Arsonist Behind Fire at Seattle Gay Bar Pleads Guilty to Hate Crime

Summer is officially upon us.It’s hard to believe that it’s been 21 years since the film Wet Hot American Summer was first released. The 2001 sex comedy spoof was total flop, earning just $295,000 at the U.S.

Traditionally gay nude beaches offer eye candy in a time when pornhub, dominating our fantasies during the pandemic, is probably just not doing the trick anymore.When diving back into real-world events, make sure to pack plenty of SPF, that special speedo that’s been in dry dock for three years, and grab a rainbow towel or two.If you’re looking for clothing-optional options that include the sun, sand, and surf get thee to a nude beach. The following beaches have all reopened for the summer season.Please check local rules about nudity–they can change.Please comment to add suggestions if your favorite didn’t make the cut. Praia do Abricó, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilIpanema is fun and all but if you’re looking for a boy from Ipanema, you have a better chance of finding him sunning his backside 25 miles west of Copacabana at the “Apricot Beach,” popular since the mid-1940s.

Beyoncé is in her oontz-oontz era — an era many of us never truly left.Her new single “Break My Soul” is the house and dance inspired moment that we didn’t know we needed. With the slightest of help from Drake’s new Honestly, Nevermind album, she is set to bring old school house pop back into the cultural conversation.House music’s roots are pretty explicitly queer and Black, and this new single featuring Black queer icon Big Freedia is reminding the girls of that fact.Names like Crystal Waters, CeCe Peniston, and Robin S.

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Screening people with HIV for precancerous anal cell changes and treating them early cuts the risk of anal cancer by more than half, according to results from the ANCHOR study published June 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine."It is great news that we now have the possibility to reduce the risk of developing anal cancer," lead investigator Dr. Joel Palefsky, who established the world's first clinic devoted to anal cancer prevention at UCSF in 1991, told the Bay Area Reporter."We believe that screening for anal cancer precursors and treating them should become the standard of care for people with HIV over the age of 35 years," he added.

It's been three years since San Francisco last celebrated Pride with its usual extravagance — COVID, like any unwanted guest, saw to that — but now, the fête is back this weekend under the theme "Love Will Keep Us Together" and people, hundreds of thousands of them, are ready to party. In person.

In October, San Francisco's New Conservatory Theatre Center will mount the world premiere of Nick Malakhow's new play "A Picture of Two Boys." It is the first time the queer Dominican and Ukrainian American writer and theater educator has worked with the LGBTQ nonprofit theater.The work features queer characters but delves more into their different racial backgrounds and other aspects of their identities. Their sexual orientations are not central to the plot, noted Malakhow in a recent phone interview from Boulder, Colorado where he lives and teaches English at a nearby private school."It is super amazing, honestly, to be working with a theater especially focused on LGBTQ issues with a story that centers LGBTQ characters but at the same time approaches these characters from a holistic, intersectional point of view," said Malakhow, 38, whose father emigrated from Ukraine in the 1950s at the age of 10.

A new film, now in pre-production, will recall the life of Juana Briones, often remembered as the "Founding Mother of San Francisco." Briones lived at a time when women didn't have rights and were often viewed as second-class citizens. Yet during her lifetime Briones raised children as a single mother, owned property, practiced herbal medicine, and was a midwife. She also excelled at business even though she could not read or write.Briones (1802-1889) was a woman of color, which made her accomplishments even more impressive, given the era in which she lived.

San Francisco has become the first known city to track its LGBTQ workforce as well as to ask applicants for city and county jobs what is their sexual orientation and gender identity. It is the latest attempt by the city to collect SOGI data, this time with an eye toward improving employment opportunities for LGBTQ individuals.In October, the Board of Supervisors signed off on striking a restriction in the city's municipal code that forbids it from inquiring into the "sexual orientation, practices, or habits" of city employees.

Maia Kobabe has the distinction of having written the most banned book in America, according to the American Library Association and PEN America, the writers' advocacy group Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists. "Gender Queer" is a graphic memoir first published in 2019 but re-issued in a hardcover deluxe edition this month by Oni Press.

San Francisco's last remaining gay sex club is racing to reopen its doors in time for Pride weekend. In doing so, it is reviving a historic location in the Tenderloin once home to a bathhouse that catered to men who have sex with men.Eros SF, the sex club for queer and trans men, is now located at 132 Turk Street.

The object of love and much adoration and — lately — plenty of controversy, the Castro Theatre is the crown jewel of the Castro neighborhood.Despite its grand Spanish Churrigueresque exterior, a popular style in California when the theater was built in 1922, and its even more grand interior, the beloved old movie palace is in worse condition than many may realize. It's not going anywhere, mind you, but once the theater's new managers, Another Planet Entertainment, finish their contractual obligations for various events this year, including Frameline46, San Francisco's International LGBTQ film festival running through Sunday, and concerts by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, the theater will be undergoing extensive renovations.

