Mark Segal was a witness to history and a participant on “just another night out” at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969.

The soon-to-be activist was just 18 when he arrived in New York City a few weeks before from his hometown in Philadelphia. He discovered Greenwich Village not long after, and “nirvana.”

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In the days, months, and years that followed the uprising against cops that night at the Christopher Street bar, Segal became a central figure in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. His latest project is curating the new Philly Pride Visitor Center, unveiled just in time for America 250 celebrations at the site of the nation’s founding.

Segal dispensed with “Hello” when he picked up the phone for his interview with LGBTQ Nation and started right in with his own question.

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Mark Segal: Good afternoon, Greg. How are you doing?

LGBTQ Nation: I’m well, Mark. How are you today?

Overwhelmed by all of the Pride things.

I know, it’s the season, right?

It is the season, but it seems to get more and more crazy every year. But you know what, that’s a great thing. I remember when we did it once a year on one day, so that was back in 1970, and look at what’s happened since. Kind of wonderful.

How old are you, Mark?

I’m 75. I’m an old man.

That makes it your Diamond Jubilee year.

You know what? It’s really great, because if you consider the alternative, it’s not so great. I’m a very happy old man.

You don’t sound so old. I have a feeling you sound exactly the same as you did back in 1970.

So that’s an interesting point. I don’t know. The most important thing is, my husband says I’m still cute. That really counts. I’m a very lucky man in a place none of us back in 1969 expected, right? It’s all good.

I’d like to talk about some of the mythology around Stonewall and get your views as a participant and witness. Stonewall has been described by people both advancing LGBTQ+ rights and those attacking them differently and the same, depending on their motivation. On the attacking side, just a couple of weeks ago, a school board in Wisconsin canceled a performance because a piece of music that students were scheduled to perform honored trans icon Marsha P. Johnson, who one board member described as “a cross-dressing prostitute who threw a brick at a police officer at Stonewall.” Another said the music would inspire the same kind of “political violence” that Stonewall did. A statement from the board called Stonewall “a six-day riot, which included police officers and attempting to burn down a building with human beings trapped inside.” Some LGBTQ+ activists might agree with those characterizations and applaud them. So, let me get your take on some common assumptions or misconceptions about that night, and whether or not they’re true. Number one, was Stonewall “a riot,” and is that a pejorative, or a label to embrace? And if it wasn’t a riot, what do you call it?

A revolution.

Number two, true or false: Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick.

False.

What are the facts around that?

There was no brick. I mean, there are many myths about Stonewall, and one of them is, “Who threw the first brick?” Well, there was no first brick, and the people who are attributed to have been throwing the first brick say some very contradictory things themselves in recordings that have been made since that time. Primarily, the people attributed to the brick were Sylvia and Marsha, my sisters from Gay Liberation Front, and both of them said contradictory things years after that happened. Marsha said that she was uptown and was up there till 2:00 am in the morning, and Sylvia said she was part of it, but maybe she didn’t throw a brick.

How long did the riot last?

Good question. So when I’m asked that question, I say, well, on that evening alone, hours. But my true answer is 365 days, because right after the riot, we were out there every single night leafleting in one way or another.

One night, we were out leafleting for maybe, “If you get arrested, this is where you can go. These are people you could see for your legal issues.” Another might be, “If you have medical issues and you’re afraid to talk to your own doctor, here are other people you can see.” Another was, “We’re angry gay people. We’re forming this new organization called Gay Liberation Front, and we would like you to join us. And here’s where we’re meeting.” These were revolutionary.

Since before Stonewall, if you were out on Christopher Street, our gayborhood, and you stopped on a corner, and you started talking with a group of your friends, the police would come along and maybe say, “Move along, people like you are not allowed to congregate.” Here we were defying the police, not only congregating, but leafleting to organize our community directly in front of the police, basically taunting them.

We also created social organizations. We created the first gay youth organization, we created the first trans organization, and if all of that were not enough, to celebrate the new community we created, and to mark the first anniversary of Stonewall, we created the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, which created the first gay Pride march. Not bad for one year.

Another assumption or misconception: gay men led the uprising to the exclusion of trans people, or trans people led it, alienating gay men.

Oh, I mean, that line has been around for years. The obvious thing to realize is there were two groups of people at Stonewall: one group comprised people who lived in the area, had good jobs in the area, and as soon as they got outside of Stonewall, you know, they ran for the subway, or to catch a taxi, or just to get out of the area. The group that remained was a mix of disenfranchised people, people like me, who had no vision of what their future would be, marginalized people, and young activists. We were a very mixed group, and that included people of color and trans people.

I mean, it’s a riot. Does anyone take a roll call at a riot? It’s difficult to stand there in the middle of a riot and count different people moving around or being chased by police.

Another assumption or misconception: rioters tried to kill cops.

I think for the most part, LGBT people were defending themselves against the cops. Remember, the cops came in, brutalized the gay community inside a place we thought was safe, right? We were safeguarding ourselves.

Unfortunately, the earlier reports of Stonewall were written by straight white guys who gave their own slant to it — in the Village Voice, by a white straight guy who just happened to be friendly with Inspector Pine, who led the raid. So, which side do you think he would be more sympathetic to?

What was he doing there?

Good question! In all these years, I never said that or thought that, even. That is great. Was he called beforehand? Good point.

Last question on that topic. True or false, people died at Stonewall.

No.

Have you seen that great clip from Drag Race about their discussion of Stonewall?

Luckily, no.

Yeah, it’s one queen correcting another: “Nobody was killed at Stonewall.” It’s pretty funny.

The last time I watched Drag Race was when RuPaul was going on about how “We were there,” and the reason it all happened was Judy Garland, which is my least favorite of the myths. That gets me real angry. You know, people of my generation didn’t really care about Judy Garland. We were into Barbra Streisand and listening to Let the Sunshine In by the 5th Dimension. That was our generation. Judy Garland wasn’t. I like to ask people, what the hell did Judy Garland ever do for our community?

She wasn’t particularly proactive.

(Laughing) No.

What’s changed for the LGBTQ+ community since Stonewall, and what’s the pre-Stonewall era that Donald Trump and his supporters would like to return us to?

Oh, that’s like 12 questions in one. What has changed? Well, before you called, I was on the phone talking to the people who are putting together the July 4 celebration in Philadelphia, and that will include a parade that will be passing by Independence Mall, with an LGBT float. Think about that. They are creating a float for the LGBT community to be part of America’s independence. And where? In front of the symbol of America, Independence Hall. I am so proud that my city and my state take our history, and their history as part of the LGBT movement, very seriously.  

Philadelphia became the first city, not only to hold LGBT demonstrations, but it’s also the first city to open a citywide LGBT Pride visitor center for LGBT tourists, and that was paid for by state money. Our state wanted LGBT people to feel comfortable and welcomed in Pennsylvania. That’s sort of amazing.

