Alfee Reft grew as a gay man and volleyball star at the same time.

The SoCal native cut his chops at a court in West Hollywood where he played alongside a talented and eclectic group of gays. Raised in a conservative family, Reft didn’t know it was possible to embrace both his athleticism and sexuality.

Those guys in WeHo showed him the way. They keep in touch to this day.

“I would look forward showing up to that space and knowing I would be challenged,” Reft tells Queerty. “I don’t know if I’ve found a space like that since. It was kind of like a token in time.”

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Over the ensuing decades, Reft has enjoyed an illustrious career. After playing in college, he embarked on a pro run that took him to three different countries and landed him a spot on the U.S. National Team. Reft started playing for Team USA in 2005 and retired in 2014.

Though Reft was out in college, he found himself receding into the closet whenever he joined a new club. Each time Reft met new teammates, he felt like he had to come out again.

The routine got tiring.

“Living in other countries and having to—especially in those early years—it felt like I had to come out a number of times to different teams in parts of the world that weren’t the most accepting of being out,” he says. “That was a scary thing.”

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Now a decorated coach, Reft provides an open environment where players can be themselves. He was the head women’s coach at UCLA, a storied program, before taking a job with a new women’s pro team in San Francisco.

While their inaugural campaign starts in 2027, Reft and his husband are already planning their move to the Bay Area. (Coaching volleyball in L.A. and then San Francisco–not a bad gig if you can find it!)

For Reft, the pinnacle of his career came two years ago, when he was on the podium at the Paris Games. He helped coach the Team USA women to a silver medal.

Triumphs like that make the emotional toll worth it.

“[Playing volleyball] is most challenging thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “But the rewards are tremendous.”

In between sets, Queerty recently caught up with Reft to chat about winning an Olympic medal, the keys to coaching and he and his hubby’s favorite karaoke song. Here’s what he had to say…

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QUEERTY: What did it feel like to play for Team USA all of those years?

ALFEE REFT: I haven’t thought about wearing the flag across my chest [for a while]! There was a large sense of responsibility at the time. Athletes were still finding their way to come out and be visible. It’s so amazing to see the progress we’ve made. I felt like I was representing not just this country, but this community. My friends here in L.A., the queer community I was playing volleyball with. I would still play in those open gyms when I was on the national team. I would come back on Sundays and play with them. It felt like I was taking a piece of all of these people who were so formative for me as I was competing for our country. It was a really special time to compete for the USA.

You’re such a successful coach! How do you relate to young and college-aged women?

The landscape of college athletics has changed a lot. The realities are different compared to when I played or my friends played. It’s really about sitting in moments and getting to know [the players.] You can’t rest on the laurels of what we did as athletes. It’s a different time and the generation is different. They’re so informed and so smart. Understanding their plight and journey is a big part of it. I’ve been better at it at times than others. I feel like in the last few years I’m really coming back around to that. It’s just kind of walking side by side with them, while guiding them, of course.

What’s one thing about playing pro volleyball that people don’t know about?

It’s such a tremendous sport, but at this point it’s lacked accessibility and visibility in our country. Pursuing anything at that caliber requires sacrifice. But athletes sacrifice their lives, they’re away from their loved ones. For me, living in other countries and having to—especially in those early years—it felt like I had to come out a number of times to different teams in parts of the world that weren’t the most accepting of being out. That was a scary thing. So whether it’s out athletes or any other athlete, it’s just the emotional toll. It’s really a lot. It’s easy to see the finished product of an Olympic team or a national team or a pro team. That’s all cool. But man, there’s so much that goes into it.

It was the most challenging that I’ve ever done. But the rewards of it were so tremendous. To realize that people in so many different cultures and facets of life, we’re not all that different. When we can authentically be ourselves in different spaces, we realize we’re all kind of just seeking the same things in life.

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What was it like to win an Olympic medal?

It was very out of body. There was a lot of personal reflection for me and looking back on all the things I’ve done to be ready for that moment: friends, family, moments, communities. You pull on all of that, because it pulls on all of you. I remember a lot of gratitude and feeling so full and grateful that I had so much backing from my communities and my family that allowed me to sit in those moments and be like, “OK, let’s F’n do this!”

Then the elation. Just being in that moment with players you’ve worked with for years and coaches you’ve been friends with. These lifelong relationships that you absolutely lean on, because again, it pulls everything from you. I was just feeling so grateful having a quality support group. And my husband, hugging him after matches. My family. It was a beautiful aggregation of life. It makes me want to cry!

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You mentioned your husband! You’re coming up on 10 years of marriage. How did you guys meet?