As viewers use their mouse to scroll around a computer-generated reimagining of the living room of the home owned by the late lesbian pioneers Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, an audio clip plays of the couple recalling the genesis for the country's first lesbian social organization that they helped to form in September 1955. The screen includes a black and white photo of the women at one of the group's gatherings in Sausalito four years later."We Daughters of Bilitis was really founded as a very secret secret social club and a means of getting together without going to the bars which were frequently raided," recounts Martin. "And to be able to, you know, meet in each other's homes and have socials and ...""... to dance that was a really important part of it," interjects Lyon.The snippet from an oral history the couple recorded in 1987 for Manuela Soares' Herstory Video Project can be heard during the roughly 20-minute virtual tour of their San Francisco residence. It comes during section seven titled "Founding Daughters of Bilitis."Their residence at 651 Duncan Street in the city's Noe Valley neighborhood became a hub in the 1950s and 1960s for the Daughters of Bilitis. The couple hosted numerous social events and meetings at their two-story cottage for members of the group.

Black trans activist Andrea Horne is an imposing woman. It's something in the way she carries herself, perhaps, her bearing, her sense of self. Her voice suggests a woman who has seen it all and knows the score but is enjoying herself nonetheless.

The increased activities of white nationalists and other right-wing extremists around the country, and particularly recently here in the Bay Area, has San Francisco Pride event organizers and authorities thinking of security at this year's event a little more earnestly than in previous years. Kids attending a drag queen storytime at the San Lorenzo public library in the East Bay were confronted by right-wing protesters June 11, as alleged members of the Proud Boys barged in and harassed drag queen Panda Dulce as she was reading to the children.

After Sabine Martin initially came out as gay at the age of 12, her Mormon parents pulled her out of her public school and decided to homeschool her. The family also relocated from Concord, California to a trailer park in the Contra Costa County city of Clayton at the foot of Mt. Diablo."I had some harassment at the time, but I also had people who had my back," Martin recalled in a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter.

It was a day that many LGBTQs will never forget.On June 12, 2016, 49 lives — mostly LGBTQ Latinos — were lost and more than 50 were injured during a mass shooting inside Pulse, an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Coming during Pride Month, the terrible news was a shock for the community. Now, six years later, the owner of Pulse is well into a plan to create what she describes as a fitting memorial at the site as a means to pay tribute to those whose lives were lost and to create a sanctuary of hope for future generations.Barbara Poma, the owner of Pulse, established the nonprofit onePULSE Foundation in 2017 with the goal of establishing the memorial.

More than two years into the pandemic, people are ready to party, but COVID-19 is still with us, and the emergence of monkeypox among gay and bisexual men presents a new health threat. Health officials don't advise canceling events or closing venues, but taking basic precautions can help maximize fun while minimizing risk."Coming out of the pandemic, people want to celebrate, and I think they can," Dr.

This past weekend, the Republican Party in Texas voted on an outrageous platform that not only denies the results of the 2020 presidential election, but also rejects gay marriage and seeks to “protect” minors until they turn 17 against “predatory sexual behaviors,” such as drag queens reading stories aloud to children. Drag queens are predators, trans women are a threat and gay marriage is a violation of the “natural order”: This is all part of the widening and re-energized attack by Republicans on L.G.B.T.Q. people and culture in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v.

Related: Dad threatened to “show up & kill somebody” if drag queens performed in his kid’s schoolWith so many Republicans stuck in the last century, they all grew up watching Bugs and his pals cheat death, taunt their enemies, and dress in drag. Sadly, while they seem to have forgotten all the laughs they had with the bunny in drag, they’re keen to remember the racist and sexist stereotypes the old cartoons embraced.Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake recently insinuated that drag queens and queer people are a threat to children.

criticized Pete Buttigieg for taking parental leave, saying, “The guy was not working! Because why? He was trying to figure out how to chest feed,” lampooning trans as well as gay people. Boebert and other right-wingers tend to laud stereotypically gendered parental roles; a typical argument from opponents of marriage equality was that children needed a mother and a father, never two parents of the same gender.Just last week, Boebert put aside her disdain for the secretary, the first out Senate-confirmed Cabinet member,  and wrote a letter to him seeking a Department of Transportation grant for bridge construction in her district, even though she opposed President Biden’s infrastructure legislation, which established funding for the grant program.Both Buttigiegs have shown expertise in taking on homophobes.

After an anonymous homophobe tore up his Pride decor, one man decided to prove that you can’t stop a rainbow from forming.Albuquerque resident Addison Foskey found the human rights sign and two Pride flags he’d planted in his yard vandalized earlier this month. Rather than despair or anger, he opted for the perfect response: rainbow revenge.First, Foskey got local news on the scene almost immediately in hopes that his vandal would hear his message.“I have ordered 100 more flags, and the yard will be awash in color,” Foskey told KOB 4.

