleksandr Guzenko jumped in.

@guzenkoaleksandr Полное видео спасения #александргузенко #aleksandrguzenko #мотивация #motivation #health ♬ som original – Z3

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Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) signed a severe anti-trans bill into law last Friday that will require child care providers, health care providers, and educational institutions to out trans kids to their parents if they express any desire to act in a way perceived as discordant with their sex assigned at birth.

The Pediatric Secretive Transitions Parental Rights Act, which will take effect in July, bans folks who care for minors “from facilitating a pediatric sex transition or social transition without informing and obtaining informed consent from a minor child’s parents or guardians.”

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Republican AG says women’s beauty pageants “misled” contestants by letting some trans women compete

The bill aims to close a “loophole” in the state’s anti-trans laws, as cosponsor state Sen. Ben Toews (R) reportedly put it during the state Senate’s debate on the legislation. That loophole, Toews said, is the fact that the state’s gender-affirming care ban does not cover social transitions, which he referred to as “the process by which vulnerable children are led into the pipeline.”

The legislation defines social transition as “the process by which an individual goes from identifying with and living as a gender that corresponds to the individual’s sex to identifying with and living as a gender different from the individual’s sex and may involve social, legal, or physical changes, including adopting a name, pronouns, appearance, or dress that does not correspond to the individual’s sex.”

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The covered entities, then, must notify a student’s parents within 72 hours if they request to be referred to using new pronouns or a different name than their legal name; if they ask to use facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms that don’t correspond with their sex assigned at birth; or if they ask to join a sports team that does not align with their birth sex.

Not doing so, the bill says, means “aiding and abetting” a child’s transition before parental consent is obtained. Parents will also be allowed to sue entities for violating the bill, and the attorney general will be authorized to seek civil penalties of up to $100,000.

Democrats argued against the bill for its vague language and the possibility that it would put children with unaccepting families in unsafe situations.

“When we write these bills, we write these statutes, we’re writing them for all families,” argued state Sen. James Ruchti (D), according to the Idaho Statesman. “And so when nurses, when doctors, when educators, tell us we need a little room to be able to handle these situations carefully… and being required to report this within 72 hours takes that out of our hands, and it means that we have to possibly go to a family… and tell them something that that family may not be in a great place to hear.”

State Sen. Melissa Wintrow (D) called the bill “one more that’s just overcontrolling overreach and just goes far beyond what’s necessary.”

“Life isn’t that black and white,” she said. 

A lone Republican, state Sen. Jim Guthrie, spoke out against the bill, saying it will “force our teachers to be tattletales” and “put additional stress on teachers that are already stressed… already overworked, and more and more they have to deal with laws like this that are going to force them within 72 hours to make a judgment.”

After the legislature passed the bill, ACLU of Idaho spokesperson Rebecca De León called it an “example of unconstitutional, big government overreach into our private lives.”

“HB 822 threatens to undermine bedrock free speech protections for students, teachers, and health care professionals and is clearly unconstitutional,” she said. “Politicians who stand for small government and personal liberties should not regulate how people dress or express themselves.”

Jane Migliara Brigham, a writer for trans news publication The Needle, slammed the bill for turning doctors, teachers, and the like into “a kind of gender secret police.”

“The language is written such that there is no clear limit on what does not constitute social transition,” Brigham explained. “As a result, whether or not some behavior which is not listed here actually constitutes social transition will be in the eye of the beholder, or more accurately, in the eye of whoever is reporting the behavior to the child’s parents. This ambiguity leaves room for personal judgment, especially where that judgment is informed by anti-trans bigotry.”

Brigham questioned whether a boy wearing pink could count as evidence of a social transition and whether the legislation does not make clear where such an act would fall.

“Most casual observers cannot reliably tell the difference between a child who is trans, gay, gender non-conforming, or one who is simply socially awkward. As a result, what does and does not get reported to parents will, in all likelihood, be determined by bigotry and stereotypes, rather than any clear guidelines.”