Oh my gosh! It was 2005 here in Los Angeles. I was training on the national team and I was injured, so I had some down time before playing overseas. We’re dating ourselves, OKCupid was the app. Err, it wasn’t really an app! It was on the computer. I was at the tail end of dating to be honest. I was like, “I’m gonna go quiet on this.” He was the last person—both of us—that we messaged. We took a chance. Date one, I was like, “Sold!” It’s really been that way ever since. It’s pretty crazy thinking we might not have met.

This industry, and this job is obviously not the most forgiving at times and it pulls us in a lot of different directions. There’s no way I’d be doing what I’m doing without the great support of my husband. A lot has changed for us in 10 years—in a good way! Meeting online, I’m a proponent. It can happen!

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What do you guys like to do for fun?

He’s a musical theater guy: voice, acting, teaches voice. I grew up in a musical family, too. We play music and sing! When we have downtime, it’s like, karaoke session in our house. Like, legit. Thank God we don’t live with neighbors. You’d think we were singing in front of a 30,000-person crowd! But it’s just the two of us.

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Queer fascists often face inglorious ends.

Milo Yiannopoulos is no different.

The OG MAGA provocateur was arrested by ICE and ejected from the country–living out the cruel fate he wished upon millions of other immigrants.

Just not himself, of course.

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We don’t know whether any bystanders who witnessed Milo’s arrest took his advice and started pleasuring themselves at the sight of his detainment. But it would’ve been a fitting finale. The incendiary, bleached blonde troll who once reveled in his infamy had been reduced to a pale tub of goo.

Speaking with Piers Morgan this week, it took Milo just one interview to unmask his sad act. In the interview, he whined about the rough treatment he received from ICE officers and confirmed he’s still married to his husband… he’s just not doing that “sex stuff” anymore.

Peel back the caustic veneer, and a broken man is all that’s left.

A hateful hypocrite

Milo was always a hypocritical figure. Like other gay fascists, he demonized the very people who made it possible for him to be an out gay MAGA troll… and score a $250K book deal in the process.

With his “Dangerous F*ggot” tour, he harnessed the hysteria of the Tr*mp era and made himself an iconoclastic figure. Each cancellation only boosted his star power. The fact that his act was all smoke and mirrors was besides the point. Milo had shock value.

Conveniently, he used his identity to provide cover for his heinous views.

He wrote disingenuous, anti-gay dreck and led racist harassment campaigns on social media. He explained it all away by saying he was a “gay Jew with a Black boyfriend.”

That boyfriend later became Milo’s husband. (More on that in a minute!)

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Spiraling downwards

Milo’s rapid rise gave away to a precipitous downfall. His 2017 CPAC speech got cancelled after old audio of him defending sex with minors resurfaced. He quickly lost his Breitbart gig and social clout.

Over the ensuing years, he declared he was no longer gay and that he had downgraded his husband to “housemate.” The grift was pathetic.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t return Milo to prominence. Turns out, he had disavowed the one trait that made him relevant.

In the wake of his sudden deportation, we’ve learned that Milo was locked in a bitter feud with MAGA acolyte Laura Loomer, who gleefully took credit for his arrest.

Despite being MAGA persona non-grata, Milo still cheerled Tr*mp’s mass deportation campaign… ironically, while being in the country illegally himself.

“I didn’t think it would happen to me!”

Milo’s interview with Piers Morgan was Grade-A comeuppance. In it, he said he was “ashamed” to ever support Tr*mp then sheepishly admitted that he was wrong to applaud ICE’s thuggery.

“I didn’t really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality is in America,” he said. “The manner in which they arrest you, they put you in manacles, everybody is arrested like an MS-13 gang member. It hurts a lot more than it looks like on television.”

Read that last line again: “It hurts a lot more than it looks like on television.” For perhaps the first time, Milo realized that life isn’t a made-for-TV spectacle.

Let’s see how long he remembers that.

When crying about how ICE ripped him away from his “family” and “pets,” Morgan asked Milo to clarify whether he’s still married to a man.

“You’re a gay man and you’re married to a gay man?” he asked.

Backed into a corner, Milo admitted he was, but doesn’t partake in the “sex stuff” anymore. (According to us, that makes Milo… an ex-ex-gay?)

For years, Milo carried himself like a person who never thought he could be exposed. Now, the entire world sees him for his phony, bloated self.

As it turns out, it’s quite easy to look away.

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Last night, Thomas Massie laid down the Epstein Files Transparency Act II gauntlet, and now all hell is breaking loose. That hell is specifically coming for Mike Johnson, and in typical Johnson fashion, he’s doing everything he can to avoid meeting it head-on… including running for cover.

When Massie named the names of several alleged Epstein co-conspirators and collaborators on the House floor yesterday, he was setting the stage for the inevitable next step: voting on the second part of the act he co-authored with Democratic rep. Ro Khanna to force the release of the remaining files.

