Tag: life

A Dutch priest is blowing the whistle after he says he was fired by the Catholic Church for being gay. Pierre Valkering’s troubles began back in March when he was suspended from his duties after coming out during a mass in the Vredeskerk in Amsterdam. During the mass, the 57-year-old priest talked about the “big pink elephant” within the Catholic Church and criticized its culture of silence around homosexuality, saying he had “suffered a lot” because of it. Around that same time,...

This just in: Michael Johnson (a.k.a. “Tiger Mandingo”), who was unfairly sentenced to 30 years in prison by a homophobic jury for not disclosing his HIV status to his sexual partners, has been released from prison 25 years early. Just to recap: Johnson was accused of “recklessly infecting” multiple male partners with HIV while he was a student at Lindenwood University in Missouri in 2013. In 2015, he was sentenced to 30 years by a jury pool stacked with white heterosexuals,...

It’s been over two weeks since it was first reported that Nivea had been dropped by its long-time ad agency following accusations of homophobia and the firestorm surrounding the global skincare brand is only growing hotter. Quick recap: According to Ad Age, it all started when the brand rejected an image the ad agency pitched depicting two men’s hands touching. In a call with agency creatives, a rep from Nivea allegedly said, “We don’t do gay at Nivea,” unaware that one of...

Iain Lee has a popular radio host, comedian, and reality TV personality for the U.K. During a recent episode of his TalkRADIO show, the 46-year-old former I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! contestant made a big reveal about his sexuality. Lee opened up seeing a psychotherapist after getting into a bad car accident, and it was during his therapy sessions that he realized he was bisexual. “He’s helped me realize that I’m probably bisexual,” he said on TalkRADIO. “So,...

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence in a Portland, Oregon Pride parade.On Saturday, the alt-right group the Proud Boys participated in a “Demand Free Speech” rally at Freedom Plaza in the nation’s capital. For the most part, hundreds of local police helped separate the rally attendees and the larger number of anti-fascist counter-protestors attending an #AllOutDC event scheduled for the same time at a nearby location. After the Proud Boys rally ended, an unknown female speaker grabbed a mic and approached...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the El Paso Processing Center, a facility operated by ICE, allegedly forced a Honduran migrant to walk around carrying a handwritten sign reading “I like men” in Spanish. According to CNN, the alleged act was meant to humiliate the man, and a CBP agent reported the March 5 incident to his supervisor via email. “This report has been made and is currently under investigation,” an El Paso CBP spokesman said in an email,...

Amazon is taking a stand against conversion therapy and Christian extremists are not happy about it. As of late last week, the online retailer has yanked all titles by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi (a.k.a. the “father of conversion therapy”) after determining his books violated the its guidelines. The move came after a Change.org petition gathered over 80,000 signatures calling on the site to cease sales of Nicolosi’s books, which promoted bogus gay conversion therapy practices and which have been described by some...

A burnt rainbow flag outside of the Alibi Lounge in HarlemFor the second time in nearly a month, someone has burned the rainbow flag outside of New York City’s only black-owned gay bar, the Alibi Lounge in Harlem. Between 12:20 and 12:45 a.m. early Monday morning, someone set fire to a rainbow flag hanging from a velvet rope outside of the bar’s front entrance. Previous to this, on May 31, surveillance cameras captured the sneakers of a person who walked up...

Feeling Grindr fatigue? Has Tinder left you swiped out? Are you missing all of OKCupid’s arrows? Take heart in the dating app success stories gay guys recently shared on Reddit. “Took a while but I met my current on Grindr,” one commenter wrote. “We have been together nearly 6 years now. When we met, I was explicit I was taking time away from dating and hookups but was happy for friends. We were official 2 months later.” Or take this...

We all know by now that bisexuality is a legit orientation and not just a gateway to being gay, but it’s also true that sexuality isn’t necessarily static and that some people slide around on the Kinsey scale. So after one bisexual Reddit user realized he hadn’t been crushing on women lately, he started wondering if he’s experiencing a “bi-cycle” or if he needs to rethink his identity. “So basically I’ve been using the label bisexual for just under a...

The 100-plus teens who planned to attend Storybook Pride Prom at Willowbranch Library in Jacksonville, Florida, got their special night of music and dance after all. The library had canceled the prom out of safety concerns following backlash spurred by a conservative blogger, but the Buckman Bridge Unitarian Universalist Church in Jacksonville stepped in to host the LGBTQ event instead. According to Grace Repass, Buckman Bridge’s past president, the church board unanimously supported the decision to offer space for the...

Somewhere along the way, the word “gay” went from meaning “lighthearted” and/or “homosexual” to also meaning “foolish, stupid, or unimpressive,” as the Oxford Dictionaries attest. And that third meaning really chafes one Reddit user, who asked for advice about “handling friends who constantly say the word ‘gay’ in the wrong way.” This Redditor has a friend who uses gay as a pejorative on the regular: “Died in call of duty? Gay. Didn’t get the day off work? Gay. Don’t like...

A lot of parents are proud of their LGBTQ children, but not all of them would show that pride in tattoo ink like John Atwell would. John’s story surfaced after his daughter, Kaitlyn, posted screenshots of her text conversation with him to Twitter on June 30. “I convinced my dad to get his first tattoo and he sent me something that my little sister painted,” she wrote in the caption of the post. “Let’s just say I’m a crying mess right...

Everyone’s favorite mustache owner Jonathan Van Ness and avocado aficionado Antoni Porowski threw fans of the Fab 5 into a Fab 5 frenzy on the Fab Fourth of July after Antoni posted a picture of the two coworkers kissing along with the caption: “I guess Amurica’s birthday’s our anniversary, babe.” There was a heart emoji at the end for good measure, naturally. But some things just aren’t meant to be. And a love connection between these two Queer Eye gurus just wasn’t...