What’s the era that Trump and his supporters would like to take us back to?

Oh, they’d like to take us back to before 1969, and in that case, I could use my own example.

I grew up in the late 50s and the early 60s, and when I grew up and realized who I was, I knew instinctively that I couldn’t tell my parents, I knew I couldn’t tell my friends, but I didn’t understand why. We had no internet, no social media. The only thing we had were TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers, and guess what? I couldn’t find out anything in any of those, so therefore I had one place to turn to, which was the public library. And when I went to the public library, I found five books. What did I discover? Let’s see, I found that in the psychological department, I was psychologically unsound. I found in the criminology department that I was probably a criminal. I learned in the religion department that I was probably not moral, and I learned basically that I would end up having a very lonely, sad life. That’s what this 13-year-old kid learned, and that was pretty upsetting.

But for me, luckily — and I guess it was the way I was raised — I didn’t feel there was anything wrong with me. But I didn’t understand why society felt that way, and luckily for me, again, I saw a show on PBS late one night, and they had real live homosexuals on TV. They said they lived in a place called Greenwich Village in New York.

So on May 10, 1969, when I graduated high school, I hightailed it to New York. Checked into the Sloane House YMCA on 34th Street, and that night went looking for people who were like me. I eventually found Christopher Street and nirvana. That began my education on who I was, and also who we were.

I love the quote that’s on your website from a friend who said, “Mark was so busy helping to create the sexual revolution that he didn’t have time to participate.” Did you really have no time to get laid in the 1970s? And what were you missing out on in New York then if you didn’t?

(Laughing) You know what? I think you just stumped me.

I think that quote was from Mark Horn, who was a member of Gay Youth and is a member of the Gay Liberation Front Foundation. We talk very often. I mean, I’m very lucky that I have the LGBT friends that I’ve had for over 50 years, and most of them I grew up with. I was 18 years old when I got to New York, and the friends I didn’t have in high school? Well, then I got them.  

You famously zapped through this period, including crashing the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. There have been some satirical protests confronting Trump, like that video at the Housing and Urban Development headquarters of Trump caressing Elon Musk’s feet with the caption “Long live the real king.” And statues erected on the National Mall by Secret Handshake, which are pretty effective statements. None have been as far-reaching as some of your zaps. Do we need more protests like yours now, and what’s your advice for activists?

I love you for this question. I think we need to get back to that form of activism. I was doing an interview about the gubernatorial race here in Pennsylvania, and someone asked me, “What’s the difference between a politician who’s an ally and an LGBT activist like yourself?” And I said, you know, I’m willing to chain myself to something and get arrested. They’re there to change policy. My purpose is to give visibility to the policy.

Gay liberation’s motto was “Out loud and proud!” and I took that to mean we had to become more visible, because if you become more visible, you’re no longer that green-eyed monster in the closet. That’s what Gay Liberation Front started. And I’d like to believe that I took that a lot further along by disrupting the Today Show, The Tonight Show, and Walter’s show. We were able to be seen by millions of people. They might not like what I did, but they discussed it. Discussion brings education, and education eventually brings equality.   

How old were you when you came out?

I came out to my mother when I was 18. I was living in New York. I had become president of Gay Youth, and I thought, gee, you know, might be a good thing to tell my parents what I’m doing.

I guess they didn’t know you were at the riot.

Yeah, I mean, nobody knew about the riot anywhere in the nation. There were only like three reports of it, in The New York Times, The Village Voice. I mean, there were no news vans in those days, no radio covered it, no TV covered it. We were invisible, and even our riot was invisible, almost.

When do you think Stonewall became “historical,” in the sense that people started referring to it as a milestone in the history of LGBTQ+ rights?

That’s difficult for me to say, because it’s always been in my life. But the first time I remember it being historical is when we created Stonewall 25. Yeah. That’s when I thought of it as historical to some extent.

It still is difficult for me to process it being historical, you know, because for me it was just another night out, until it wasn’t.

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A high school Pride Month display telling students to “Have a Gay Summer!” sparked conservative outrage across the country after an angry parent shared a photo of the message on social media.

In the photo at Massachusetts’s Dartmouth High School, the bright-colored letters are taped to a bulletin board, along with two Pride flags, a photo of Marsha P. Johnson, a photo of Harvey Milk, a photo of Alan Turing, and a grid of rainbow Post-it notes containing positive messages like “love yourself” and “you’re amazing.”

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“This is NOT ok,” wrote parent Lynne Turner on social media, alongside a snapshot of the display. “It needs to be removed and an apology needs to be made to the children and parents of Dartmouth kids. Schools are supposed to educate and prepare students for successful careers, as well as give them skills for life.”

“DHS, pushing gay ideology on our youth is NOT your place!!!”

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Turner continued to update her post as she communicated with school officials. She said the principal told her the board was created by a student-led Gay/Straight Alliance group and approved by the group’s adult sponsor.

“He does not have a problem with it because he feels that the messages are positive on the sticky notes…. He said the bulletin board will be up for another week, until school gets out.”

She continued, “I let him know the photo is online and I told him the problem many of us have is not the positive affirmations on the small sticky notes, but in the big words telling everyone to, ‘Have a Gay Summer’. This message is NOT inclusive, it is suggesting their gay orientation for everyone, or for ‘gay’ acts to occur over summer. I also suggested that some people see this as grooming…”

She said the principal did not agree that it was grooming and also said he “highly doubts that someone walking by the bulletin board will want to become gay.”

“I responded that I think it does promote becoming gay, or considering being gay… and joining the club… especially for kids who feel like they don’t really fit in other places, or are lonely,” Turner said. “I told him I thought the large words were inappropriate, and that he should make a public apology and change the words.”

The principal refused, she said, adding that she has now moved on to campaigning for the superintendent.

GOP state legislative candidate Chester Tam reposted Turner’s message and added his own disapproving thoughts about the bulletin board.

“Public schools are funded by all taxpayers and their job is to teach kids academics and critical thinking,” Tam said, “not promote specific sexual identities or activist messaging on the walls. A plain ‘have a great summer’ sign works just fine. One-sided ideological stuff like this is where a lot of reasonable people draw the line.”

In the replies, he also claimed the message wasn’t inclusive to all students.

The rapidly anti-LGBTQ+ account, Libs of TikTok – which has been accused of stochastic terrorism – also picked up the story, sparking hundreds of comments from folks who saw the board as “an alarming sign of a degenerating society.”

“That really is obscene,” one person wrote. “It’s a groomers mentality that would do something like this.”

Turner’s own post has also garnered over a thousand comments on Facebook alone. Folks called it “unacceptable,” “disturbing,” and “disgusting,” and called for the teacher in charge to be fired.

Some did jump to the LGBTQ+ community’s defense. One person noted, “Are you aware that kids enter puberty in their teens or earlier? Sex is on their brains and they need honest, knowledgeable support no matter what their sexuality is.”