Despite recent surges in bisexual representation in pop culture, many LGBT community members still experience identity invalidation today. This invalidation can significantly negatively not just bisexual people in particular but the community as a whole.Because bisexual people are neither gay nor straight, finding where they fit within the LGBT community can be a challenge.

It's time to come out, y'all! (Note: This is all in good fun, and people should only come out when they feel comfortable, safe, and ready. HAPPY PRIDE!)Ok, let's start with a softball (that's not a lesbian joke I swear!!). It's pretty widely suspected and accepted that Elsa is a lesbian.

Located at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, Israel is internationally recognized as the LGBTQ+ capital of the Middle East. Its nightclubs, bars, beaches, and premier Pride parade attracts millions of LGBTQ+ tourists from across the world. The beating heart of this community is the city of Tel Aviv, which could be viewed as the equivalent of San Francisco.Much like San Francisco, Tel Aviv has long been a safe haven for the region's queer citizenry, where the LGBTQ+ community could thrive and people could celebrate their identity.

The National Audubon Society has partnered with drag artist Pattie Gonia to invite the LGBTQIA community outdoors this Pride Month and to ensure that they have a safe and welcoming experience while there. As part of the collaboration the society has released the first two of four videos celebrating Pride in the outdoors.From hiking in platform boots to ice skating in a famous dress made from recovered pieces of discarded trash, Gonia is the creation of avid hiker and backpacker Wyn Wiley, who said the character was born spontaneously on a hike several years ago, according to a news release.

A longtime deputy director at San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights has embarked on a new job leading Legal Services for Children.That nonprofit, known as LSC, is also headquartered in San Francisco. Cathy Sakimura, a queer woman, began serving as its executive director June 20.Sakimura, 42, replaced Ronald "Ron" Gutierrez, the agency's interim executive director.

The NBA champion Golden State Warriors held their victory parade in San Francisco Monday, June 20. Guard Stephen Curry, shown on a bus with his wife, Ayesha, left, held the Most Valuable Player trophy that he received in a unanimous vote following Golden State's 103-90 win over the Boston Celtics at TD Garden in Boston June 16 in Game 6 of the NBA Finals.Hundreds of thousands of people descended on San Francisco for the parade, which started at the foot of Market Street and continued to Eighth Street.

The world governing body for competitive swimming, FINA, has banned most trans female athletes from participating in elite levels of competition. Based in Lausanne, Switzerland, the organization announced June 19 that it would institute the new policy the following day, June 20.

If you see something, say something. That appeal to the public gained traction after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and, today, remains relevant as the LGBTQ community prepares to celebrate the first in-person San Francisco Pride events since 2019. The reason, of course, is the uptick in some strange and frightening events over the past several weeks, both locally and across the country.

Cameroon-born performance artist and "RuPaul's Drag Race" Season #1 winner BeBe Zahara Benet believes in the power of drag."Drag is having its moment in pop culture right now, but it won't last forever," said Benet. "This type of representation matters immensely.""Visibility is so crucial," she said, from things like drag storytime to the Emmy Award-winning "RuPaul's Drag Race."She hopes that the award-winning documentary, "Being BeBe", her music, and live and video performances "pushes the needle forward in opening eyes, hearts, and minds" in Africa and wakes the West up and activate people to "help liberate others.""Being BeBe" debuted on Fuse June 21 in the United States and on OUTtv in Canada.

Santa Clara County's Office of LGBTQ Affairs has a new leader. Sera Fernando, a Filipina asexual queer transgender person, was named leader of the county department June 13.Fernando was appointed by Rocio Luna, deputy county executive, and former Office of LGBTQ Affairs manager Maribel Martínez.Martínez, the office's first manager, was promoted to program manager III in the county's Division of Equity and Social Justice in July 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile.Fernando, 42, had been serving as the office's interim manager and senior management analyst since January 18.

1956 — 2022Donald Dean Price (1956-2022) passed on June 15, 2022 in the San Francisco he loved.Don met Bill Lipsky in 1980 and they remained life partners, husbands, and best friends for the next 42 years.Both native Californians, Don and Bill moved to San Francisco in 1981, the best decision they ever made together. A graduate of St.

People stopped by Ringold Alley in San Francisco's South of Market district Saturday, June 18, to celebrate the revival of the leather space. Gayle Rubin, left, explained the history of San Francisco's leather scene and the role Ringold Alley played in it during an informative walking tour that was part of the Ringold Revival event.The San Francisco Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District and the SOMA West Community Benefit District led an effort to repair the leather-pride colored sidewalks and polish the boot print plaques.