At the end of March, Little also signed the nation’s most extreme bathroom ban. The law is the fourth in the U.S. to criminalize trans people’s use of bathrooms and other sex segregated spaces that don’t match the sex they were assigned at birth — similar laws have been enacted in Florida, Kansas, and Utah.

Guthrie was again the lone Republican against the bill. “If [a trans woman goes] in the bathroom of their biological sex, they’re going to upset a lot of people and freak people out,” he told the Associated Press. “If they go in the bathroom that is consistent with their looks — they are knowingly and willingly going into the bathroom — that is breaking the law.”

“They’re human beings,” he said, “just like us, and what are they supposed to do?”

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Remember two years ago when Matt Bomer was spotted running on the beach, sporing yellow short-shorts and a lower-back tattoo, and nearly broke the gay internet in the process?

Well, turns out it was all for the Jonah Hill-directed movie Outcome (yes, even the ink!), which is now streaming exclusively on Apple TV. However, it also turns out those short-shorts didn’t make it into the final cut of the film—sorry to be the bearers of bad news!

But the good news is there’s plenty more to enjoy in this star-studded dark comedy, the story of a beloved actor named Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeves), who embarks on an apology tour after a video from his past resurfaces that could threaten to derail his career, and the two childhood best friends Kyle (Cameron Diaz) & Xander (Bomer), who have stuck by his side through it all.

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For Bomer, it wasn’t just the opportunity to hang out with Reeves and Diaz that drew him to the role. He was moved by the fact that, beneath it’s satire of modern fame & cancel culture, Outcome is really about the priceless value of friendship. The kinds that are intimate yet expansive, constant yet complicated; the friendships that see us before we see ourselves, and sustain us over the years.

With the film out now, Queerty took the opportunity to speak with Bomer about why he resonated with the film’s themes, and how the improvisational vibe on set led to “one of the most fun and free experiences, creatively” he’s ever had. As he reveals, the yellow short-shorts weren’t the only thing left on the cutting room floor…. Apple, release the extended cut, ASAP!

You can watch our conversation with Matt Bomer above, or read our full interview with the Outcome star below.

QUEERTY: In Xander’s case, this story isn’t about the fact that he’s gay, but it very much informs his friendship with Reef, which we learn about in a fanatstic scene late in the movie. Can you tell me about finding your way into that moment, emotionally? Is their friendship something you could relate to?

MATT BOMER: I think, if we all were lucky enough to have one friend like Reef who, in our most vulnerable time of adolescence—when we’re all finding each other and a lot of people have insecurities and social dynamics are just falling into place—if you have one friend like that who not only sees your authenticity, but embraces it and demands it of you? I mean, you’re a blessed person!

With anything, it’s always a combination, right? It’s the writing, lived experience, imagined experience, history of the character. And also I was playing a version of Jonah’s co-writer, Ezra Woods, so I had the person I was playing right at the monitor there as well, which is always helpful. So it was a combination of a lot of things, and just a great piece of writing!

But in addition to the writing, I understand that there was sort of this loose, semi-improvisational vibe on set, too, which let you kind of feel these characters out in the moment, right?

I wouldn’t even say semi-improvisational! I think there were some scenes where maybe we did the scripted dialogue once. It wasn’t like a free for all; it was very much Jonah’s brilliant mind kind of just throwing circumstances at us, throwing line lines at us, and not deliveries—he would kind of throw them at us neutrally, and then you’d have to filter it through the character, and find your way into the scene through the character.

But there are some things that are on the cutting room floor! There’s a whole other movie with Cameron and I, things that probably would have changed the rating of the movie! [Laughs.] But it was one of the most fun and free experiences, creatively, that I’ve ever had.

I can say with certainty that there are a lot of gays out there who would pay good money to see the whole other movie with you and Cameron—

Tell it to Apple! This is one of those movies where—and I’m dating myself—back when there were DVD extras, you would have had a field day with this movie!

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A post shared by Apple TV (@appletv)

And at this point I think it’s out there so it’s not spoiling to say that you also have a really great extended moment with Drew Barrymore, another one of our Charlie’s Angels.