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A transgender woman and community fixture in Birmingham, Alabama was found dead in the city’s jail last week, part of a pattern of neglect and deplorable conditions in the facility, trans advocates say. Another inmate died just three days later after an attempted suicide, according to city officials.

Kalena “Peaches” Croskey, a 32-year-old Black trans woman, was found unresponsive during a routine check at Birmingham City Jail last Thursday afternoon and couldn’t be resuscitated, WTVM News reported.

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Jail staff tried to save her life and called for medical assistance, according to the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office/ Croskey was later declared dead at the scene.

TAKE Resource Center, a local trans advocacy organization, mourned the young woman’s passing.

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“She brought light, laughter, and joy into every space she entered,” the group said in a statement. “Despite the many challenges she faced throughout her life, she never allowed those struggles to define her. Whether she was singing her favorite Beyoncé songs, voguing to the beat, creating glamorous makeup looks, or simply making others smile, Peaches found ways to experience joy and share it with those around her.”

Croskey’s death was followed on Sunday by a suicide attempt by another inmate in the facility.

That morning, jail staff found a 35-year-old man in an apparent act of self-harm. Birmingham Fire and Rescue took him to a local hospital, where he was evaluated and later released back to the jail, WTVM reported.

After returning, Sweazer was placed on suicide watch, officials said.

But just over three hours later, jail staff found the man unresponsive in his cell. Staff attempted to resuscitate the inmate, and he was returned to hospital, where he died later.

According to city officials, a preliminary review found that jail staff followed established procedures in both Crokskey’s and the second inmate’s deaths. The Birmingham Police Department is conducting its own investigation.

The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office has yet to announce the cause of death in either of the back-to-back cases.

While it was unclear where Croskey was held in the Birmingham jail, initial reports from the city, repeated by local news outlets, identified Croskey as male.

“This loss is not accidental,” TAKE Resource Center said of Croskey. “It is a tragic reminder of the failures within the carceral system. The lack of adequate mental health resources, combined with negligence and systemic shortcomings in our system, continues to cost lives.”

Croskey had been held at the Birmingham jail since April 21, on charges including disorderly conduct, public intoxication, criminal mischief, and two counts of third-degree assault.

TAKE Resource Center founder and executive director Daroneshia Duncan-Boyd, a close friend of Croskey’s, shared the challenges she faced in the deteriorating jail, including bullying by other inmates, lack of access to specialty medications, a failure to prioritize medically necessary appointments, inedible food, pest infestations, broken windows, and the absence of air conditioning in the facility.

“Despite living with untreated mental illness and having to navigate this world alone in your trans identity, you still managed to bring so many people joy,” Duncan-Boyd said to her friend in a post to social media. “The love you had for me is something I can’t fully put into words. Once again, a system has failed you.”

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It was an “all hands on deck” situation.

That’s how Lambda Legal fellow Nephetari Smith described it. The Trump administration’s abrupt removal of the rainbow flag from the Stonewall National Monument in February – under the guise of adhering to “government-wide guidance” – sparked a frenzy of activity within the civil rights organization as activists, politicians, and nonprofits across the country demanded action. Within a week, an expert team of Lambda Legal attorneys had filed a lawsuit demanding the restoration of the flag. After only two months of litigation, they won. And now, only two months later, Lambda Legal has already released a video series on the journey.

Every day at LGBTQ Nation, we write about horrific actions taken by this administration to silence and erase LGBTQ+ people. These acts continue to cause tremendous physical and emotional harm, yet it has been years since we’ve seen the wrath of the LGBTQ+ community burn so brightly as the day that flag came down. The move seemed to cut through Donald Trump’s barrage of rash actions that constantly overwhelm our news feeds, inspiring a collective outrage like none other. Never have I received more emailed statements in a single day, and it felt like a long time since any of us had seen activists and politicians this riled up. 

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What was it about that particular move that struck such a nerve? 

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Of course, progressive activists, politicians, and organizations have relentlessly fought back against Trump’s many anti-LGBTQ+ policies, refusing to let his “flood the zone” strategy wear them down. Their grit has led to some critical wins for LGBTQ+ people and has sent a clear message to the administration that no matter how barbaric his and his party’s attempts to erase us become, we’re not going anywhere. 

But among the battles against gender-affirming care bans, Don’t Say Gay laws, forced outing policies, and bathroom bans, something felt different about the fight to return the Pride flag to Stonewall. It was more emotional, more rage-filled, more mobilizing. Our whole team felt it.

That rainbow emblem, understood around the world as a symbol of belonging, holds an almost incomprehensible level of power for an inanimate object. It’s why activists fight so hard to fly it, and right-wingers fight so hard to ban it from public spaces. Its weight is undeniable. Its presence or absence, addition or removal, can change the entire aura of a place.

The flag “serves as a beacon of hope and light for people that are still struggling,” Stonewall flag caretaker Steven Love Menendez, who has devoted the past decade to fighting for a permanent Pride flag installation at Stonewall, told LGBTQ Nation. “It lets them know that there’s a community of people behind them that has their backs.”

Symbolically costly

Smith knew immediately she wanted to be involved in the lawsuit. As a New Yorker, she has long felt a deep connection to the place that launched the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. She remembers how meaningful it felt to visit the Stonewall Inn during her college years, when she was still coming to terms with her queer identity.

“I remember having a conversation with this queer person I met who was 65 or 70, and at 21, I’m the only queer person in my family. I just remember being so floored meeting someone who had been queer for so long and was so unashamed and had this comfort with their own identity.”

Only a year out of law school, she described how “amazing” it felt to work on something so historic alongside a team that is “deeply connected to what is happening and responding to it so quickly and expertly.” The older, more experienced attorneys involved in the case, she explained, had strong ties to activists in the community, which “facilitated being able to work so quickly and so efficiently.”

“In addition to, of course, the law just being very much on our side.”

But Trump and his cronies have never been all too concerned about the rule of law. Yet, the administration caved quickly. Perhaps Trump officials could not have anticipated the potency of the fury. Perhaps for once, they actually accepted they had made a mistake.

Callum Blades, a lecturer in political psychology at Bournemouth University who studies the emotional significance of flags, told LGBTQ Nation that some symbols hold so much cultural weight that nothing can penetrate their power.

“There are symbols that become too embedded in the broader cultural sphere to be demonized,” Blades explained. “There’s 50 years of cultural history behind [Stonewall]… and it appears in mainstream films, history books, and is recognized quite globally.”

The administration’s decision to settle, Blades posited, “might tell us the limits” of its anti-LGBTQ+ fearmongering strategy. “It was too symbolically costly,” he said. “The Stonewall monument, it does occupy that different cultural position… The imagery of a Pride flag being physically removed from that location is always going to generate media coverage that even people who are sympathetic to Trump might find uncomfortable.”