Obviously for Johnson and his few remaining MAGA-ites, that’s a terrifying thought. So he’s seemingly retaliating in the best way he knows how: by running scared, and taking his fellow House members with him.

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Talk about Coyote vs. ACME!

This cartoonish move is inspired by Massie’s determination to advance the act by getting the 218 signatures needed to bypass Johnson and bring the issue to a vote. If that happens, Johnson knows that he and Tr*mp are in huge trouble: the second part of the act won’t just potentially reveal Tr*mp’s “one million mentions” in the files, it will give victims recourse to potentially sue Todd Blanche’s DOJ for the cover-up.

We know what Tr*mp-aligned figures do when their enemies find a way to bypass them. They play dirty. Currently it’s just a rumor, but rumblings in Washington center around Johnson and an alleged plan to recess the House in order to stall the inevitable. At least, that’s what Massie told followers on X yesterday.

It would definitely be in keeping with Johnson’s MO if he were to call an emergency recess.

With the midterms creeping up, Johnson sees the writing on the wall and knows that there’s a very slim chance of MAGA holding on to power. Democrats need to gain at least 4 congressional seats to achieve a Senate majority, and there are currently at least 8 seats in play. “Party strategists are whispering about a once-unthinkable takeover of the upper chamber just two years after a stinging, demoralizing defeat,” the Nation reports.

The House is a different story, and a much tougher proposition with 43 races in play. But if Democrats are successful in getting those nine “tossup” seats, they could gain enough power to technically bring an impeachment vote against Tr*mp. Which would pretty much be Johnson’s worst nightmare come true.

So yes, even if Johnson isn’t actually trying to game the system as Massie claims, he has every reason to be sweating bullets right now. If Democrats regain the House, not only is his job on the line, his entire political future is at stake. Johnson rose to power by supporting Tr*mp at all costs. Today, as citizens grow increasingly frustrated with Tr*mp turning his back on low-income and middle-class Americans everywhere, that choice doesn’t speak highly of Johnson or his legacy.

Queer people, of course, have been waiting for this moment: as one of MAGA’s most consistently anti-LGBTQ+ forces, Johnson has wreaked havoc on our lives for too long, and we’d be thrilled if he started on a new career path…preferably as a used car salesman.

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One thing about bisexual icon Margaret Cho? She stays ten toes down for the trans community. She also stays on Tr*mp’s neck, and we love her for it.

Last month, Cho reiterated what global experts have been warning about for months: we’re in the midst of a trans genocide, and Tr*mp isn’t even being subtle about it. Earlier this week, Tr*mp made a promise to his dwindling support base: if Republicans keep a majority in the House and Senate, he will make “transgender…end.”

To be fair, he’s been trying to achieve this for two years, and here we still are. “Just a reminder,” Cho says in a recent TikTok, “everything he says he’ll do, he hasn’t done.”

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You can say that again! Among Tr*mp’s many promises to voters during his 2024 run, he vowed to end the war in Ukraine, keep the US out of future wars, and bring down the price of grocery staples. So far, he ain’t done bupkis.

What he has done successfully is launch campaigns of violence and intimidation against the most vulnerable communities in the country: undocumented people, low-income women, and trans people. The threat to “end transgender” might be far-fetched—not to mention impossible—but it’s part of the dying Republican party’s final push to use voters’ ignorance against them.

Tr*mp’s inability to keep promises still isn’t “a lot of comfort” to already-terrified trans people and their allies, Cho says while sporting a Protect the Dolls t-shirt. “It’s so terrifying and so horrible because of what that means to the people I love…the transgender people in my family.”

For Cho, a true ally, trans rights and trans existence are not up for debate. “We will fight for you to the very end,” she promises. “All the rest of the queer community, we have to stand up for them. We have to make them understand that if you come for one of us, you come for all of us. And you don’t want this smoke.”

Cho’s heartening words come at an especially dire moment for trans people struggling to find hope during a bleak midterm cycle. As Tr*mp-aligned Republicans lose their grip on power, they’re choosing to fall back on a scare tactic that worked fantastically during the 2024 race: whipping up anti-trans sentiment.

In a more prosperous era, it worked. But it’s a big unknown as we lead up to the midterms. As gas and grocery prices rise, police violence overtakes the streets, and basic food staples are declared unsafe to eat due to lack of regulation, are trans people still the reliable boogeyman the GOP thinks they are?

It remains to be seen. Two years ago, even the most prominent establishment Democrats found themselves hedging on the topic of trans participation in sports. Today, with pro-trans politicians like Jon Ossoff, Zohran Mamdani, and Abdul El-Sayed in the mix, we’re seeing a different trend. Democrats aren’t scared to defend trans people anymore, and Republicans who lean on anti-trans sentiment are losing their primaries.

Cho, however, has been with us all along. When the chips were down, she still showed up for us, and that’s something we’ll never forget.