Yes! I mean, that was… it was so surreal, because at that point I had been on her show, and there are scenes with she and I that fell to the floor, too, where we’re, like, making out—it really went all over the map! But there was this one run of improv that was really Jonah’s brilliance, where he was like, “Pretend like you have no idea what ET is”—wait, are we spoiling? I should not spoil this; take that back. [Laughs.] But he gave me some circumstances to play with her that are basically in the credit sequence of the film, and they were just hilarious. And he gave me ideas and thoughts about what my character thought about certain things that were just brilliant. I would fall out for, like, a good 30 seconds, and then have to wipe the tears away and then pull myself together and jump back into the scene.

But Drew is like—I mean, I was pinching myself every day, you know? That I was these great artists, and get to laugh with them. There’s nothing that like bonds you together with people better, in my opinion, than laughter. So it was a great.

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Matt Bomer is ushering in Hot Gay Summer a month early.

You and Keanu & Cameron, in particular, do have this really lovely chemistry as friends, and I believe you had never worked with either of them before, but had you at least met prior to stepping onto set?

No, I hadn’t! Look, they’re both icons of cinema, and so formative to my movie-going experience. So it’s a testament to what pro they are, but also how down-to-earth and generous of spirit they are, that we were able to just kind of jump right into it. And it’s also a testament to the writing between Jonah Hill and Ezra Woods—it was based on their friendship, as well as a girlfriend of theirs. And so you felt that nexus of friendship that came from something real in the script when you read it. And so, once we understood their rhythms and their pitter-patter, and the way their dynamics worked, we were able to kind of just dive in.

Well, sadly I have to wrap there, Matt—

Cameron! It’s always good to talk to you—you have a great first name, shared with one of my new friends, Cameron Diaz.

You know, it’s funny, for many years growing up, she was the only other Cameron I ever knew of!

Hey, that’s a good Cameron to have! Thank you; take care!

Outcome is now streaming exclusively on Apple TV.

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‘Mid-Century Modern’ stars Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer & Nathan Lee Graham reveal their first crushes
Find out which silver-screen hunk Nathan Lane says helped him “become a man.”

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Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is going viral for “dogwalking” conservative CNBC Squawk Box host Joe Kernen in a discussion this past Friday about the war in Iran and inflation.

“Last year the president assured us that he ended [Iran’s] nuclear ambitions,” Buttigieg said. “If he wants to come clean with the American people that he failed to do that, then he has to say that before he launches a war.”

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“When a president sends you to war… you do it with some level of confidence, some level of assurance, that your chain of command, all the way up to the president of the United States, would not do this if they didn’t have a choice,” Buttigieg said later in the exchange.

Kernan defended Trump’s invasion of Iran during the exchange, saying that Iran had “slaughtered” its own people. He brought this up after Buttigieg noted that Trump said that he ended Iran’s nuclear program last year, before using the possibility of an Iranian nuclear program to invade this year.

“How do you feel about that regime being left intact by this president?” Buttigieg responded.

When discussing the economy, Buttigieg pointed out that Trump ran on the promise of lowering inflation on “day one” of his second term, but inflation is up in his first year in office and is likely to continue rising because of the war in Iran.

“There’s no obvious way out now. But I want to make sure that this ends in a way that, first of all, our economy can recover, that we’re not paying so much for gas. Right now, oil’s 100 bucks, jet fuel’s 200 bucks, gas is over four bucks, diesel’s like $5.50 and up,” Buttigieg said.

Kernan then said that gas cost an average of $3.80 during President Joe Biden’s tenure – it was actually $3.50, according to The Independent – and Buttigieg responded by pointing out that inflation was lower when Biden left office than it is today.

“His central campaign promise was he was going to take inflation and drive it down, and instead, he took inflation, and it’s up,” Buttigieg said.

“Pete Buttigieg absolutely shreds CNBC host on Iran war and Trump’s broken inflation promises” was the headline that The Independent ran with its story on the exchange.