“The irony is quite unbearable,” he continued. “You’re removing a symbol of queer resistance from the site that exists because queer people were persecuted by the state. I think people felt that instinctively… It demonstrated in quite a concrete way that history being commemorated at that monument isn’t considered settled or safe by this administration.”

Smith emphasized that the removal of the flag was a clear symbol of the administration’s quest to erase LGBTQ+ people from the American story. “To see that symbolically,” she said, “gives an additional visual cue to what is going on.”

Menendez sees it as “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“Like, we can’t have our one flag at our one monument on our one flagpole?” he told LGBTQ Nation. “It was like, enough.”

A halfway win

After President Barack Obama designated Stonewall as a national monument in 2016, Menendez contacted the superintendent of national monuments and proposed doing a Pride Month flag installation involving 250 flags around the park. He has spearheaded that project on a volunteer basis ever since.

For a long time, he’d also install a temporary flagpole bearing the Pride flag, but permits allowed it to remain only for Pride Month.

“I immediately saw how much people loved it, would take pictures with it. It was a meaningful symbol for them… So each year when I did the flag installation around the park for Pride Month, I would ask to keep up that flagpole inside, and every year the answer was no. But bearing in mind that those four years were the first Trump administration… Then when the Biden administration was coming in… suddenly the answer was yes.”

“The pole has two little side flags where you can put smaller ones,” he explained, “and we would put trans, two-spirit, and just rotate different flags in the community so that everyone felt represented, everyone felt seen, and that’s how the flagpole was functioning during the four years of the Biden administration.”

Then Trump returned to the Oval Office.

First, his administration removed all references to trans people from the Stonewall Monument’s website. Then, officials banned the Progress and trans Pride flags from flying in the park. And finally, the administration removed the traditional rainbow flag.

Lambda Legal’s lawsuit focused narrowly on convincing the courts to return the six-striped rainbow flag, which Menendez says now flies in the park beneath an American flag, as the settlement required. 

Menendez called it a “halfway” victory.

“This is our landmark,” he said. “This is the heart and soul of the movement where it all began… We should show different iterations of flags, we should make everyone feel represented… I feel like in the lawsuit, they should have fought for us to have the freedom to fly whatever flags we want inside.”  

Flags, Blades explained, “carry enormous emotional weight for people’ and send a message “about who belongs, who is seen, and whose history is considered legitimate.”

“Maybe the reason behind the public outcry was that removal was saying the opposite, that this history is contestable.”

And with so many variations of Pride flags still banned, Menendez believes that message continues to be sent about the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ+ community.  

Blades, in fact, believes there’s a reason that the outcry was not quite as loud when, in 2025, the National Park Service banned the Trans and Progress Pride flags from the monument’s Pride Month display (something Menendez has circumvented this year by discovering that the fence around the park is actually city-owned and thus he can attach the flags to it).

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“Trans rights have been attacked relentlessly with very little political blowback within the coalition that Trump needs to maintain,” he said. “I think there’s something psychologically interesting there. The attacks on trans people have been quite remarkably effective precisely because trans people remain, for many Americans, abstract. It’s easier to construct a persecutory… that no one’s ever met or seen; you can just believe and project any image you want onto it.”

For the love of the flags

The LGBTQ+ community seems to have an infinite number of flags. An infographic shared earlier this month by LGBTQ Nation shows dozens of flags focused only on variations of asexual and aromantic identities. There’s a flag for leather pride, ally pride, nonbinary pride, and polyamory pride. There’s pansexual, bisexual, and lesbian pride (and even a separate flag for butch lesbian pride). The list goes on, and new flags are introduced all the time.

Some folks, both in and outside the LGBTQ+ community, think it’s all too much, that it has made queer people a source of mockery, and that one or two flags are enough to encompass everyone. But there’s a reason these flags continue to proliferate in a way they don’t in other communities.

“It speaks to something really important about how the community relates to symbols of identity compared to nationalist flag culture,” Blades said. “When you look at the original rainbow flag and trace the evolution, including the trans flag, intersex inclusive flag, progress flags, these various identity flags, each new addition acknowledges there’s something within the broader community that’s not yet fully seen. It’s an ongoing reparative gesture, a refusal to leave anything in the position of being unacknowledged.

“There are genuine debates about this in the community on whether that dilutes the symbol’s power or if it reflects real political tensions around race and inclusion that need to be named as well. Those are legitimate conversations, but I think the impulse behind it is to make the symbol more accurate. I think it’s quite beautiful, really, and quite worth defending, trying to ensure that level of inclusivity and always making progress and space for different identities and different people to feel included.”

Pride flags, he explained, do “something quite unique compared to a lot of political symbols.”

Groups often co-opt existing flags to serve their own agendas, like how the American flag has come to symbolize conservative values. But in this case, flags serve as “rallying points” to bring a community together that might not have found each other any other way.

“The LGBTQ+ flags come from the bottom up, the grassroots. They already represent a community rather than trying to force a community onto a flag.”  

Smith points out that, unlike other marginalized communities, LGBTQ+ people may feel especially isolated because they may find themselves the only queer people in their families. Flags signify there are people out there like them.

“Race, that’s something that you can see… Part of how [queer people] build community is how we communicate symbols to each other.”

No place like this

Once, while working in the park, Menendez spotted a young trans person trying to take a selfie with the Progress Pride flag in the background. He offered to take a photo for them, and as he did so, the person began to cry.

“They said to me, ‘I’m here for a visit, I’m on vacation from Texas, we don’t have a place like this.’”

“Some people want to discount the flag and say, ‘Well, what does it mean? It doesn’t really mean anything,” Menendez said, “but it really is important to so many people.”

Under an administration so hostile to LGBTQ+ rights, Pride flags, it seems, have come to take on even more meaning. The presence of a flag, and the existence of Stonewall specifically, is a source of comfort to many, a signal of safety, and a reminder to those who are suffering that there is an entire community out there that supports them and is like them.

In a way, these visual cues might just make it possible to keep going. How else, after all, will we find each other? How else will we know there are people out there still fighting? How else can we know that people still care?

In other words, it seems it’s not that the flag is more important than other battles; it’s that the flag makes it possible to fight them.

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The vice president appeared on both The View and Fox News yesterday to promote his book about religion. On The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked him about racism in the Trump administration, and he acted like he didn’t know what she was talking about. Then, while on Fox News, he said that she accused him of being racist, which she didn’t do.

“What have Black people done to this administration that has allowed it to really stigmatize folks of color?” Goldberg asked on The View.

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“You know how hard it is, you have folks of color in your family, so when you see, you know things, the Emmett Till stuff coming down, or them doing all kinds of removal of information of Black heroes, how does that sit with you?” Goldberg continued. She was referring to how the administration is removing and rewriting historical exhibitions across the country to remove references to slavery and racism, a move that stems from an executive order and has already resulted in at least one lawsuit.