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By the time American audiences became aware of Spanish actor/filmmakers Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, they were known colloquially as “Los Javis,” a gorgeous power couple whose romantic partnership led to some truly fantastic creative work.

Their international breakthrough was the biographical series Veneno, the story of trans woman La Veneno who became a media sensation, which premiered stateside on HBO Max in late 2020. But at that point, they’d already been together for the better part of a decade, meeting as young actors (Ambrossi was once cast to play Calvo’s boyfriend on the teen soap Física o Química, though it didn’t pan out), sliding into one another’s DMs, before official becoming boyfriends in 2012.

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Together they created the campy church camp stage musical La Llamada—which they’d later adapt into their feature film debut Holy Camp!—the hit workplace comedy Paquita Salas, and have been main judges on Drag Race España from the very beginning.

Then came news that they were making a film called La Bola Negra, a decades-spanning epic that would tell the stories of three queer men whose lives were intertwined, partially inspired by the works of the late out poet & playwright Federico García Lorca. Sure sounds like a future queer classic to us!

But in the middle of filming, word got out that the pair had split after 13 years together, kick-starting a rumor mill and prompting a number of questions like, “What will become of the movie?” and “Is this the end of Los Javis?”

To the surprise of many, only a few months later, Ambrossi and Calvo were together on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival for the world premiere of La Bola Negra. And if there was any lingering heartbreak between the two of them, you wouldn’t know it because they were hugging and crying tears of gratitude during the film’s rapturous reception (its 20 minute standing ovation nearly breaking a record for the festival).

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A few short days later, the pair jointly accepted Cannes’ prestigious Best Director award, and a bidding war for distribution rights ensued, with Netflix coming out on top and instantly planning a roll-out for what many were already calling a major Oscar contender.

Now, with La Bola Negra readying a splashy fall release, the directors are finally opening up about how the film both led to their break-up and inspired them to double-down on their commitment to each other as creative collaborators.

Speaking with The New York Times‘ Kyle Buchanan, Ambrossi & Calvo reflect on the early days of their love story, recalling this feeling that they were “meant to be together.” But whether or not that story was meant to last was a different question all together, and it was amidst filming La Bola Negra they came to realize they would have to “finish this relationship,” believing the movie would be their last.

Directly addressing whispers that their handsome star, Guitarricadelafuente, had come between them, Calvo quickly points out it “didn’t happen” as the rising singer-songwriter is happily partnered (so, sorry to everyone out there hoping to score a date!).

Instead, it seems that La Bola Negra is so personal for the filmmakers that they couldn’t help but see the truth of their fizzling romance reflected back at them through the camera lens. As Buchanan notes, the film’s 2017-set passage follows a writer named Alberto (Carlos González) who lives with Juan Pablo (Julio Torres), but whether they’re longtime lovers who’ve lost their spark or just roommates is left intentionally vague.

“We wanted to do that to understand ourselves,” Ambrossi shares, admitting the nebulous nature of the characters’ relationship was a way to process the uncertainty around their own. “Doing that opened a door we needed to face, that we were not in love anymore.”

He continues: “It’s a movie about love, and when you try to put real love in front of a camera, suddenly you realize you don’t have it.” After filming a scene where one character “declares his passion for another,” they knew they’d lost that spark for themselves. They were over; Los Javis no more.

Though they had every intention of also ending their creative partnership after taking La Bola Negra to Cannes, it proved to be an overwhelmingly positive experience, and they couldn’t just ignore the fact that they, once again, had created something truly special together.

“We won best director at Cannes—we have to explore that,” Calvo shares. “It was a realization that we shouldn’t lose this. We’re a good team.” After all, “the weird thing is to be boyfriends who work together,” he adds “The normal thing is the other thing, right?”

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Their romance behind them, Ambrossi says he’s now able to “love [Calvo] more, I love him better,” and the two have already started work on their next project, something based on real events. But they’ll have to be careful to carve out time for that because they’re going to be very busy, no doubt fielding calls from major studios while also making press rounds for La Bola Negra and becoming the darlings of awards season.

In other words, we’re going to be seeing a lot of Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo in the next several months, so at least we no longer have to wonder, “What’s going on with those two?”

La Bola Negra opens in U.S. theaters on Oct. 16, before streaming exclusively on Netflix beginning Dec. 12. And, in the meantime, we highly recommend reading the rest of Kyle Buchanan’s fantastic profile, which includes fascinating tidbits—like the reveal that Glenn Close approached Los Javis about directing her in a film adaptation of the Sunset Boulevard musical—and so much more.

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D*n*ld Tr*mp hasn’t committed to spending any money to boost Ken Paxton’s flailing Senate campaign. But the president sure is happy to diss the philandering politician’s looks.