“This is not a debate in any sense of the word,” commentator David Pakman said on his podcast, after he said that Buttigieg “dogwalked” Kernan. “When one person loses control of their ability to think and their ability to remain calm, this is what it looks like.”

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A DoorDash worker and Republican policy advocate hired by the White House to deliver McDonald’s to Donald Trump yesterday refused to agree with the president when he bizarrely brought up trans women participating in sports as their lived gender, apropos of nothing.

Sharon Simmons, who has previously testified before a congressional committee in support of GOP policy, delivered two bags of McDonald’s food to the White House yesterday, the one-year anniversary of the GOP’s “no tax on tips” policy. Trump tipped her $100.

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“This doesn’t look staged, does it?” Trump asked as she dropped off the food.

There was an awkward moment during that delivery when Trump asked Simmons: “Do you think that men should play in women’s sports?”

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“I really don’t have an opinion on that,” she responded.

Trump, apparently not able to comprehend that the person hired for the stunt wasn’t playing along, pressed her: “You don’t? I bet you do.”

She tried to say she was there to talk about the “no tax on tips” policy, but Trump interrupted her and said she was there because of “pizza.” McDonald’s does not sell pizza.

“Yeah, OK,” he said, patting her arm.

During their conversation, Trump also asked Simmons whether she had voted for him, according to The Daily Beast.

“Um, maybe,” she responded.

“I heard you’re a great supporter,” Trump replied. “We appreciate it.”

Some people online noticed that Simmons looked familiar and found a clip of her testifying in support of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025. Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN) posted about other testimony on X last year, saying that she has “financial breathing room thanks to @HouseGOP.”

Trump has a history of bringing up his opposition to equal rights for transgender people at strange moments, sometimes just barking out phrases like “Transgender operations for everybody” and “woke trans bulls**t” while talking about other topics. Trump has admitted in the past that he brings up transgender issues just to get approval from his immediate audience.

Simmons said she is using the “no tax on tips” policy to pay for her husband’s cancer treatments, though the income tax exemption she’s receiving apparently isn’t enough to cover the costs the way an employer-provided health care plan might (DoorDash drivers are independent contractors). The Daily Beast reports that Simmons’ son-in-law set up a GoFundMe for her husband’s cancer treatments, which raised $834 of its $2,400 goal by the time of publication.

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After President Donald Trump posted a now-deleted AI-generated image of himself as Jesus on Sunday night, numerous MAGA Christian conservatives criticized the image as blasphemous. Transphobic MAGA influencer Riley Gaines was among them. When a reporter asked Trump about her reaction, he said he’s “not a big fan of hers,” despite prominently featuring her on a government website to spread her anti-trans views.

Trump posted the image after publishing a rant against Pope Leo XIV for repeatedly criticizing Trump’s illegal war in Iran. In response, many anti-LGBTQ+, pro-Trump Christian influencers issued social media messages condemning the image and telling Trump to delete it, including racist pastor Joel Webbon (who called Trump “demon possessed”), transphobic Daily Wire contributor Michael Knowles, accused evangelist Sean Feucht, Pete Hegseth’s pastor Douglas Wilson, and Gaines.

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Republican AG says women’s beauty pageants “misled” contestants by letting some trans women compete

Gaines — who has said that trans people want to “normalize pedophilia” — wrote on X, “Why? Seriously, I cannot understand why he’d post this. Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this? Either way, two things are true. 1) A little humility would serve him well. 2) God shall not be mocked.”

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On Monday, Trump deleted the post and, when asked by reporters, claimed that the image depicted him as a Red Cross doctor (even though modern-day doctors don’t wear robes like the one Trump wore in the image).

Then, CBS reporter Norah O’Donnell asked Trump whether he deleted the image after pushback from conservatives like Gaines. Trump replied, “I didn’t listen to Riley Gaines. I’m not a big fan of Riley, actually.”

Despite his claim, last year, Trump prominently featured Gaines on a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “women’s health” webpage whose language echoes the president’s transphobic executive orders seeking to demonize trans people as a threat to women and kids.