“What are you exactly talking about, Whoopi? Emmett Till wasn’t-” Vance said, and the audience audibly groaned.

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Goldberg explained that she was talking about how museums have been pressured to remove historical information about Black people.

Co-host Sunny Hostin stepped in to try to explain to Vance that Goldberg is asking about “Black history getting erased from public spaces, Black voter districts are being dismantled, Black leaders are being sidelined from our ranks. Where do Americans of color fit in this vision, because it doesn’t seem like we fit?”

“You say that we’re anti-minority, right?” Vance told Goldberg, and she said that she didn’t.

“No, I didn’t say that!” she said and tried to take down the tension in the room with some humor. “I asked— see? Don’t start any stuff with me, man. Don’t get me in trouble.”

But Vance decided to just deny the administration’s actions instead of explaining them: “Black history is not erased from public spaces, that is not right.”

“I’m telling you we celebrate Black history, we celebrate all American history in this administration.”

While Vance remained polite on The View, he went to Fox News’ Gutfeld! to complain about Goldberg and Hostin.

“I expected them to be absolutely vicious, and they were only a little bit vicious,” he said.

Vance: I thought Sunny, the woman to my left, was going to call me racist. In reality, it was Whoopi, the woman to my right, that called me racist. Expectations defied. pic.twitter.com/yO1CHiU9lF

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 17, 2026

“I thought that Sunny, the woman to my left, was going to call me a racist. In reality, it was Whoopi, the woman to my right, who called me a racist. So expectations were defied,” he said, even though Goldberg did not call him racist.

Host Greg Gutfeld then said that Hostin can’t call Vance racist because “her ancestors were slaveowners,” referring to her appearance on Finding Your Roots several years ago, when she found out that some of her ancestors from Puerto Rico likely owned slaves.

Vance didn’t challenge Gutfeld’s bizarre assertion that people whose ancestors owned slaves can’t oppose racism today.

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Anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigrant, white nationalist influencer Gregory Moffitt (also known on social media as “Young Bob”) was beaten up while holding a public debate in Manchester, England, last weekend.

Video shows Moffitt debating a dark-skinned man with gray dreadlocks while seated at a table in a public outdoor space. The table had a sign that said: “Reform UK must be more radical.” Moffitt’s stance in the debate was that subjects of the British Empire shouldn’t necessarily be welcome in the U.K., Metro UK reported.

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During their discussion, a bystander threw a water bottle at Moffitt, and he turned and said, “All of you who throw water are cowards. You don’t actually want to fight for what you believe in.”

A woman replied, “If you wanna fight, I’ll fight you, b**ch.” People laughed and Moffitt replied, “And you’ll go to prison.”

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The dark-skinned man then continued to debate Moffitt for a while before he dismissed the man’s argument by saying, “Righteous indignation. No discussion.”

Moments later, Moffitt confronted bystanders who had been throwing paper wads at him. When the fight broke out, a person held Moffitt by his shirt, while others encircled and started to punch him, eventually sending him to the ground, where they started kicking him. Eventually, a man interceded to keep the attackers off of him.

Video footage showed the attackers overturning Moffitt’s stool and camera tripod. He has pledged to continue holding public debates, though he said he plans to bring in extra security.

In a June 15 post on X, Moffitt wrote that a group of foreign lads had attacked him, allegedly encouraged by members of the organization Stand Up to Racism. The attack caused him to “pass out halfway through” and not remember what occurred, Moffitt said, though video seems to show him moving soon after being dragged to the ground as well as a moment later, after the attackers fled.

Moffitt claimed that police arrived five minutes later but “did nothing to stop the counter-protesters or retrieve the to see what actually happened.” The attack left Moffitt with “a cut and a number of marks on my neck, bruises on my face and the top of my head, and cuts running down my back,” he added, while promising to be checked out at a hospital.

Metro reported that his phone was smashed and his banner was stolen. Moffitt also said that his video camera was smashed. Police reportedly arrested three people in connection with the attack.

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A post shared by Young Bob (@youngbobrb)

Moffitt was once a member of Turning Point UK, the British offshoot of the U.S. young conservatives organization well-known for its public debates with its now-slain leader, Charlie Kirk. Like Kirk, Moffitt records debates where he takes conservative positions and tells others, “Change my mind.”

Moffitt has been praised by other white nationalists like Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson for his advocacy of the so-called remigration movement, which seeks to forcibly deport immigrants and their descendants back to their countries of origin.

Moffit has taken anti-LGBTQ+ positions and has previously claimed that his generation is being “sexualized” through “pornographic material,” including drag queens. He claimed, without evidence, that there’s a correlation between children’s exposure to this material and the exploration of their gender identities.

“They’re hypersexualizing these children through trans-ing them,” he claimed once while speaking on a right-wing broadcast. “I mean, why would you need to explore your gender identity at such a young age…? It confuses this younger generation into this Marxist illusion.”

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Ian McKellen channeled his fury at Trump into archvillain role in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’

Iconic out actor Ian McKellen says he shouted “Mar-a-Lago” to get into his character’s destructive headspace while filming Marvel’s upcoming Avengers: Doomsday.

The latest installment in Marvel’s cinematic universe, due out in December, sees the 87-year-old Oscar nominee reprising his role as X-Men archvillain Magneto. While filming a scene in which his character destroys all of New Jersey, McKellen told The Guardian that directors Anthony and Joe Russo told him “to look more furious.”

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The actor and long-time LGBTQ+ rights advocate recalled the Russos telling him to “Make it look as if you hate what you’re destroying.”

“So, I stood there, and I shouted: ‘Mar-a-Lago!’” McKellen told the outlet, referring to President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, resort.

McKellen has been involved in LGBTQ+ rights advocacy since the late 1980s, when he came out publicly in part as a reaction to Section 28, a proposed law later passed by Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government that banned the “promotion” of homosexuality.

McKellen has also been a vocal critic of Trump. During the president’s first term in office, the actor criticized the administration’s refusal to recognize Pride Month and Trump’s formal rescission of President Obama’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order in 2017.

“It’s appalling and quite unnecessary and very un-American,” McKellen told Variety at the time.

McKellen also spoke about channeling his antipathy for Trump on the set of Avengers: Doomsday during a February appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

“So, I’m standing up, pretending to [destroy New Jersey], and the wind is blowing in my hair, and I’m putting on a fierce look, and I’m trying to be magnetic. And the director, over the loudspeaker, says, ‘Ian, look more furious!’” McKellen said, while demonstrating his Magneto fury. “He said, ‘Shout the worst thing you can possibly think of!’ So, I said, ‘Mar-a-Lago!’”

“Will I be allowed back in the country?” McKellen joked.

“No guarantees. I don’t think I’m the right person to ask for that,” said Colbert, whose canceled show has been viewed, at least in part, as retaliation for his own criticism of Trump and CBS parent company Paramount Skydance owner David Ellison’s ties to the administration.