On multiple occasions Wednesday, Tr*mp called out the Texas Attorney General’s slovenly appearance. Early in the afternoon, he ripped Paxton in the Oval Office.

“We have a guy named Ken Paxton,” he said. “Some people don’t like the way he dresses or interviews or talks.”

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He followed up with some shade in the Rose Garden.

“And I say this—it’s so insulting to him, but I might as well say it—you might not like the way he looks,” said the president, a self-proclaimed admirer of “good looking men.”

Clearly, he’s decided that Paxton isn’t one of them.

Even though Tr*mp eventually got around to praising Paxton’s far-right record as AG, his remarks were phrased as a backhanded compliment. “[His record] speaks a lot louder than the suit he’s wearing that doesn’t look so great,” he added.

Republicans have long feared that Paxton wouldn’t “look so great” at the top of a ticket. His primary win over incumbent John Cronyn raised alarm in GOP circles, despite Tr*mp’s endorsement. Democrat James Talarico has led Paxton in nearly every head-to-head poll, and is in position to become the first Dem to win statewide office in Texas since 1994.

Impeached by the GOP-controlled Texas House in 2023, Paxton was accused of concealing an affair with a former political aid and landing his alleged mistress a no-show job with a top donor. Paxton’s wife of 38 years, a Texas state senator, divorced him last year on “biblical grounds.”

“I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation,” wrote Angela Paxton. “But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.”

While Paxton denies wrongdoing, his personal baggage has tattered his moral veneer. Talarico has effectively branded him the “most corrupt politician in Texas.”

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For our money, Paxton is also the most hypocritical pol in Texas–if not the country. A devout anti-gay crusader, he’s dedicated his career towards crawling back protections for LGBTQ+ Americans, dating back to the Obama Administration.

At the same time, he was running around with his alleged mistress. Now separated from his wife, Paxton has been galavanting around Europe this summer instead of campaigning in Texas.

He spent his Fourth of July holiday on a swing through Iceland and London, England. That’s some real “Cancun Ted” energy right there!

Still bitter over his primary defeat, Cronyn said last week he doesn’t intend to help Paxton raise money. “He’s lazy and doesn’t raise money,” he told the Texas Tribune. “He basically is not offering a very compelling case for his election.”

It’s apparent that donors agree. According to the latest FEC filings, Talarico has raised $31.6 million, while Paxton has raked in $9.3 million.

With a $400 million war chest, one might expect Tr*mp to boost his preferred candidate with some expensive ad buys. But so far, Tr*mp’s MAGA campaign arm has only released midterm ads that focus on, well, him!

Here's the new ad from Trump's political operation — it's all about Trump. pic.twitter.com/7dRL5tHvsj

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) September 2, 2026

Even in Texas, Tr*mp has a net negative job approval rating. Faced with those headwinds, Republicans have desperately tried to portray Talarico as a vegan, “Low T,” and anti-breakfast taco. Basically, they’re doing everything except calling him “gay.”

As for Paxton, there are many words that describe him: slob, hypocrite, homophobic, corrupt, awkward. And if the polls hold, loser!

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Seth Moulton made a calculation. And in Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary in deep blue Massachusetts, it blew up in his face when he failed to oust Sen. Ed Markey, who’s never wavered on his pro-LGBTQ+ values.

In the aftermath of D*n*ld Tr*mp’s 2024 popular vote win, Moulton decided to veer rightward. The issue the congressman chose was trans participation in sports.

In a post-mortem interview with the New York Times, Moulton lambasted his party for “trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face.”

The first “challenge” he named was trans girls playing sports, an issue that impacts a microscopic percentage of people.

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Yet, it receives outsized attention. Boogeymen always do.

Rather than support a marginalized community, Moulton dug in. “I have two little girls,” he said. “I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.”

Moulton wasn’t the only ambitious Dem who played footsie with the anti-trans right. California governor Gavin Newsom sat down with Charlie Kirk and called trans participation in girls’ sports “deeply unfair.” Their about-faces were the result of cold political jockeying: a majority of Americans oppose trans women competing in female sports.

But what Moulton and Newsom showed in calculus, they lacked in courage. The party base didn’t appreciate them treating trans people like red meat while Tr*mp’s administration stripped away their rights and protections.

It wasn’t long before Moulton and Newsom reversed course. After launching his Senate bid, Moulton co-sponsored a Trans Bill of Rights, which would’ve banned discrimination based on gender identity, including in sports.

The legislator who authored the Trans Bill of Rights was Markey, who trounced Moulton by nearly 30 points on Tuesday.

From the get-go, Markey leaned into his support of LGBTQ+ people, regardless of the political environment.

It paid off for him big time. The 80-year-old Markey often said that while Moulton had the “younger face,” he had the “younger ideas.”

Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly agreed.