Gaines became an anti-trans activist after she tied for fifth place with a trans woman at a swim meet four years ago. She has repeatedly praised Trump and other anti-trans conservatives for their support of policies banning trans girls and women from playing sports on girls’ and women’s teams.

In a response published on X yesterday, Gaines wrote, “I love the President and I’m so grateful he’s in the Oval Office. Of course, I’ll continue to support him and the America First agenda. At the end of the day, I do nothing for the approval of man. Our purpose on this earth is to glorify Him in all we do. The truth social post missed the mark. It’s now deleted. Amazing!”

“We’re imperfect people,” she continued. “I know I am. I don’t get my feelings hurt easy and I know with the President it’s really not personal. I want to spend eternity in a real place called Heaven. I’d love for Trump to be there too. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. I’ll keep doing my part by speaking truth & doing my best to lead others to Christ. (and no, I won’t be selling merch with his insults on them hahaha).”

Despite Gaines’ wishes, Trump said last October, “I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to get me into heaven. I think I’m not maybe heaven-bound.”

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Out Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent allowed Donald Trump donor Elon Musk and his team access to the payment system used by the federal government. Musk is threatening to illegally stop spending mandated by Congress and has ordered the shutdown of USAID, which delivers humanitarian aid on behalf of the United States, claiming that Donald Trump wants him to. Trump does not have the authority to end USAID.

According to reporting from several media outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post, and the New York Times, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury David Lebryk has been put on leave because he tried to stop Musk and his team from getting access to the payment system and the data it uses this past Friday. Lebryk has been in charge of the system that issues payments on behalf of the federal government for the last 15 years and is known for his “unparalleled” understanding of the system, according to Rolling Stone.

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“To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. “I am concerned that mismanagement of these payment systems could threaten the full faith and credit of the United States.”

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Reuters reported that Musk and his team had locked out the civil servants whose jobs were to actually run the payment system and gave his unvetted team called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to the personal data of millions of federal employees. DOGE is not a real federal executive department, and its unvetted team includes young college graduates between the ages of 19 and 24 who have little to no governmental experience and no security clearances.

The billionaire said that he intends to cut $4 billion in federal spending per day until September 30. The system that he accessed handles payments for Social Security, government salaries, tax refunds, and contractors hired by the government.

Neither Musk nor Trump have the authority to stop payments for spending ordered by Congress. It’s unclear what will happen if Musk gets the Trump adminsitration to stop payments illegally, but people could challenge his decisions in court. It’s unclear if the Trump administration would respect court decisions if they’re willing to ignore Congress’ spending decisions, and the takeover of the payment system could prevent career government employees from following court orders in defiance of Trump’s unilateral spending decisions.

This is a massive power grab, and Bessent has been key in creating this constitutional crisis. The New York Times reports that he gave Musk access to the payment system on Friday as part of an agreement, the same day that Lebryk was put on leave and then announced his sudden retirement. Bessent, an anonymous official told Politico, agreed to a plan that would give Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause access to the payment system to act as a liaison between Musk’s DOGE and the Treasury.

“The secretary’s approval was contingent on it being essentially a read-only operation,” the source said, referring to the code of the system that processes payments.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Musk “won’t have direct authority to stop individual payments or make other changes” under the agreement. But Musk getting access to the code of the payment system suggests that he is considering rewriting that code, and Bessent could be a willing accomplice in implementing those changes.

The payment system, run by the Bureau of Fiscal Service, is “studiously apolitical,” according to Lily Batchelder, Treasury secretary for tax policy under former President Joe Biden. This runs counter to Musk’s and Trump’s belief, according to the Wall Street Journal, that the system should be run by political appointees. Politicizing the payment system could allow Trump to bypass court decisions forcing the government to spend money authorized by Congress, removing a safeguard to Trump unilaterally — and illegally — cutting federal programs.