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Conservatives are up in arms over the fact that Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) appointed a trans rights supporter to the state’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board.

Kellen MacBeth, the founder and president of LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Arlington, has “a long history of pushing gender transitions for minors,” according to right-wing outlet The Washington Free Beacon.

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Equality Arlington advocates for the rights of trans and nonbinary students and has spoken out against the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies. Macbeth also wrote a letter advocating for best practice gender-affirming care for trans youth.

This year, Equality Arlington also launched the Arlington Trans Youth Quilt Project, for which trans kids ages 5 through 19 created quilt squares to answer the question, “What does Freedom to Be mean to Me?” The group also advocates for discrimination policies that protect LGBTQ+ people, especially trans people.

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The Free Beacon wrote that MacBeth’s appointment proves Spanberger’s “embrace of left-wing gender activism” and claimed it “contradicts the rhetoric Spanberger offered on the issue while campaigning as a ‘moderate’ Democrat.”

The publication pointed to the fact that Spanberger said she believes the issue of trans kids in sports should be addressed by schools on a case-by-case basis, rather than relying on the state or federal governments to enact sweeping legislation.

Despite the Free Beacon’s view of Spanberger’s moderate campaign, her GOP opponent, Winsome Earle-Sears, repeatedly accused Spanberger of being obsessed with trans rights.  Earle-Sears ran multiple ads attacking Spanberger for her support of trans rights. One of the ads ended with a slogan reminiscent of the 2024 presidential campaign, saying that Spanberger is “for they/them, not for us.” 

The ad cited Spanberger’s vote in Congress for the Equality Act – which would ban anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination at the federal level – and falsely said that it would “allow men in girls’ sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms.” School sports are not addressed in the Equality Act. Moreover, no Democrat supports adult men joining girls’ sports teams; they generally want trans girls to have access to the same education, including sports education, as cis girls do.

Another ad accused Spanberger of wanting to “let children change genders without telling their parents,” a reference to the fact that many on the left believe that schools should let kids tell their parents they are LGBTQ+ on their own instead of mandating that teachers report their students’ identities to their parents, which can put students in danger.

“It really angers me to hear these lies about who I am,” Spanberger responded at the time. “I believe we need to get politics out of our schools and trust parents and local communities.”

Throughout the campaign, Spanberger maintained her belief in equality for all Virginians, but did not allow Earle-Sears to force her to focus exclusively on trans rights over other issues important to Virginians.

The Free Beacon slammed Spanberger for appointing others to the board who have “a record of left-wing activism.”

Virginia’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board consists of 26 members, including 21 nonlegislative citizen members, at least 15 of whom must identify as LGBTQ+. The current board contains several conservatives appointed by the virulently anti-LGBTQ+ former Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R).

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JD Vance was on Fox News’ The Five yesterday to promote his book about religion. As the segment ended, host Jesse Watters – who is obsessed with performing heterosexual masculinity – noted that it was National Fudge Day, said that that’s “too gay,” and so instead he had the vice president eat an unusual cake.

“It’s National Fudge Day for the VP but I thought it would be too gay so I did pickle cake instead,” Watters said. “I’m not sure if I got it right.”

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Vance laughed at the elaborate gay joke.

“And enjoy your pickle cake,” Dana Perino said as she thanked Vance for appearing on the show.

Watters’ joke was likely a reference to the anti-gay slur “fudgepacker,” but it’s not clear if he noticed that making Vance eat pickles could also be interpreted as a gay joke.

The pickle cake itself went viral about a month ago after a New York City pastry shop posted a picture of the cake to social media. The New York Post covered the cake as a product of social media, noting that pickles are trending in 2026.

Whenever people ask Gregory Marks, “When did you come out?” it earns a laugh from the retired opera singer.

“I’ve always been out. I didn’t have a dramatic reveal or a tortured confession. I was simply a fat queer kid who knew exactly who he was,” he tells LGBTQ Nation.

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And what he wanted to do: sing.

“I was always a performer — onstage in school plays, singing in choirs, dancing in show choir, and playing piano and flute. My mother took the flute as an early sign that I might be ‘a bit off,’ and she wasn’t wrong,” the longtime San Franciscan says.

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His career as a professional opera singer began long before he ever stepped on a stage, however.

“It started in my father’s butcher shop. My dad was a Portuguese immigrant with a distinctly European sensibility — gentle and artistic. Every Saturday morning, while he trimmed meat and greeted customers, we listened to the Texaco Metropolitan Opera broadcasts together. He would patiently tell me the stories, and I was absolutely transfixed. Those mornings were my first masterclasses.”

Marks followed up those lessons with a music major at San Francisco State University, where he joined the College Opera Guild and saw every production at San Francisco Opera, including, in 1977, the very first performance by Luciano Pavarotti singing his legendary rendition of “Nessun Dorma” in Turandot.

After earning a master’s in music, Marks joined the San Francisco Opera Chorus, “where I spent 24 glorious seasons as a proud union chorister singing with the greatest artists of the late 20th century.”

It was his time with the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, however, that earned Marks his favored moniker: “Singing activist.”

“Being a ‘singing activist’ is one of the great joys and privileges of my life. It’s the moment when my literal voice becomes my political voice — when the sound coming out of my body aligns with what I believe in, what I fight for, and who I am. Singing becomes more than music. It becomes testimony,” Marks says.

His first real encounter with singing activism happened hours after Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were shot at City Hall in 1978.

“I was at the candlelight march that ended on the steps of City Hall, where the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sang publicly for the very first time. They performed Mendelssohn’s Lord, Thou Art My Refuge. Not exactly a queer anthem, but the very act of a gay chorus singing in public, on that night and in that moment, was pure defiance. It was the birth of the gay chorus movement, and it was the first time I understood that singing could be a form of resistance.”

Mourning in song was a necessary ritual into the 1980s and 90’s, at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in San Francisco.

“As an opera singer then, I sang at more funerals and memorials than I can count. If I didn’t sing for my friends, who would? Music became the only way I could express my grief, my rage, and my love. But they were wrapped in beauty, because beauty was the one thing the virus couldn’t take from us.”

In 2013, Marks’ career and activism and his dad’s Saturday morning opera lessons aligned when he and a team from the Gay Men’s Chorus commissioned composer Andrew Lippa to write the oratorio, I Am Harvey Milk.

“It was the greatest piece I ever had the privilege to sing with the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus,” Marks says. “To witness a work like that being born, and to know it would become part of our community’s musical DNA, was one of the greatest joys of my life.

“I Am Harvey Milk isn’t just music,” Marks says. “It’s memory. It’s activism. It’s a love letter to a man who changed the world, and to the movement that rose from his courage. Every time I’ve sung it, I’ve felt Harvey’s spirit in the room — hopeful, stubborn, joyful, and absolutely unwilling to be erased.”