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Throwing trans kids “under the bus”

During Markey and Moulton’s final debate, Markey highlighted his steadfast support of trans people.

“You belong, you matter and I will have your back,” he said, before attacking Moulton for “throwing trans kids under the political bus.”

Days before Tuesday’s primary, Markey told the NYT that trans rights were a “defining issue” in the race. “Massachusetts voters believe it’s disqualifying if you don’t stand up for human rights everywhere and all the time,” he added.

Moulton, for his part, blamed Markey for trying to “weaponize the issue.” But in fact, that’s exactly what he was doing when he joined the anti-trans pile-on.

Throughout the race, the trans community backed Markey. An activist spoke at his victory party.

Lessons learned

Arguably the bluest state in the country, Massachusetts is a unique case. The path to victory in Cambridge looks very different than the path to victory in, say, Cincinnati!

Across the country, Dems are taking a variety of stances on social issues. But the common thread between them is authenticity.

As Sarah McBride, the only out trans member of Congress, told Semafor, voters want “Democrats who are fighting for their principles.”

On that front, voters could see right through Moulton. It’s clear that his North Star has been striving for higher office. The Marine Corps vet unsuccessfully tried to oust Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker in 2018 and launched a quixotic bid for president in 2020.

In a particularly shameful maneuver, Moulton tried to tie Markey to Jeffrey Epstein, a claim with zero merit.

When Moulton spoke against trans inclusion, he was treating the trans community as collateral damage in his aspiring ascent. But on Tuesday, his political career was ended for that very reason.

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Mary Austin, Freddie Mercury’s former girlfriend and lifelong close friend, has a new book out. A Life in Lyrics: The Official Creative Legacy of Freddie Mercury, Based on His Unseen Personal Archives and Collections, is available now. It includes lyric sheets, drawings and other memorabilia that the Queen frontman bequeathed to Austin.

Austin rarely talks to the press. However, to promote the book, she sat down for a long and candid interview this week with the Guardian.

Austin met Mercury in 1970. She worked at the influential and hip clothing store Biba and was a friend of Brian May. At the time, Mercury ran a clothing stall in London’s Kensington Market.

One day, Austin found herself at May’s student house. He, Roger Taylor and Mercury were present, discussing potential names for their band. May wanted Build Your Own Boat. Mercury suggested Queen.

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It was the first time Austin met Mercury, and she was struck by his confidence and bravado, which she “found a bit intimidating.”

“Different from the others”

Soon after, she and Mercury began a relationship. She quickly discovered the bravado was something of a front to hide his true self. Within four months, in 1971, Mercury suggested they move in together.

Austin believes they bonded over sharing difficult childhoods. As for his sexuality, she says she long suspected that Mercury was gay. She’d only had two previous relationships, but Mercury was unique.

“He was different from the others. He was more creative. He was just more interesting. He was always thinking about going to see things. Not just bands. Like he’d go to see the film Cabaret over and over again. I loved listening to him explain why he enjoyed it so much. I enjoyed the journey around his mind. It was like reading a book.”

Despite her suspicions, they became engaged.

Then Queen began to become successful, and she noticed Mercury’s confidence became more real. She found herself slipping more into the role of his PA and fixer rather than girlfriend.

After four years, Mercury told Austin he had something to tell her.

“‘I think I’m bisexual.’ I said, ‘No, Freddie, I think you’re gay.’”

He did not argue or disagree.

Austin now says that rather than feel upset, it came as a relief. She already felt that their romantic relationship was not going any further.

“It was a huge relief, because I wasn’t sure whether we were travelling in the same direction any more,” says Austin. “Some time earlier I saw a dress and thought, that would be a really nice wedding dress. I asked Freddie, is it worth me buying it, and he looked at me and shook his head. So I knew from there on …”

“We became better friends and it became a better relationship.”

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Mercury’s death and will

They continued to live together for another 18 months. Austin remained working as his PA, traveled the world with him, and always lived close to him. She remained by his side while he fell ill with AIDS in the late 1980s. He died on November 24, 1991, aged 45. Born September 5, 1946, Mercury would have turned 80 this week.

Austin and Mercury’s relationship was close but complicated. She says now that he was the love of her life.

When he died, Mercury left his London home to Austin, along with trunkloads of memorabilia and other possessions. He left £500,000 to his boyfriend, Jim Hutton, who later said he was given three months to move out of Mercury’s house. Austin says that was down to the executors of the will, not her.

Mercury also instructed Austin to scatter his ashes and not reveal where. She followed his instructions to the letter, even declining to inform Mercury’s parents and sister.

“I think if I was Freddie’s parents, Freddie’s sister, and I wasn’t allowed to know where his ashes have been scattered, I would be upset and offended,” she said. “But that’s the job he asked me to do. And I did it. I kept saying to them, ‘I’m really, really sorry – I can’t tell you.’”