Musk said over the weekend on social media that the payment system had been sending money to “known fraudulent or terrorist groups,” but he didn’t provide any evidence. The Bureau of Fiscal Service has safeguards in place to prevent improper payments and it seems unlikely that Musk would have been able to spot such payments in mere hours that the Bureau hadn’t noticed in years.

He also complained that the Bureau hasn’t refused to send a payment that it was ordered to in its history, even though it does not have the legal authority to veto spending authorized by Congress.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has called for a congressional investigation into the events.

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After Melania issued a rare public statement Thursday downplaying her association with Jeffrey Epstein, observers were left with a single question: why? No, seriously, why?!

Her husband’s ties to the convicted sex criminal aren’t exactly a secret. In fact, they’ve pretty much swallowed up the entire first year of his latest presidency.

“The lies linking me to the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today,” she said, without referencing any specific lies that needed to end.

But as more information is revealed, it appears the possible explanation for Melania’s curious denial traces back to a Brazilian model and potential whistleblower.

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Let’s dive in. But, bear with us, because it’s a twisty tale…

Who is Amanda Ungaro?

It all starts with a story in the New York Times about a longtime Tr*mp friend who asked ICE to detain the mother of his child so he could win a custody battle that flew under the radar recently.

Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent and current presidential envoy, reached out to a top ICE official when he learned his ex, Amanda Ungaro, had been arrested on fraud charges in Florida.

Ungaro first arrived in New York as a 17-year-old model on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane in 2002. Later that year, she met Zampolli at a Manhattan night club. They entered into a relationship, had a kid together, but never married, and eventually broke up in 2023.

According to documents, Zampolli told the ICE agent that Ungaro was in the country illegally, and asked if she could taken into custody, hoping her detainment would help him win custody of the couple’s teenage son.

“The [ICE] official, David Venturella, promptly called the agency’s Miami office to ensure that ICE agents would pick up [Ungaro] from the jail before she was released on bail,” reports the Times.

OK, but what does this have to do with Melania?

Well, Zampolli is credited with bringing the future FLOTUS to the United States when she was a model in Slovenia, as well as with introducing her to Tr*mp at the Kit-Kat Club in 1998, a story that she referenced Thursday.

“Epstein did not introduce me to D*nald Tr*mp,” she said. “I met my husband by chance at a New York City party in 1998. This initial encounter with my husband is documented in detail in my book.”

Who is Paolo Zampolli?

Described as a “low-level” Tr*mp ally, Zampolli is the president’s special representative for global partnerships. His ties to Tr*mp go back decades, a fact that he often mentions, per the Times.

Judging by his official Instagram, his job consists of posing for a lot of pictures. He even has his own chyron…

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by AMB PAOLO ZAMPOLLI (@ambassadorzampolli)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by AMB PAOLO ZAMPOLLI (@ambassadorzampolli)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by AMB PAOLO ZAMPOLLI (@ambassadorzampolli)

Like many ultra rich men living in Manhattan in the ’90s and ’00s, Zampolli crossed paths with Epstein and is referenced several times in the Epstein Files, a fact that he appears… to be proud of???

“At least I was included,” he told the Times. “Because if you’re not on the list, you’re a loser, right?”

Epstein, however, didn’t appear to hold Zampolli in such high-esteem. In a 2011 email, he warned an Emirati businessman that the guy was “trouble” and “sells stories to the press.”

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Siccing ICE on his ex

For years, Zampolli maintained a warm correspondence with the Tr*mps, and Melania in particular. “OMG You are always the best!!!!!!” he texted her in 2015. “Let’s meet Sooooon XOXO.”

By the end of Tr*mp’s first term, Zampolli was appointed to the board of the Kennedy Center. Ungaro followed him to D.C. But in 2023, the Times reports she became fed up with Zampolli’s womanizing, dumped him, and took their son to Florida.

There, she married a wealthy Brazilian doctor, and the two ran a cosmetic medical practice together… until last June, when they were arrested over fraud accusations. While Ungaro’s husband has a green card, her visa had expired in 2019. Zampolli used that against her.