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A new poll from Harris coinciding with Pride Month indicates that LGBTQ+ employees are feeling the same chill the current administration’s attacks on DEI and the community itself are having on American society more broadly, with a majority of LGBTQ+ workers saying they are now self-censoring at work.

62% of LGBTQ+ employees have noticed at least one meaningful change in how their employers communicate about LGBTQ+ staff or issues, including more cautious language, more focus on legal compliance than belonging, and less internal or public communication around diversity and LGBTQ+ issues.

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The findings suggest that LGBTQ+ support at work is not disappearing in one dramatic move, analysts say. Instead, many employees see it becoming quieter, more cautious, and less visible.

That silence is starting to affect how workers judge their employers, the poll shows.

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“Corporate silence does not feel neutral to employees,” says Tim Osiecki, director of thought leadership and trends at The Harris Poll. “When companies get quieter about LGBTQ+ support, LGBTQ+ workers may read that as a signal about whether leadership will stand by them when the conversation gets harder. That can affect how open they feel at work, how much they trust leadership, and whether they see a future at the company.”

The poll surveyed more than 3,000 employed U.S. adults, including 650 LGBTQ+ employees and 2,432 non-LGBTQ+ employees.

Dialed-back support from the top has employees self-censoring, the data indicates.

64% of LGBTQ+ employees say they have self-censored or changed their behavior because of the current social or political climate around LGBTQ+ issues at work. That includes avoiding personal conversations, staying quiet when LGBTQ+ issues come up, or becoming more careful about what they share with coworkers.

Four in 10 LGBTQ+ employees say workplace conversations about issues that impact LGBTQ+ employees are declining, or never even started.

A company’s reaction to the current political climate affects LGBTQ+ employees’ trust in their workplace, the poll shows.

80% of LGBTQ+ employees say they are less likely to trust a company that becomes quieter about LGBTQ+ inclusion, and 68% say they would leave a company if they felt it no longer supported LGBTQ+ employees.

Less support could translate to lost LGBTQ+ talent, as well as other staff concerned about how their company supports all employees.

Among non-LGBTQ+ employees, 62% say that their workplace’s treatment of LGBTQ+ employees says something about how it treats employees overall, while the same number say they trust leadership more when inclusion efforts are consistent, even during backlash.

60% say support for LGBTQ+ employees makes the workplace feel more welcoming for everyone.

“Support for LGBTQ+ colleagues is a broader signal of how the company treats people overall,” said Osiecki. “For employers, this is not just about Pride Month or internal communications. It is about trust, leadership credibility, and whether employees believe the company’s values hold up under pressure.”

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Edwin Feulner, a former congressional aide in Washington who rose to prominence as a co-founder of the influential Christian Nationalist right-wing think-tank, The Heritage Foundation, died on Friday. He was 83.

The Heritage Foundation announced his death but provided no details.

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Feulner (pronounced FULL-ner) co-founded the group with another now-prominent right-wing Republican, Paul Weyrich.

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The far-right policy group has long advocated against LGBTQ+ rights, including bans on marriage equality, LGBTQ+ military service members, trans service members, adoption by gay and same-sex parents, gender-affirming care for trans youth, and advocating for “conversion therapy” and draconian bans on LGBTQ+ content in libraries.

Heritage generally opposes anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination measures, opposed the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision to include “sex” in discrimination rulings, and opposes the Equality Act, federal legislation that would explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

With its founding in 1973, Feulner and Weyrich transformed the conservative think tank model from “ivory tower” to “accessible”, based on easily digestible policy briefs they called “backgrounders”, distributed to lawmakers before a vote to influence policy outcomes, rather than waiting to deliberate on the results afterward.

“It doesn’t do us any good to have great ideas if we are not out there peddling our products,” Feulner told the Washington Examiner.

Rightwing House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the Heritage Foundation “the Parthenon of the conservative metropolis.”

Feulner served as founding president of the organization until 2013, and again briefly in 2018.

The group gained renewed prominence in 2024 with their policy recommendations for a second Trump administration, called Project 2025, a nearly-thousand-page far-right conservative wish list that has been implemented with an army of appointees — many recommended by Heritage — at every level in every department of the federal government.

Partner organizations for Project 2025’s advisory board include anti-LGBTQ groups Alliance Defending Freedom, Eagle Forum, Family Policy Alliance, Moms for Liberty, Turning Point USA, and dozens of other far-right organizations.

Trump publicly distanced himself from Project 2025 during the campaign but has embraced its goals as an organizing principle for his second term. Feulner described those early on in the history of the Heritage Foundation as “free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional values and a strong national defense.”

Project 2025 was the latest iteration of the “Mandate for Leadership,” another wish list for new presidents that Heritage has issued since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.

That document, also around a thousand pages and “the nuts and bolts of how you make the kind of changes that philosophers and academics have been talking about,” said Feulner, was distributed by Reagan at his first cabinet meeting.

Heritage claimed that about 60% of its suggestions had been acted on by the Reagan administration in its first year in power.

Heritage identified Trump as a pliable partner for its conservative goals early on. In 2016, as the Republican establishment turned against him, Feulner’s successor as the group’s president, Tea Partier and former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), pursued a collaborative relationship with the Trump campaign.

With Trump’s win, Feulner became head of domestic policy for Trump’s first transition. The group returned again with a database of thousands of loyal conservatives to appoint to political office.

The Heritage Foundation was launched in 1973 with a $260,000 donation from beer baron Joseph Coors, a far-right conservative and notorious homophobe.

At the early peak of Heritage Foundation influence in 1984, Feulner told The New York Times, “The years in the wilderness gave us the time to work out challenges to the prevailing orthodoxy.” Feulner saw “intellectual ferment” happening on the left — new ideas, new institutional energy. “Now we are in the mainstream,” he cautioned, “and we will suffer for that like the liberals before us.”

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A federal judge issued a temporary injunction against Idaho’s new law, which would’ve given prison time to transgender people who use government and business restrooms that differ from the sex that they were assigned at birth. Idaho’s attorney general, Raul R. Labrador, has pledged to appeal the decision.

Though the law was set to go into effect on July 1, U.S. District Judge Amanda Brailsford of the District of Idaho issued an injunction against its restroom enforcement portion after six trans state residents, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), sued to stop it.

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Brailsford, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, said the law is “unconstitutionally vague” because it requires police officers to individually assess a person’s biological sex without any specific guidance on how to do so. Though the allow includes an exception for trans people in “dire need” who access a “reasonably available” restroom to relieve their needs, the law “furnishes no standards by which those facts are to be evaluated,” Judge Brailsford wrote.

“It does not identify any objective benchmark, specify what evidence may establish such a need, or explain how an officer is to assess whether the exception applies,” the judge wrote in her 30-page decision, according to The Hill. “Instead, enforcement largely depends on an officer’s subjective assessment of an individual’s physical condition at a particular moment.”