Mercury’s parents have now died. Austin continues to have a “delicate” relationship with Mercury’s sister, Kashmira, who claims she spent £3million of her own money buying back family mementoes when Austin sold much of her vast collection of Mercury’s belongings via auction in 2023.

Not telling her sons about relationship with Mercury

Austin has two sons. One was born a couple of years before Mercury’s death, and she was pregnant with the second when he died.

Surprisingly, she says she doesn’t think her sons knew anything about her relationship with Mercury until they were in their 20s. This is despite growing up in his former home, which was full of his possessions and had photos of him on the piano. She only decided to open up when she decided to declutter and sort out the 1,500 items to sell at auction.

Interviewer Simon Hattenstone expresses surprise at this revelation. He asks her younger son, Jamie, who accompanied his mother to the interview, if it’s true.

Jamie says he did actually know about his mother’s relationship with Mercury, despite her never mentioning it. Other people told him. However, he and his brother recognized that their mother found it upsetting to talk about.

“When you see that kind of discomfort and pain, it’s not something you want to talk about. So we learned to be respectful of that.”

A Life in Lyrics: The Official Creative Legacy of Freddie Mercury, Based on His Unseen Personal Archives and Collections, is out now via HarperCollins.

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The following is an excerpt from Disability, Revolution by Robert McRuer, out now from the University of California Press.

In recent political times, disability identity has been mobilized in ways that paradoxically compound bodily injury and disability. This single-issue approach obscures the oppression of disabled people and prevents solidarity across difference.

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In Disability, Revolution, Robert McRuer introduces alternatives to “one-dimensional disability,” providing an accessible overview of disability justice movements and their relevance to larger emancipatory coalitions.

Exploring the most prominent examples from the past several decades, the book focuses on the convergence of queer and crip movements, mad pride, intersectional disability justice work, neurodiversity, and the globalization of disability alliances.

Essential for anyone interested in disability politics, this book shows how these multivalent movements help us imagine alternative disabled worlds.

Queer disabled people were naming such minoritarian standpoints and interventions as crip by the final years of the twentieth century. Filmmakers David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder produced one of the first celebrations of crip defiance in their 1995 documentary, Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back.

Vital Signs puts into circulation a crip practice of repetition and reversal: if “vital signs” conjure up the diagnostic gaze and an objectified, one-dimensional patient, a patient who is perhaps even on life support, Vital Signs, the documentary, instead displays a thriving community of disabled artists and activists, including Clare reading poetry.

Many in Vital Signs identify as queer and understand the work of crip to be similar to the bold reclamation of the word queer. Indeed, the activist and artist Carrie Sandahl, who appears in a performance in Vital Signs, would later go on to coin the phrase “crip theory” through a study that focused on crip/queer performers connecting disability culture to the flamboyance, excess, and defiance of queer culture.

Sandahl performs in museum space with a cane and a white laboratory suit, on which are written various surgeries and other interventions that had been made on her body over the course of her life. The performance takes that medical objectification and makes it subjective, with Sandahl writing on her own body and then displaying that self-authoring in public space.

As queercrip culture expanded, a range of other documentaries and collections in the twenty-first century similarly put into circulation repetition and reversal of not only crip but other words intended to contain or wound disabled people, such as freak.

In 2020, Simone Chasnoff directed Code of the Freaks, a witty look back on more than a century of problematic, flat, one-dimensional representation of disability in Hollywood. The title of the documentary itself claims Tod Browning’s 1932 film Freaks for disability/crip culture, with the code of the freaks referring to the adage “offend one and you’ve offended them all.”

Code of the Freaks is a thickly intersectional documentary, attending to the ways in which problematic representations of race, gender, and sexuality converge with ableist representations in mainstream representation. 

Antonio Centeno and Raúl de la Moreno, in 2015, released Yes, We F*ck!, a documentary filmed in Barcelona and Madrid that worked to spotlight more generative possibilities than mainstream representations of sex and disability generally afford.

Yes, We F*ck! is composed of six vignettes spotlighting both physical and cognitive disabilities, focused entirely on sexual freedom for disabled people. One of the vignettes particularly explores what sexual pleasure and freedom mean for intellectually disabled people, as a range of young adults are interviewed about their sexual fantasies and pleasures.

The documentary circulated not only in Spain but across Latin America, and put forward multiple examples of what Andrea García-Santesmases, in her study of the same name, calls “el cuerpo deseado” (the body desired or desirable).

In his endorsement of El cuerpo deseado, Bob Pop writes that “El cuerpo deseado habla de mí, de mi cuerpo discapacitado, de cómo lo vivo y de cómo lo percibís. Habla de mi deseo y el deseo que os podría generar” (El cuerpo deseado speaks of me, of my disabled body, of how I experience it and how you perceive it. It speaks of my desire and the desire it could generate in you). [Throughout Disability, Revolution, all translations from Spanish are mine, unless I am using a quotation from an already-published/translated source.]