Interestingly, Zampolli doesn’t deny that he called ICE about Ungaro’s case. He says he just wanted to “find out information.” Notes of a top ICE official’s calls to the agency’s Miami office indicate otherwise, however.

“During the call, Mr. Venturella noted that [Ungaro’s case] was important to someone close to the White House,” the outlet reports.

Ungaro was placed in ICE custody and ultimately deported to Brazil. The couple’s son initially moved with her, but now lives back in the U.S.

Melania’s denials

In a statement to the Times, Melania denied “having knowledge of, nor involvement in, the personal affairs of Mr. Zampolli and Ms. Ungaro.” And a spokesperson said FLOTUS has “no contact or engagement” with ICE.

But that’s not the case when it comes to Epstein or his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. In the wake of her appearance, reporters dug up a fawning 2002 email FLOTUS wrote to Maxwell, whom she calls “G.”

“Shut your mouth when speaking about me”

Then this week, Ungaro–or at least someone claiming to be her–started posting veiled threats towards Melania and fired AG Pam Bondi.

Though Ungaro doesn’t directly reference Epstein, the implication is apparent, especially after Melania’s remarks yesterday.

On top of that, Ungaro apparently taped an interview with a TV station in Spain that’s slated to air this weekend.

Could Melania have been trying to get out ahead of some salacious accusations? We’ll be watching!

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We’re sure we don’t have to tell you, but one the best parts of Heated Rivalry was the sex.

Yes, because it was hot, but more importantly because it was frank, intimate, and felt like an authentic expression of the heated romance blossoming between Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) & Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie).

How about we take this to the next level?

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In that sense, credit is due to series creator-writer-director Jacob Tierney, who saw the spark in Rachel Reid’s source novel and fought to bring it to the screen with no concessions. Sure, that might’ve meant he had to produce it in Canada with a much smaller budget, but that also meant he could approach the sex scenes with an honesty we rarely get to see between two queer men on TV.

And that’s why Tierney was perfect for the job: He’s always been refreshingly open when it comes to sex & sexuality, actively combating stigma around the topics every step of the way.

In fact, a clip of the actor-filmmaker candidly discussing his HIV status has recently resurfaced, and fans are applauding him for speaking so openly about his health challenges while also sharing a message of optimism and hope.

Back in 2022, Tierney was a guest on comedian Zach Noe Towers’ podcast Good Morning, Sodomites!—well before most of the world knew the power of the phrase, “I’m coming to the cottage.”

At the time, he was perhaps best known as the co-creator and star of Canadian sitcom Letterkenny, so while technically promoting that series, he & Towers appear to have already been good friends, and their fantastic rapport keeps things loose & funny as they gabbed about a wide range of topics, from dog food to narcissistic exes to their p*rn preferences.

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But it’s when the podcast host asked Tierney about how being Diabetic has impacted his sex life that the conversation turned toward his status:

“As you know, I am undetectable, I’m HIV-positive undetectable,” Tierney shared at the time. “And I acquired HIV when I was 34, and it was really, really bad. I got very, very very sick, lost a lot of weight, had a lot of bad medical complications that a lot of people don’t.”

In his words, whoever gave it to him was “off their meds” and was “very high viral,” “so please stay on your meds,” he said while looking into the camera.

As Towers clarifies, this was “post-cocktail”—a time beginning in ’96 when HIV was treated with a therapy combining antiretroviral drugs that significantly reduced fatalities, making the disease a more manageable chronic condition—yet only a year before the introduction of PrEP, according to Tierney.

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A post shared by Jacob Tierney (@jacob.tierney)

Unfortunately, after that, the filmmaker also developed Type 1 diabetes and got really sick again because of it, yet his doctor thought the symptoms might’ve been a reaction to the medication he was already taking, so he went undiagnosed for many months.

It was his other doctor—the one he went to for HIV treatment—that finally diagnoses his diabetes, and not a moment too soon: apparently he was only two weeks away from complete kidney failure, or “a coma nobody could ever get you out of.” Thank goodness for thorough medical professionals!