Rounding the corner from San Jose's Museum of Art on North First Street, lesbian retired Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell saw a larger than life image of herself.The tropical, purple-tipped leaves and fuchsia butterflies flying between the scales of justice with a fist at the top frame Cordell. Her likeness stands calmly draped in a judicial robe holding a gavel.

It's Pride 2022, and we are back in the streets to celebrate in-person again! Afterward, many of us will continue the party at bars with family and friends. In San Francisco and Oakland, however, should you head to the bar patio for fresh air, you could find something else in your lungs: secondhand smoke and vape.Unlike over 50 other cities in the Bay Area, San Francisco and Oakland allow smoking and vaping tobacco on bar patios. Using cannabis in any way on a bar patio is prohibited under state law, but you may still smell a special something on many a bar patio.

Topics: Aaon, Health, History, Living, Sports, Trans Rights, World More Posts About: Budapest, Cisgender, Reuters, Transgender, Veronica Ivy

Florida’s first Black nominee for governor when he ran against Republican Ron DeSantis in 2018. DeSantis won.

The Associated Press.While monkeypox is not currently defined as a sexually-transmitted infection, it can be passed on by close or intimate contact that occurs during sex, either through respiratory droplets or through contact with sores or bedding and clothing that has touched pox sores. Health officials warn that anyone who is in close, physical contact with someone infected or their clothing or bedsheets is at risk of acquiring the disease, regardless of sexual orientation.However, in the United Kingdom, where there are 793 confirmed cases of monkeypox, 99% of those infected are men, and men who have sex with men comprise the majority of cases among that sub-group.Last month, Dr.

Due to testing positive for COVID-19 Wednesday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed will not be able to take part in any of the city's Pride events taking place this weekend. The LGBTQ celebrations are returning after a two-year hiatus due to the ongoing pandemic.According to the mayor's office, Breed will be following all isolation and quarantine protocols as recommended by the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

Netflix announced that the 35-year-old actor’s character, Viktor Hargreeves, would use he/him pronouns in the third season of the superhero series, which premieres Wednesday. The Oscar-nominated “Juno” star stopped by “Late Night with Seth Meyers” on Tuesday to talk more about how the decision for the character to come out as transgender came to be. They said “Umbrella Academy” showrunner Steve Blackman was “really excited” to incorporate Page’s identity into the show.

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. But! He is heard.The heartthrob lends his unmistakable vibrato to the voice of the eponymous animal, a crooning croc who just wants to hang out with the neighborhood kids and *checks notes* wear a scarf? We guess?Like Clifford The Big Red Dog, it’s the kind of thing that makes sense in a children’s book, but then is pretty baffling—and terrifying—when the character is brought to life through photorealistic animation and plopped down in the middle of a Manhattan brownstone.Related: Shawn Mendes posts super cryptic letter about struggle to live as his “true self”On top of that, you’ve got Hustlers‘ Constance Wu as the harried mother who’s just worried about her child’s (Winslow Fegley) safety in the presence of a carnivore, which is very understandable! But are we just imagining things, or does she have some chemistry with the crocodile?Funnyman Brett Gelman also stars as a nosy neighbor, Mr.

LOVE Island fans have pleaded with show producers to offer support to Ekin-Su after they claimed she was bullied. Viewers made the plea to show bosses after saying both Jacques and Luca bullied her amid her row with Davide.

Due to what critics have called a discriminatory policy, men who have sex with men remain banned from donating blood. Tinder has joined forces with the Human Rights Campaign to call for an end to the ban. The groups are urging attention to the FDA-funded study, Assessing Donor Variability And New Concepts in Eligibility, or ADVANCE Study.

The Umbrella Academy incorporated it into the new season of the show, the actor said Tuesday on Late Night With Seth Meyers.Meyers asked Page about the reaction he’s received since he came out as trans in December 2020, as some in the general public have made negative comments, although Page’s loved ones have been supportive. “What I want to focus on right now and has been so extraordinary is the degree of joy that I feel, the degree of presence that I feel,” Page replied.

abandoned later that year during demonstrations stemming from long-simmering tensions between protesters and the police department and sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The fire attracted immediate attention, and officers who were on scene observed Garcia a short distance away.

Twenty-seven months after he set fire to a dumpster behind a Seattle gay bar, Kalvinn Garcia has pleaded guilty to one count of committing a federal hate crime. According to a news release issued May 26 by the United States Department of Justice, on February 24, 2020, Garcia, 25, of Sedro Woolley, Washington, set fire to the contents of a dumpster behind Queer/Bar, a popular club in Capitol Hill, Seattle's LGBTQ neighborhood.

Kalvinn Garcia, 25, of Sedro-Woolley, Washington, admitted to committing a hate crime because seeing the word “queer” angered him.