The symbol for the documentary adapts the universal access symbol for disability in queercrip ways. Accompanying the generic and nongendered universal access figure is a second stick figure seated in her/his/their lap; the erotic, intimate connection implied between the two not only represents crip sexual pleasures but also rescripts the bland utilitarianism of the widely known symbol.

In the process, the symbol for Yes, We F*ck! essentially asserts that a right to what Tobin Siebers has termed “a sexual culture for disabled people” is as important (or perhaps more, given the role of sexuality in self-actualization) as accessible doors, elevators, or parking places. 

Queer crips had in fact long been generating alternative ways of apprehending disabled sexuality, from Lorenzo Wilson Millam’s The Cripple Liberation Front Marching Band Blues (1984) to Connie Panzarino’s The Me in the Mirror (1984) to, in the twenty-first century, Terry Galloway’s Mean Little Deaf Queer (2009). Panzarino’s sex-positive queercrip presence included, famously, a sign that she would wear to Pride marches and elsewhere: “Trached dykes eat p*ssy without coming up for air.”

The sexually explicit assertion not only foregrounded the pleasures of crip sexuality but also emphasized that the accoutrements or technologies of disability need not necessarily be a limitation, and could even be a sexualized asset.

Through queercrip pride and defiance, writers such as Millam, Panzarino, and Galloway take what Sandahl calls “a radical stance towards concepts of normalcy.”Moving beyond calls for mere inclusion into dominant institutions, this worldmaking queercrip cultural production instead imagines and works to materialize other modes of existence.

Reprinted from Disability, Revolution by Robert McRuer, courtesy of the University of California Press. Copyright 2026.

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Mike Johnson is fully in his flop era. Despite using his noted anti-LGBTQ+ record to rise to Speaker of the House under Tr*mp, he’s now seeing how shortsighted it was to bet on that particular horse. Now, Johnson’s bet is costing him, and the cracks are starting to show.

Despite the few remaining MAGA loyalists seeing the writing on the wall, Johnson is committed to staying the course with Tr*mp, even though the president keeps putting him in increasingly humiliating situations. This week’s midterm meltdown was a perfect case in point. Asked by journalist Manu Raju about how long we can expect to suffer through the endless Iran War, Johnson’s veneer slipped, and he lost it, calling Raju’s question “one of the stupidest questions” Raju “ever asked.”

Well, that’s certainly an opinion! The problem is that Raju’s question about rising gas prices tied to the conflict is the same question most Americans are currently having. With the midterms looming, Johnson had better find an answer, quickly.

“It is more than six months, people are getting hurt still at the pump,” Raju reminded Johnson. “Should the American people not also judge you on your projections here that were fairly off-base?”

Politics, but make it gay!

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If Johnson doesn’t like being held responsible for Tr*mp’s erratic choices, he probably should have considered that before he hitched his wagon to the vastly unpopular president, who recently went full Marie Antoinette mode during an event at the White House Rose Garden.

On Wednesday, Tr*mp treated his closest minions staffers to a VIP event boasting a menu that would give most people gout on sight. Guests were served heirloom tomato and burrata salad, frozen strawberry curd, and for the entree, a “prime-aged beef burger.”

This tone-deaf choice comes on the heels of a USDA recall of 30,000 pounds of beef hailing from Argentina, where Tr*mp recently claimed to have found the answer to rising beef prices. We don’t know what kind of beef was served at the Rose Garden on Wednesday, but something tells us it wasn’t the cut-rate product that the president feels comfortable foisting on the rest of the broke, hungry population. It’s giving “Let Them Eat Beef”—and it comes at a moment almost as politically charged as the one that sealed Marie Antoinette’s own doom in 1793.

But listen, the guy’s gotta find some way of getting people to attend his parties, especially with rumored RSVPs for his upcoming GOP convention hitting a rock-bottom low.

Yesterday, Politico reported that more than 70 GOP members “do not plan to attend or are still weighing whether to go,” while “dozens more declined to share their plans.” And this is in Dallas, Texas, deep Tr*mp country. Could it have something to do with the fact that Tr*mp’s Argentine beef shenanigans have alienated struggling US ranchers in Texas and Florida, many of whom shared his MAGA politics? Or maybe with the “pain at the pump” that Americans are experiencing whether Mike Johnson likes it or not? Possibly. Either way, the result is depressingly predictable. Tr*mp has decided to boost attendance by doing the one thing that will turn people off even more: promising to speak on both days of the event.

It’s a good thing he loves the sound of his own voice, because at this point, nobody else does.

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