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She wrote that the law “imposes criminal penalties — up to a felony for repeat violations — yet leaves critical enforcement decisions to the unguided discretion of individual officers,” The New York Times reported.

Last week, Idaho Solicitor General Michael Zarian suggested that police could figure out people’s gender by forcing suspected violators of the law to undergo forced DNA testing, something that usually requires a warrant.

Nevertheless, Judge Brailsford also acknowledged that although the state has a “valid interest in promoting bodily privacy and protecting women and children in public restrooms from those who may seek to do harm,” she said existing laws already do that.

Paul Carlos Southwick, legal director of the ACLU of Idaho Legal Director, said in a statement, “This ruling means trans folks in Idaho can continue participating in public life without the threat of being arrested for using the bathroom.”

“Trans Idahoans have been understandably anxious about the disruption this unconstitutional law would cause in their daily lives,” Southwick added, noting that both the Idaho Sheriffs’ Association and the Idaho Fraternal Order of Police called the law impractical and unworkable.

A first-time violation under the law would’ve resulted in a misdemeanor charge and up to a year in jail, while a second violation within five years would be a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. A fourth violation of the law would constitute a third felony conviction, punishable under Idaho’s persistent violator statute by a mandatory minimum of five years and up to life in prison.

The ACLU notes that analyses of public safety data have found policies inclusive of transgender people’s access to public accommodations have no impact on rates of harassment or violence, while policies that restrict access actually increase the risk of harassment and violence. Trans people are four times as likely as their cisgender peers to be the victims of violence.

In his statement pledge to appeal the judge’s ruling, Labrador noted that the part of the law barring trans people from sex-segregated locker rooms and showers remains in effect. “Biological sex is not vague, and neither is this law,” Labrador said. “The good news is that this ruling is narrow.”

Currently, 21 states have passed transphobic bathroom bills, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

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In a bizarre video that is being compared to a Saturday Night Live sketch, the office of the U.S. Ambassador to The Bahamas, led by appointee Herschel Walker, warned Americans visiting the archipelagic country that “Jet ski rentals pose a serious risk of injury, death, and sexual assault.”

In the video, Walker said that injuries and deaths have been caused by people riding jet skis in shallow waters. He then clarifies, “Americans have also been sexually assaulted by jet ski operators who take victims to isolated islands,” and adds that operators may be unlicensed, uninsured, and may not properly maintain the skis.

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Numerous social media users mocked the message for its awkward phrasing, with many saying they couldn’t tell if the video was real or a parody, and at least one person claiming that Walker, a former NFL player, has brain damage. One commenter jokingly asked, “Jet ski rentals pose a risk of sexual assault?? How wrong are you using a friggin jetski?”

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During Walker’s failed 2022 U.S. Senate campaign, journalists discovered that he hadn’t actually owned several businesses or worked in law enforcement or as an FBI agent as he had previously claimed. Walker’s flamboyantly “not gay” son, Christian Walker, said in October his father’s repeated death threats against him and his mother forced them to move “six times in six months.”

Walker opposes same-sex marriage and told a crowd at a rally that transgender kids will not get into heaven. During his failed campaign, Walker’s handlers reportedly wouldn’t allow journalists “within 20 feet of him,” for fear that he would make embarrassing comments.

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Samar Halabi and her husband, Amjad Muhtaseb, both attended the Republican Party of Texas Convention, which was held in Houston from June 11 to 13, because, as Muhtaseb explained to The Texas Tribune, “We believe in Adam and Eve. We don’t believe in this, multiple genders. We don’t drink. We don’t gamble. We are against pornography.”

Republicans at the event repeatedly told them and other Muslim delegates to leave the country because they’re a terrorist threat. Other attendees tried to boot them from the event. Convention rules prohibited them from kicking the couple out, but party officials promised to create such rules when the convention meets again in 2028.

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Halabi wore a hijab (head covering) at the event. Attendees accused her of being a part of a terrorist organization. When one attendee approached her and told her to leave the country, she turned and wept into her husband’s chest.

The married couple said they are trying to bring more Muslims into the Republican Party. But the Texas GOP has spent a lot of time during recent election cycles speaking out against Sharia Law and the so-called “Islamification” of Texas.

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The state GOP and Gov. Greg Abbott (R) have deemed the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, a terrorist threat. Hussein’s father founded the organization’s Houston chapter and also attended the convention as a delegate; there’s no proof substantiating CAIR’s alleged ties to extremist organizations.

Additionally, Abbott signed a law in September 2025 to ban the establishment of an Islamic community in the city of Joesphine (35 miles northeast of Dallas) after numerous state officials and locals said it intended to enforce Sharia law and exclude non-Muslims, claims which the community’s developers denied.

On Saturday at the convention, outgoing state GOP chair Abraham George told two Muslim delegates, “I would strongly advise you to leave our caucus,” adding, “There is a Democrat convention happening in a couple weeks. Join them.”

That same day, Muslim conservative Mohamed Hussein attended a Judeo-Christian Caucus moderated by former Southern Baptist pastor Dr. Rick Scarborough, who is also president of the religious political organization Recover America. Scarborough said Muslims will erode Christian values, lie and hide their meanness to win political power, and then use that power to “cut your head off as believers of Christ.”

State Sen. Bob Hall (R) echoed that sentiment, falsely claiming that Muslims are “required by Sharia to lie” to “stay below the radar of being aggressive.”

At the panel, state Rep. Brent Money (R), founder of the convention’s Sharia-Free Texas Caucus, said political candidates should undergo religious tests and that all Americans should only vote for Christians because, “We’ve proven over 250 years that we’re best … when we’re ruled by Christian men who serve a God that’s bigger than them and that seek the welfare of everyone that’s here.”

Horrified by their statements, Hussein spoke out, saying that Sharia law only provides a religious framework that applies to Muslim daily practices.

“When they tell you that we’re compelled to lie, they are putting your Texan neighbors in an impossible position where nothing that we can say or do can absolve us from the crimes that they are accusing us of. That is not just, the Bible commands you to be just, and that is not American.”

After the panel, Scarborough told Hussein to either convert or leave the country. Hussein then cried in a chair while Scarborough sat next to him and offered to pray to Jesus with him. Muslims pray only to God (Allah) and do not pray to Jesus, seeing him only as a prophet rather than the son of God.

Scarborough later told The Texas Tribune, “If you’re going to embrace the values and the teachings that you’re advocating for, there’s no place in America for you. That’s not assimilation. That’s taking over.”

Hussein expressed disbelief at being told to convert or leave, noting that the convention’s tagline was, “Unity drives victory.” He said he worries that the party’s anti-Islamic rhetoric could foment violence against Muslims. However, he said he will vote for whichever candidate most supports religious liberty and economic prosperity.

“I will vote along those principles, but what I saw at the convention is not conservatism, so I’m going to assess in November and vote along with my values,” he said. “Absolutely, I will be voting for Republicans who denounce this extremism.”

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