“There was like a year and a half where I just was basically dying all the time,” Tierney revealed. “And that period of time definitely changed the way that I approach a lot of things, because the thing they tell you when you get HIV is that this is easier to live with than Type 1 diabetes, which is 100% true, but the stigma is insane. So then getting Type 1 diabetes the next year… it just takes a long time to recalibrate into just feeling a normal, functioning, healthy person.”

In terms of HIV, Tierney is a “full disclosure person,” reminding Towers that in Canada it is considered a criminal offense by not disclosing, even if undetectable, because “the laws have not officially caught up yet.”

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Though this podcast was initially recorded in spring of ’22, Towers savvily uploaded it in full to his YouTube channel in light of Heated Rivalry‘s success launching Tierney to new levels of fame & acclaim. In the months since, fans have flocked to the video’s comments, sharing their appreciation for the showrunner’s wit & candor, even when discussing heavier topics like his status.

“I can see why Jacob [is] such a magnificent director,” one viewer writes. “The open communication and ease with which he discusses the most intimate details must make actors know exactly what he is aiming for. What a gift to the world he is.”

“[It’s] moving how open, vulnerable and real he is,” adds another, “willing to not protect ego but shared a [life lived] honestly… Many will hear Jacob’s story and be strengthened.”

And this week on X, user @_mika60_ shared the clip of Tierney discussing his dual diagnoses, which has since gone viral to the tune of nearly 400k views and counting. They highlighted just how far we’ve come in terms of HIV treatment and stigma, reminding us how lucky we are to have artists like Tierney still with us, “creating beautiful things” and sharing them with the world.

“Here in NYC the scars left by the worst era of HIV/AIDS are still fresh and likely permanent,” @_mika60_ shares in the thread. If anyone still doubts Jacob’s intentions behind queer joy storytelling, I don’t know what more to say, really.

They continue: “Also important to remember that those diagnosed today can live completely normal lives due to significant, wonderful advancements in prevention and treatment. What’s critical still is ensuring that all marginalized communities around the world receive the same level of care!”

So in case you need a reminder that not all of fandoms are toxic, here’s a Heated Rivalry fan not only sharing Jacob Tierney’s story, but taking the opportunity to advocate for HIV care & education around the world!

You can watch the rest of Jacob Tierney’s conversation with Zach Noe Towers on the Good Morning, Sodomites! podcast at the embed above, or listen to it right here. And for mrer from Towers, don’t miss his new stand-up special Twink Death, which drops April 24 on his YouTube channel.

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On social media, gaymer and fitness coach Kevin McDonald goes by yourfriendkevin — but after looking at his pics, you’ll want him to be more than a friend.

On Twitch, McDonald streams games from Pokémon to Dark Souls to The Last of Us, as well as hosting a monthly book club with his followers. But the real action is on his TikTok, where McDonald sports more than 222,000 followers. Many of them came for the shirtless flexing, but stuck around for his mix of comedy and cultural commentary, like his snarky takedown of AAA games. 

In his Instagram bio, McDonald describes himself as “a little bit Hank Green, a little bit Sean Cody,” an accurate assessment based on a quick scroll through his page. He loves to show off his hairy body, posting photoshoots in singlets, thongs, leather, and even totally bare (or as close as Instagram will allow).

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He’s also friends and a frequent collaborator with Darby Lynn Cartwright and Alexis P. Bevels, the iconic drag queens behind Queerty winner for Best Webseries IMHO: The Show. 

And he’s also collaborated with hilarious and prolific queer comedian Michael Henry on some of his hysterical videos.

As if his body wasn’t enough, McDonald is also community-minded and frequently hosts charity streams where viewers can pay for him to show off. One of his most recent streams was raising money for Trans Empowerment Project, a charity that provides direct aid to disabled queer and trans people of color.

Sexy, funny, smart and kind-hearted — what’s not to like?

And if you’re still not a fan, McDonald’s got plenty of thirst traps to win you over.

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A post shared by Kevin McDonald (@yourfriendkevin_)